“What are they doing first?”
“Timed mile,” I answered.
“Nettie will smoke them,” Magnolia guessed.
I shrugged. “She’s seven months pregnant so…maybe not.”
Magnolia whipped her head toward me. “She’s what?”
“Seven months,” I repeated. “She still runs. A lot. But I doubt she wins this.”
“We’ll see,” Magnolia admitted. “Even pregnant—which she doesn’t look like she is at all—she’s going to be faster than most of them. If not all.”
They all lined up at the start line and were off.
Nettie didn’t try to come out in front.
She stayed about the middle of the pack for the first two laps.
I looked down at my watch and shook my head.
As of right now, she was running about a five-forty-five-mile pace.
Not her fastest, but definitely not her slowest, either.
“In high school,” I mused as she rounded the second curve of her third lap, “she used to get roped into running track. She absolutely hated it. Said the feeling before a race was the absolute worst. I used to run with her to pace her, but eventually, even I couldn’t keep up with her. She’s damn quick.”
“I can’t believe she’s running that fast seven months pregnant,” Magnolia grumbled. “When I was pregnant, I could barely breathe. I ballooned up quick, and everyone thought that I was having twins.”
“She still has abs.” I chuckled. “I kind of wish she was big and fat with my baby.”
“She’s yours then?”
Nettie and the captain were neck and neck now, first and second place.
It could go to either one of them.
“She’s mine,” I confirmed. “We got married a couple of weeks ago. But we’ve been each other’s since the moment we met when I was fifteen and she was fourteen.”
“I had that once,” she murmured. “Would kill to have it back.”
I looked over at her. “This one’s dad?”
“Yeah.” She paused. “And I wouldn’t kill to have him back, per se. But that feeling of being someone’s person.”
I was quiet for a long time before I said, “Maybe you’ll find that here.”
The captain and Nettie crossed the finish line at the same time, both of them laughing.
Nettie lifted her shirt to wipe some sweat off her brow, and I devoured her.
Pregnant with abs.
Jesus, this woman was a miracle.
“Can you watch her while I go introduce myself?” the woman asked hopefully.
I raised a brow at her. “Of course.”
