Then I went back and read the top one and followed it up by reading the bottom one.
I did it a third time. And then I balled them back up and stuffed them where I’d found them.
I didn’t need to look at them again to remember what was on each.
The first one, in small, neat handwriting that was crossed out with hard dashes across the letters, like he’d changed his mind, had said:YOU ARE THE LIGHT OF MY LIFE.
The second one… I sucked in a breath through my nose and made sure not to glance at Dallas even out of the corner of my eye.
It was the second one that had me feeling like a twitchy crackhead. The words hadn’t been crossed out like the first one, and there was a smudge on the corner of the Post-it that went straight to my heart. It was a smudge like the ones I always spotted on his neck and arms.
I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT YOU.
I can’t live without you.
The first time I read it, I wondered who the hell he couldn’t live without. But I wasn’t that stupid and naïve, even though my insides felt like they were on the verge of exploding.
He wasn’t… there was no way….
What exactly was it that I had told him and Trip in my kitchen during Josh’s sleepover what felt like forever ago?
“Tia!”
I sat up and looked around, recognizing Louie’s voice instantly. Dallas must have too, because he shot to his feet and scanned the area. But I found the blond head instantly; beside him was Josh. It was the woman in front of them that had me zeroing in like an eagle on the hunt for an innocent mouse for breakfast. Of all the women it could have been, it was Christy.
Fucking Christy.
The notes forgotten for now, I swiped my bag off the bleacher and left the rest of my shit where it was, that second of hesitation giving Dallas a head start on the route toward the boys. He made it before I did, and that was when I noticed that Josh had his arm around his brother’s shoulder. The last time he’d made that kind of protective gesture had been at Rodrigo’s funeral.
Which meant someone was about to die because Josh and Louie should never feel threatened by anything.
“What happened?” Dallas asked immediately, his hand reaching out toward Louie. I didn’t miss how Lou took his hand instantly.
“She called me a brat,” Louie blurted out, his other little hand coming up to meet with the one already clutching our neighbor’s.
I blinked and told myself I was not going to look at Christy until I had the full story.
“Why?” Dallas was the one who asked.
“He spilled some of his hot chocolate on her purse,” it was Josh who explained. “He said sorry, but she called him a brat. I told her not to talk to my brother like that, and she told me I should have learned to respect my elders.”
For the second time around this woman, I went to ten. Straight through ten, past Go, and collected two hundred dollars.
“I tried to wipe it up,” Louie offered, those big blue eyes going back and forth between Dallas and me for support.
“You should teach these boys to watch where they’re going,” Christy piped up, taking a step back.
Be an adult. Be a role model,I tried telling myself. “It was an accident,” I choked out. “He said he was sorry… and your purse is leather and black, and it’ll be fine,” I managed to grind out like this whole thirty-second conversation was jabbing me in the kidneys with sharp knives.
“I’d like an apology,” the woman, who had gotten me suspended and made me cry, added quickly.
I stared at her long face. “For what?”
“From Josh, for being so rude.”
My hand started moving around the outside of my purse, trying to find the inner compartment when Louie suddenly yelled, “Mr. Dallas, don’t let her get her pepper spray!”
The fuck?
