Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 128801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 644(@200wpm)___ 515(@250wpm)___ 429(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128801 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 644(@200wpm)___ 515(@250wpm)___ 429(@300wpm)
Resignation had me blowing out a sigh. “I know you do, I’m just not sure—”
Her head shook. “Brad might not be your love match, but you’re never going to know unless you try. It’s just one date. That’s all I’m asking of you. What could it hurt?”
The problem was, there was that achy spot inside me that promised it would always hurt. This hole that could only be filled by one person.
Shaking my head, I mumbled, “Fine.”
Paisley threw a fist in the air. “There is my fabulous, ferocious, Grade-A, amazing bestie.”
“You are amazing, Auntie,” Evelyn sang, looking up at me from where she was slurping her tea from a straw with that sweet smile on her face.
Paisley looked at me like she dared me to refute them.
“Manipulators, the two of you.” The tease came out lighter than I’d expected.
Evelyn lifted her hand to give Paisley a high-five. “We’re a really good team.”
“That we are, Evie-Love.”
Shaking my head, I went into the kitchen and picked up their burgers, then returned with them.
Paisley groaned as she wrapped both hands around the enormous burger. “Now there’s no denying you love me. We all know food is your love language, Doodle-Boo. And I feel it right here…way down deep in the pit of my stomach.”
She took a massive bite.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You are such a dork, Paisley Dae.”
A meddling, wild, wonderful dork.
Tenderness moved through her gaze, remorse and worry making their way to the top. “But you really do love me, right?”
I glanced over to where Brad sat. A new heaviness pressed down on that empty spot that throbbed inside. I turned back to her. “You know I do. I just hope you’re not bringing trouble to my door.”
Paisley smirked. “Nothing is quite as much fun without a little trouble splashed in it. Now let’s talk about what my hot AF BFF is going to wear…”
SEVENTEEN
DAKOTA
THIRTEEN YEARS OLD
The timer buzzed on the oven and Dakota padded over the linoleum floor to open it. She covered her hand in a mitt before she reached in and pulled out the tray of chocolate chip cookies. The only light illuminating the kitchen was the one that glowed from the hooded vent above the stove, cutting into the darkness that pressed in from the windows and hovered heavy in the night.
Baking always made her happy.
Chased away every bad thought.
A place where her mind drifted, and her heart beat free. Where she was safe. Where she found comfort.
Where she found that feeling that made her believe she was something special, or at least that one day she was going to be.
Tonight, though, as she set the tray on the cooling rack, it was filled with sadness.
With a grief so distinct that the air felt clotted. Like a thick cloud of it had come to blot everything out.
It crushed down around her as she transferred the cookies into a tin and covered them with a lid, and it weighed down her steps as she quietly edged through the sleeping house and slipped out the front door.
She cringed when it snapped a little too loudly behind her, then she breathed out a relieved breath when she heard no movement from inside.
Keeping her feet as quiet as possible, she eased down the steps, and she stayed low as she crept along the front of their house to the side. The second she made it to the path that ran the length of their fence, she increased her pace, hurrying along it under the cover of night until she slowed at the edge of the woods that rose up behind their backyard.
She could hear the trickling of the stream as it rolled over the smoothed rocks, the hoot of the owl, and the rustle of the branches as the crisp fall air breezed through the leaves.
But more than anything else, she could taste the sourness of the sorrow that sat like a blanket that sagged from the heavens.
She eased up to the tree, her eyes tracing the silhouette that she saw from behind.
That shaggy mop of black hair had gotten long and even more unruly over the summer. He’d grown tall during that time, when he’d gone away to spend the summer with his cousin in Washington. He was no longer the gangly boy that she knew, the one who laughed at everything and was always joking around.
The one who devoured every single thing she baked and never failed to tell her it was the best thing he’d ever eaten.
The one who had met her out here so many times when he somehow knew that she was sad.
But this time, she was coming for him.
She eased forward, trying to keep her footsteps light, like she didn’t want to interrupt but didn’t know how to stay away, either.
Ryder didn’t say anything as she crawled onto the branch where they always sat below the star speckled sky.