Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 110127 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 551(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 367(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110127 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 551(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 367(@300wpm)
“Thank you God.” Bobbie groans.
“Thanks. See you in a bit.” I get some water and sneak quietly back into my room. Ari is sprawled out over the middle of the bed and the tee shirt has bunched around her waist showing her complete ass. If we didn’t have a houseful of people, I would take advantage of this situation. Instead, I crawl in beside her and drag her limp body across my chest. Her warm breaths heat my skin and I run my fingertips along her side.
I silently thank God for this second chance and vow to never let my family down again.
Chapter 26
Reed
This cannot be good news, which really fucking sucks because we’ve had an awesome weekend. But if Trey is at my door at four o’clock on Sunday afternoon, something is wrong. He looks at me apologetically when I let him in.
Jack stayed the weekend again and when he sees Trey, his shoulders tense. Ari is in the shower and Davis is asleep so I motion to the back patio. He opens a folder and pours the contents on the table. Pictures fall out and I recognize some of the people in them from college.
“You know any of these people?” Trey asks.
Both Jack and I point out a few faces and I freeze when I realize Alex Moore is in a lot of them. Ari walks out and wraps her arms around my waist.
“Hey Trey, what are y’all looking at?” Her face changes and she grips me tighter. “Why do you have pictures of Sarah Summers?” She points to a blonde in several pictures.
“You know her?” he asks.
“Yes.” She says so quietly we barely hear her.
“Baby, how do you know her?” I urge.
“She works with me at the bank. She’s the one Luke was seeing for a few weeks.”
“I know her too, man. I hooked up with her several times our senior year.” Jack says.
Trey looks at all of us and shakes his head a bit, indicating there’s more to the story.
“Baby, go call Luke and see if he can come over. He needs to hear this.”
She nods and goes inside. I get each of us a beer and sit down looking through the rest of the pictures.
Luke arrives in thirty minutes. Davis woke up so Ari set him up with a movie then joins us again.
Trey starts to explain. “I’ve been digging through old college pictures trying to find the common denominator. We found out about Alex and Cara, but there were still so many unanswered questions. Like why Ari was called into the Dean’s office and how her scholarship could have been threatened. Then there was how this could happen the same day Ari found out she was pregnant. Nothing here is a coincidence. The commonality is Alex Moore. Reed, I need to know all you know about her.”
“She is my sister’s friend. She and her friends followed me around in high school but she was a pain in the ass. She came to FSU my sophomore year and started a fan club for me. I still stayed away, but was polite because of the relationship with my sister. Honestly until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t seen her much since college.”
“Any reason she would be in your college apartment? Look at the pictures in the back of the stack.”
I shuffle through and see a few of her and Cara in my place and I remember the night Cara planned the party. “Yeah, the night Ari and I broke up; my sister had planned a party without telling me. I kicked them out.”
“Well, you may not have seen her, but she has seen you. Records show she moved to Jacksonville after college. On paper, she works for her father, but I’m not sure exactly what her position is. Somehow she has engrained herself into your life. She has been at almost every function you’ve attended since being drafted. This is more than a simple adoration. We may be bordering on obsession. I’ve looked into her and she has your schedule down pat. She volunteers with the same charities, she works with the team on citywide events, and the list goes on and on. When you came up here in May and rented this place, she went nuts that you had disappeared from your normal routine. She went to a buddy of mine in the business and asked him to find you. He was able to blow her off for a while because he thought she was a crazy fan, but she finally went to him with some of these pictures and said y’all were tight and she was worried about your state of mind since the injury. He started looking into you. His trail led him to me and I knew the story about Ari and Davis by then. I explained you were very much alright and had a need for privacy. He gave her money back and told her you were fine then she went crazy. Threatening to have his license revoked and put him out of business.