Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 98264 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98264 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
One on a snowy mountaintop, his hair a tousled mess beneath a pair of ski goggles. There were six grinning men all huddled around him, and it made me smile to know that Camden had finally found his tribe of friends.
Someone else had tagged a picture of him at what appeared to be a restaurant, a cake with sparkling candles lit in front of him. It had been posted four months after his birthday, so I wasn’t sure what he was celebrating, but I just liked knowing he had something to celebrate at all.
But the picture that hit me the hardest was an image of him standing beside a gorgeous blonde. They looked like Ken and Barbie. He was in chinos and a baby-blue button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows—pure Camden Cole preppy. She was in a white silk blouse tucked into a high-waisted black pencil skirt and capped off with black stiletto pumps. She was taller than I was. Classier than I was. Prettier than I was. But most of all, she was standing in what should have been my spot at his side, and he was smiling ear to ear with his arm draped around her hips.
The caption read: Nothing better than a night out with this guy.
And she wasn’t wrong.
I cried myself to sleep that night, simultaneously mourning the loss of a man who had never truly been mine and hoping he’d finally found someone who could make him happy.
Stalking Camden Cole quickly became my favorite guilty pleasure. He never added any pictures of his own, but every few months, one of his friends would tag him in something. As far as I could tell, Pencil Skirt Barbie hadn't lasted long, but as the years passed, it wasn't unusual for other girls to appear in photos with him.
What had I expected though? He was a gorgeous man in his twenties. Honestly, it was more surprising I hadn’t run across engagement or wedding photos yet.
Deciding to follow Camden’s lead, I allowed some of the teachers at school to set me up on a few dates. Most were dumpster fires, though a guy named Noah earned a second date. He was nice enough, funny enough, kind enough.
He just wasn’t Cam.
So I threw myself back into work and swore men off for good. Well, all men except for my secret late-night rendezvous with whatever picture of @CamdenCole1019 had been recently added.
Between working on myself, working for the kids, and working toward keeping Thea from becoming a crazy cat lady sans the cats, time moved on.
Until one day, it stopped.
“You have a call from inmate—”
After twelve years, I didn’t need to listen to the rest of the message. I pulled the phone from my ear and pressed the number one to accept the call. While I waited for the line to connect, I paused the “How to Make Creamy Tuscan Chicken” video on my iPad and dried my hands on my pink-and-white floral apron.
It had been a long day at school, complete with a first-grader sneezing in my face only to turn around and puke on the floor, but hey, at least it hadn’t been the other way around. Thea was losing her mind, struggling with the latest update to her website, Travel For Me. I’d decided to cook her something yummy in my never-ending attempt to take her mind off things. I was a good roommate like that. Plus, I’d really wanted that Tuscan chicken since I’d stumbled across the recipe on my weekly Peeping Tom stroll through Instagram. Win. Win.
“Nora,” Ramsey choked across the line.
I froze, my whole body going on alert. “What’s wrong? What happened? Are you okay?”
There was some movement on his end, and I sucked in a deep breath, ready to face whatever hell the Department of Corrections had thrown his way this time.
“The parole board approved my release,” he whispered as if speaking the words out loud might accidentally change them.
“What?” I gasped. “They approved it?”
This wasn’t our first parole hearing. Ramsey had had one every twenty-four months since he’d become eligible after year six. The Caskeys did everything possible to keep Ramsey locked away. For a family who lived in denial about who their son had been, they sure held a lot of clout in the legal community. With Jonathan being a decorated cop, his dad the former mayor, and the entire Caskey name being something of a Clovert dynasty, they had entirely too many favors to call in.
After Ramsey’s hearing at year ten, we’d had a good cry together during a visitation and decided not to put our hopes into an early release. He hated seeing me crushed each time he was denied, despite being a model inmate. And I hated knowing that, after everything he’d sacrificed, he was still trying to protect me.