I sit back, relaxing into the soft leather of my living room sofa. My gaze scans around my upscale condo. The floor-to-ceiling windows that expand along one wall and overlook downtown Charlotte. The expensive furniture and top-of-the-line appliances. Everything in here, the best that money can buy. I take stock of my tailored clothes and gold watch. I look at the awards sitting on every shelf of the built-in bookcase, and at the framed magazine covers hanging on my walls; my face and name plastered on a billboard not too far from here. All of the fame and money means nothing because she wasn’t here to share it with me. And now I’m free.
I look down at the coffee table to the local newspaper lying there. At the story about the opening of the Cameron Bollinger Youth Center of Highland. At the picture of my two best friends who I have missed dearly. At the gorgeous woman I still love and will stop at nothing to get back, even if it means revealing the secrets that made me leave. I called and spoke with Dustin at the crack of dawn this morning. I’ve made plans and already put things into motion.
Bill exhales loudly and falls back into one of the oversized chairs. Scraping his hands over his face, he studies me with a defeated expression. “So, what do you plan to do now?”
“I’m going home,” I tell him.
Chapter 31
You know those days when you wake up and feel like something is different? A feeling that pricks and niggles at the back of your neck until it drives you crazy? Like an itch you can’t scratch or a scab you keep picking at? I should feel on top of the world today. The youth center is officially open. I have three days off from work. Knox is back in town. I was woken up this morning with soft kisses from a wonderful man. But I still feel off somehow, and it’s starting to annoy the hell out of me.
“There’s the woman of the hour!” Prescott shouts from the back booth at Ruby’s as I walk inside.
Dustin stands up to kiss my cheek. “You smell like motor oil,” he says, scrunching his nose up and I poke him sharply in the side. “Ow!”
“Knox and I went out to the Fields to play around on our bikes, and he wanted to stop by Randy’s garage on our way back. You know how he and Ryder are once the two of them get talking.” I scoot into the booth after Dustin sits back down.
Dustin texted me earlier and asked if I wanted to stop by Ruby’s Diner to meet up with him and Prescott. Knox said he’d come later once he was done talking with Ryder, which means it could take a few hours.
“Hey, Rory! My homemade meatloaf is on the specials tonight!” Pete yells out to me from the kitchen through the serving window.
“Yes, please!” I call back. “Make that three!” I tell him when both Prescott and Dustin hold their hands up like they’re waiting for a teacher to call on them.
“You got it, sweetheart! Darla, get that table a round of iced teas.”
“On it,” Darla says and quickly brings us three glasses of sweet-iced tea while giving Prescott moony eyes as she places his in front of him.
“Thanks, darlin’.”
I swear she gives a little girlie sigh and I roll my eyes at him. He knows his effect on women.
After she leaves, Dustin looks at his friend. “You know she’s like a decade older than you are.”
“Just being cordial.”
Prescott and Dustin are still drop-dead gorgeous. Still have large football builds. Still make the girls lose their minds, and—more often than not—their panties as well. Shelby doesn’t understand how I can be close friends with two hot guys without doing the friends-with-benefits thing with either one of them. I have to remind her that she’s friends with them too just to watch the hot blush that scorches her cheeks. I have a sneaking suspicion that Shelby and Prescott hooked up at some point in time but neither one of them will confess.
Prescott drums his fingers on the tabletop in a triple beat. “I was thinking about our summer trip this year. How does Utah sound?”
After what happened five years ago, Dustin and Prescott dragged my ass on a two-week summer excursion to get me away from everything. That wasn’t the only reason, but I can’t think about that right now. I made one very bad mistake in a very dark moment. Not something I want to relive, even in memory. But that first trip started a tradition that we now do at the beginning of summer. Our goal is to visit every national park in the United States. Last year we went out to California and rented an RV, and Shelby, Austin, and Knox joined us for the first time.
“Utah sounds fabulous. I’m in,” I tell him.
“Me too.” Dustin holds up his drinking straw and fires off the paper covering straight into Prescott’s face.
“You are such a juvenile jackass,” Prescott chides him, but throws a sweetener packet at him in retaliation.
I’m still stuck on Utah. “Can we go to Arches?”
Dual male voices chirp, “Yep.”
“Canyonlands?”
“Yep.”
“Bryce Canyon?”
“Yep.”
