Jealousy lodged in his throat, making it nearly impossible for him to breathe. His lungs kept operating somehow, and he stepped next to Sam and looked down at the grave.
Jeffrey Jones Sherman.
Bonnie bent and ran her fingers along the top of the stone, a sense of sadness in her very movement. Darren took a long drag of air and found a sense of peace in this cemetery he hadn’t expected to feel.
He glanced up at the perfectly blue sky, with the wonderfully puffy clouds. The breeze blew across his face, flirted with the brim of his cowboy hat, and he was really glad he was here, in this moment, with his brother.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed before he became aware of Sam elbowing him.
“What?” he asked in a voice near a hiss.
Sam jerked his head to the right, and Darren’s gaze went that way. Another woman had come to the cemetery that morning, and his heart and lungs and every other internal organ seized.
“Farrah,” he whispered. What was she doing here? They’d dated for eight months, and never once had she said anything about anyone dying. Island Park was a bustling town, but he would’ve heard of a funeral—especially if she was affected.
“Go on,” Sam said under his breath. “We’ll be a while anyway.”
Darren looked at his brother. Found hope in his dark eyes that seemed to be swelling within him too. Sam’s lips twitched upward. “Be nice to her.”
“Shebroke up with me,” Darren reminded him as he stepped around his brother and walked away.
Farrah Irvine had intoxicated him from the moment he’d met her. So what if Logan had set up the meeting? So whatthat it had been in the lobby of the church? Darren hadn’t been able to think straight since last fall, and he actually enjoyed the skiwampus ways his thoughts went when he was with Farrah.
He approached her slowly, his hands way down deep in his pockets. He didn’t want to scare her off. Didn’t want to intrude. Didn’t want to let her get away.
Her dark caramel-colored hair made his stomach ache. He could feel the ghost of it between his fingers as he kissed her, and the temperature suddenly skyrocketed. With his pulse drumming in his ears, and his breath clogged somewhere in his throat, he stepped next to her.
Said nothing.
Held very still.
She finally turned her head to look at him, but he kept his gaze on the headstone at her feet.
Gary Karl Lewis.
Darren had no idea who that was, but he’d passed away three years ago, just before the brothers had come to Island Park.
“How’s Bolt?” Darren asked, his voice barely adding its tone to the symphony of wind. He didn’t particularly like her cat, but Farrah adored the gray tabby. Today, though, she stood as straight and still as a statue.
The birthdate on the grave marker was today. So Gary had been born today, July seventeenth, sixty-four years ago. Crazy ideas about how it was sixty-four years ago today that he’d been born, and sixty-four days ago that Farrah had broken up with him started circling Darren’s mind.
He’d never been one to believe in fate or signs, but everything in him wanted this reunion to be meant to be. Orchestrated by God. Something other than a chance encounter.
Farrah turned back to the marker without saying anything about her cat. Darren stood two feet from her, but he felt like an ocean separated them.
“Who is he?” he tried next.
“No one,” Farrah said.
Yeah, right.Darren didn’t believe her though she spoke in her usual calm way. In all the time he’d known her, he’d never seen her so subdued. She didn’t exactly call attention to herself, but she usually wore a quick smile, and engaged in lively conversation, and had candy quirks Darren wanted to explore until he knew them all.
He knew she liked to drink soda with a red licorice straw. He knew she liked to separate her fruit candy by color, mixing the reds and oranges, the greens and yellows, and eating the purples all by themselves. He knew she ate chocolate every day, even if it was just a single square from the stash in her pantry.
“I can probably find out,” Darren said.
That finally got a reaction from her. She stepped in front of him, blocking his view of the headstone. He looked right into her eyes, and dang if he wasn’t excited to be so close to her after being so far apart for so long.
“Don’t do that,” she said, an edge in her eye that matched the hard tone of her voice.
