Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 82214 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82214 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
A few people littered the sidewalks and followed the curved path into urban nature. It split a few times to offer variety, but my legs dragged me down the same path I’d traveled many times before.
Squirrels skittered up tree trunks and chirped at each other in places I couldn’t see. I wondered if they were arguing or simply having a conversation. Sometimes I couldn’t tell the difference with people, but with squirrels, it seemed as if everything they said was an order. Every noise they made refused to go unheard.
“On your left.”
I jumped to my right to let a biker pass; his tall frame bent over a road bike on thin wheels. I watched his back until I no longer saw the yellow flames licking up his lycra-clad shoulder, then I kept walking on my path.
I thought of Christie. I’d like to show her this place. I’d almost showed her, except we got preoccupied, and then I chickened out. Something about this park felt almost sacred. If I brought her here, I’d want it to be because we were ready to be more for each other. My world was too confusing and unsure right now for me to know whether that was even possible right now, and if she wasn’t moving to Dallas anyway, what was the point?
My gut twisted at the sudden thought of this place becoming a stained memory. God forbid Darlene bring Duke here and just shit all over what we had when we were together. I sat on a bench under an oak tree that bowed over as if to specifically bring shade to this spot. This spot was where so many promises and life changes had been made.
“How old do you think this oak is?” Darlene had asked me once. We’d walked this trail many times before, usually to escape the terrors of her final exams and find some quiet in the chaos that stole her normal brightness.
“I’m not sure,” I droned, glancing back at the tree and measuring it with a quick scan. “A hundred, maybe.”
She guffawed. “A hundred? It’s not that big, is it?”
“Sure it is!”
Darlene’s eyebrow lifted in a challenge, so I laughed. “What, you don’t think this tree is big enough to be a hundred?”
“No, I don’t.”
“And why are you so sure?”
Her cheeks reddened, and I followed her gaze to a small plaque on a stand shorter than the actual bench. It wasn’t too far from the tree, but it was at least close enough to me that I could see the engraving of an oak tree and the year that, I assumed, it was planted.
“1925. That’s not as off as you acted like it was.”
Darlene scooted closer. “Well, it wasn’t a hundred.”
I wasn’t sure why that memory was the one I remembered, but I’d decided that day that I loved her. I didn’t tell her later when I proposed right here, on this bench, under the not-one-hundred-year-old oak tree.
Had I been distant even then? Had she wondered in the beginning whether she’d have to deal with me working so much? It almost made it worse that I realized it now, after all the time and effort we’d put into a relationship only for it to fail.
Was it worth it to try again with someone else? And was Christie really someone I wanted to try with? She’d been the first woman I enjoyed spending time with in a long while, and it wasn’t until she dumped her drink on me that I knew I had real feelings for her. She didn’t sugarcoat things.
I wished I’d let myself appreciate that quality in Darlene, but I still could, I supposed. As James’s mother.
“Ryan.”
My head shot up and landed on the thick, muscular frame of Duke the Fluke. I ground my teeth as I remembered the pressure he’d put on Darlene to cancel her bank account—to move north with his family.
“Duke,” I managed, fighting the building pressure in my chest when he sat beside me.
Stained.
My memory of this place was officially stained.
Chapter 27
“How are you? I didn’t know you were still in town.”
I didn’t meet Duke’s gaze or shake his hand when he’d offered it, but now that his ass was where Darlene’s used to be in every good memory I had of us, I wanted to shove his face into the cement and walk away.
“You doing okay?”
I swallowed a couple of dozen sarcastic remarks before I settled on something a little less than friendly. “No better than you, I’m sure.”
Duke was taken aback. His body recoiled in a way that made the big guy seem a hell of a lot smaller. “Did you talk to Darlene?”
I sighed. I’d just started a conversation I didn’t want to be part of. “I . . .” I what? I saw her with the man she cheated on you with. “Yes. The other day.”