Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 98412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
The shop I worked at wasn’t far from Carmen’s house, and for once in the entire time I’d been working there I was early. I sat back in my seat after glancing at the clock on my dash and shutting off the car. I had ten whole minutes to myself—it was like a freaking miracle.
Grabbing the mail off the passenger seat, I started leisurely flipping through the envelopes. Most of them were for Max, like I’d expected. There were only two bills—thank God—for me, and I shuffled them to the back of the stack so I didn’t have to look at them and stuffed them all in the glove compartment. Something had come for me that I didn’t recognize, but it looked official. I turned it over in my hands for a moment. New notifications were never a good thing in my experience, and I wanted to ignore it like I was doing with the other bills, but I knew that if I didn’t see what it was, it was going to drive me crazy all day, like a bomb ticking away in my car.
My stomach clenched as I opened it up.
At first I didn’t really understand what it said. The language was all very legal sounding and almost impossible to decipher.
Then suddenly what I was looking at became crystal fucking clear.
Life insurance paperwork.
Life insurance paperwork for the father of my child.
And if I was getting life insurance paperwork, that meant only one thing.
“Goddamn it, Henry,” I whispered, dropping my head to rest on my steering wheel as tears flooded my eyes.
Chapter 3
Trevor
The address I had for Morgan Riley was in an apartment complex in Mira Mesa, one of the neighborhoods in San Diego. I only knew the neighborhood’s name because I’d asked my foster brother Shane’s opinion of the area on one of the many phone calls I’d received during my drive south. It seemed like an okay place, which settled my nerves a little.
I wasn’t real comfortable in large cities. It seemed like the more crowded a place got, the rougher it looked. Mira Mesa wasn’t bad, though. There were a lot of shopping centers and bars, but it didn’t have the feel of people living on top of each other the way I knew a lot of other parts of San Diego did.
My stomach churned as I pulled into the apartment complex a little after five that evening. The parking lot was packed with cars as people came home from work, but I finally found a place half a block from the apartment I was looking for that would actually fit my four-door, long-bed truck. It stuck out like a sore thumb alongside the compact cars that filled the spaces on each side, and I tried to not let it bother me as I shook out the tension in my hands.
I’d forgotten what a nightmare the traffic was down here. I had no idea how Shane and Katie dealt with that bullshit every day. I’d lose my mind if I had to sit on a hot-as-shit freeway for hours just to get to work.
Morgan lived in a second-floor apartment, and I checked the address one last time before I mounted the stairs. I could hear music playing inside the apartment when I reached the door, and for a second I questioned why the hell I’d volunteered to be the one who made contact, but I forced myself to knock anyway.
The guy who answered the door was clearly military of some sort. He wasn’t in uniform, but he had the same haircut, and tan lines around the sides of his head and right above his elbows that my brothers always had in the summer thanks to their uniforms.
“Hey man,” he said, easily. “Can I help you with somethin’?”
“I’m looking for Morgan Riley,” I said, automatically reaching out to shake the guy’s hand. “I’m Trevor Harris.”
His head cocked to the side as he took my measure, then he grasped my hand for a quick shake. “I’m Linc. Sorry, Morgan moved out about a month ago.”
“She did?” I asked dumbly, my mind barely wrapping around the fact that I’d driven all that way for nothing.
“Yeah, she’s up in Anaheim now.”
“Shit.” I reached up and ran a hand over my head in frustration.
“Why are you looking for her?” he asked, leaning against the door frame.
“She knew my brother Henry,” I replied, clearing my throat. “He passed away not too long ago, so—”
“Aw, man. That sucks. Sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, hey, I think I’ve got her address here somewhere,” he said, turning to open a kitchen drawer near the door. “She left it in case we got any of her mail.”
He rifled through the drawer for a minute, then lifted up a small sheet of paper and waved it from side to side. “Got it. You got a pen?”