Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
After meeting him, and being so drawn to him, I’d learned everything I could about Tom Pierce, and that had blown my mind too.
At the time, all the pundits had said it was a huge mistake. He was wasting his best tennis years in a classroom, when he could return to the classroom later. But he’d never get back those years of strength and stamina to play tennis.
All the pundits turned out wrong.
If he’d decided to do that for a strategic purpose, it was also a stroke of brilliance. Because once he hit the pros, he’d blown through that too.
Like a cyclone.
“My practice is part-time,” he shared. “I only have a few patients of my own, I’m choosy when I take on new ones, and for the most part, my office hours are to fill in for my partners when I’m in town so they can have a break.”
Only Tom Pierce would practice medicine in a way it seemed like a hobby.
“Oh,” I said.
“So yes, I can come over tomorrow.”
“Fine. Great. I’ll text you my address.”
“She’s ready to come forward.”
“Pardon?”
“Your friend, or the person you knew. Now that things have changed, shifted, it’s safer, she’s ready to come forward.”
But of course, even after all these years, Tom did not forget I mentioned what I did, even ambiguously, about Luna.
His guess wasn’t on the nose, but it was close.
“We need to talk about it in person.”
“Text me,” he ordered, and strangely, my nipples tingled.
Okay…
What was that?
I was not a woman who got off on being ordered around by a guy.
Shit.
“Will do. See you tomorrow.”
I was about to ring off when I heard him call, “Mika?”
“Yes?”
“I’m glad you phoned.”
Now, how did I respond to that?
“See you tomorrow, Tom.”
He sounded amused, which sucked, when he said, “Tomorrow, Mika.”
I ended the call thinking, my whole life, I’d been surrounded by powerful, fascinating, attractive, talented men, and for the most part they were all assholes.
I jumped when I heard Cadence’s voice.
“Is there a reason you had to hole up in your studio all alone to talk to a tennis stud?”
I took her in.
She didn’t look like me at all.
She had Rollo’s dark, wild curls. He’d been tall and bulky. She had a body like his mother’s: average height and slender (which was totally not me). She had his dark eyes and olive cast to her skin and that nice line to her nose. She tanned in a blink, and it was beautiful.
Sometimes, when she was a little kid, I would bury my face in her curls and I’d swear, they smelled just like Rollo’s.
Then the years passed, and I wasn’t sure I remembered it right. I’d had him so little time, did I make that up?
It didn’t matter, that smell went away, it became all Cadence, so even that part of Rollo was lost to me.
Still, she was so very him in so many ways, I had that. I held on to that.
And I held on to the other thing my husband left me. That frisson inside that I felt the first second I laid eyes on him, and it remained when he was gone. Where it lived in me was the part of me he owned, and I was never going to give it to another.
That didn’t mean, if I fancied a fuck, I didn’t have one. I did. I’d also had a few affairs that lasted longer than a night. And I had a few men who were fuck buddies who I could call on to take care of business.
Not one of them had I brought into Cadence’s life.
Hell, in any meaningful way, none of them had been in my life.
My daughter was eighteen now, and after those agonizing years long ago when she came to understand the concept of having a daddy, and it dawned on her others had one, but she did not, she didn’t give me any impression she had missed a man like that in her life.
Until recently.
She’d begun doing weird shit, like right now, staring at me hopefully after I had a private conversation with a “tennis stud.”
I sensed this was because she was eighteen. She was graduating next May. And after that, she’d be gone.
Which petrified me.
Because first, I was a mother and that shit happened when you were a mom, no matter how cool of a mom you were. And I imagined myself one of the coolest moms there was (though Cadence might argue that, at least on occasion).
But mostly it was because she wanted to work for a place like Judge Oakley and Hale Wheeler’s Trail Blazer program.
And not just that.
She also wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps and be a drummer (and she was a damn good one, and I knew music, so I wasn’t prejudiced (much)). She wrote songs as well (and those were damn good too, Lorde-esque meanderings, but there were tinges of Taylor’s storytelling and honesty in Cadence’s stuff).