She titters, natural eyelashes clumped together from the rainwater. “You and Bennett talking. I had a feeling you didn’t know about it.”
I think back to that day, and how weird my friend had been acting. I shake my head as I laugh. He’d called her on my phone without my knowledge. Bennett fucking Quinn.
“I love you, Evan. I don’t want to be away from you, trying to discover where I think I belong,” her lips tilt, “because I belong right here, beside you and Leo.”
“I was about to catch a flight to Georgia.”
She pulls back in shock. “You were?"
“Someone once told me it’s not selfish to follow your heart, even if you have someone relying on you, and you, Flo McKenna, have my heart.”
After a beat, her eyes find my shallow slashes, and they harden. “We’re going inside, and I’m patching you up.”
“Okay, fine, but first, kiss me, trouble.”
Flo cranes her neck with a smile and presses her lips to mine, wrapping her arms around my neck as we kiss passionately in the rain. She moulds herself to me, and my fingers shape her waist and pull her impossibly closer, until a loud honk startles both of us.
“Hey, you’re blocking the entrance! Move your car!” a grumpy man yells with his head poked out of his car window, and Flo giggles, apologising.
“I’ll just park up, and then I need to see my little man. I’ve missed him like crazy.”
And when we enter the stadium and I watch Leo leap into Flo's arms, the both of them grinning like they've just won the fucking lottery, it’s then that I realise that at one point, I thought that Flo was always meant to come into our lives and be Leo’s nanny, but I was wrong. Dead wrong. She was always meant to come into our lives and be Leo’s mom.
36: Flo
“You seriously still haven’t done anything with this place?” I mutter.
Evan and I stand outside the store Gracie gifted him for his birthday, which used to sell antiques before it went out of business, and his sister bought it a few months ago.
Thepermanently closedsign hanging on the door is sideways, one of the pieces of string holding it up having snapped, and the brown paint on the brick outside is peeling to the point where it resembles sunburn, with skin flaking off.
There’s a pile of crushed cans and chip packets in the corner of the room, probably left there by the people moving everything out, having not been courteous enough to dispose of them before leaving the place for good.
It smells like dust, making its way up my nose and causing me to sneeze.
Evan’s already on the phone to Gracie, laughing and thanking her for his ‘gift’, but she defends herself by explaining that she wanted to give him a challenge—something for him to throw himself into when he retires, which isn’t far away now.
But not having actually visited the shop in the middle of Missarali town yet, Evan and I were curious and wanted to come for a snoop, which we’re now regretting.
I pick up an old50% bannerwith my fingertips, before immediately dropping it back down once I realise it has a dead cockroach stuck to it. “Okay, so what’s your plan?”
“Well, looking at it now, I don’t really have one,” is Evan’s response, taking my hand and protectively leading me away from the rat droppings on the creaky floorboards.
“Oh, come on, you like a little DIY, don’t you? And I can’t lie, it’ll be hot seeing you dirty and all covered in sweat and dust.” My hands lay on his chest as I reach up to kiss him.
“Don’t get me turned on in here, Flo, because the last place I want to fuck you is a rat and cockroach-infested trash heap like this.”
True. We’d probably catch something in here.
“It’s not that bad.” A sharp hand clap from me permeates the air. “Let’s think. What could you do with it? A coffee shop?”
“Missarali already has too many of them.”
I hum. He’s right. Mug & Mingle is also a favourite, and their clientele is loyal. “Okay, you could sell stuff? Umm, like furniture? Or books?”
Evan scrunches up his nose.
Yeah, definitely not him.
