Total pages in book: 185
Estimated words: 180510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 903(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 602(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 180510 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 903(@200wpm)___ 722(@250wpm)___ 602(@300wpm)
Becca and Colten chuckle.
“Colten made us reservations at a tearoom. So we got dressed up and had three o’clock tea. Scones. Little sandwiches. And cakes. It was really …” She eyes Colten and I swear I see tears in her eyes. “It was a wonderful gift. I raised such a thoughtful young man.”
We’re just going to agree to disagree on that one for a while, even if I find it really sweet that he did that for his mom and daughter.
“What about you, Josie? Did you have a good day?” Colten asks as if he didn’t see me this morning and talk to me on the phone at lunch.
I nod several times, eyeing him suspiciously. “You?” I feel compelled to ask in return.
He takes a bite of pizza and chews it while nodding. “It was okay. Better now that I have my three favorite girls all at the dinner table with me.”
No. Nope. Uh-uh. He’s not allowed to say that. Seventeen years. Seventy years. Five hundred lifetimes. It doesn’t matter. He crushed me, and I’ll always feel it.
Becca gives her son the expected adoring gaze. Reagan’s too busy eating her pizza in micro bites to pay any attention to his comment. I … well, I ignore him, gulping down my water like I haven’t drank a drop all day.
After dinner, Becca takes Reagan upstairs for her bath while I help Colten clean up the small mess from dinner.
“I talked to the family this afternoon.” I hand him the last plate to load into the dishwasher. “It was incredibly hard, but I think reassuring them he probably didn’t suffer was a little comforting. I don’t know how long it will take for them to really process that it happened in the first place.”
“Never,” Colten mutters, closing the dishwasher. “You never fully process it.”
I wipe my hands on a towel before setting it aside and sliding my fingers into the pockets of my gray linen capris. “I wanted to call you. After it happened, and you weren’t at the funeral, I wanted to call you. But …” I press my lips together, not really sure how far I can or should go with this. Where will it end?
“But you hated me.”
Staring at my feet, I inch my head side to side. “I didn’t have your number.”
“And you hated me. You did. You do. I won’t make you say it. And I take full responsibility. I can’t change it. And I haven’t decided if I would change it if I had the chance.”
The only thing worse than feeling rejected is hearing his confession that it wasn’t an accident. It was intentional. No remorse.
He hurt me, and he feels no remorse.
“Tell your mom and Reagan goodbye for me. I’m going to head home.”
“Josie …”
I make my way to the front door without actually running, but I want to. Boy, do I ever want to run away from Colten Mosley and never see him again. With him, I’m not a doctor. I’m not a well-respected medical examiner. I’m barely a woman. With Colten Mosley, I will always be the girl in love with the boy. The girl who he thought was a boy. The default friend.
“No. Just … no.” I bolt out the front door, slinging my purse over my shoulder.
“Josephine Watts, look at yourself.” He takes long strides, following me to my car. “You are more … so much more than I imagined. Without me, you became everything you never were with me.”
I stop at the driver’s door, keeping my back to him, taking one deep breath after another.
He’s right, but not in the way he thinks. I will never tell him that.
“If we choose to live with regret, then I have to regret Reagan. I have to regret my job. I have to regret too many things that are good in my life because my life went in directions no one could have ever imagined. And I’m tired of regret. It’s the heaviest anchor, the most unbearable feeling of drowning … of suffocating. My dad tied a rope around his neck because of regret. If I regret, then I’m chasing a ghost. If I regret, it might be my neck inside that noose.”
Pressing my fingers to the corners of my eyes, I wipe away every outwardly physical sign of pain. My other hand grips the door handle. “If I can’t look back, you are nothing more than a detective like Detective Rains. I don’t eat dinner with him. I don’t visit his mom and meet his children. So…” I open the door “…good night, Detective Mosley.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When Josie said my dad had kissed another woman, I was mortified.
Angry.
Embarrassed.
But mostly … confused.
I ran home without another word to her and tore through the house looking for my parents.
“Where’s Mom and Dad?” I quizzed Chad.
He was too deep in his video game to acknowledge me.