Page 49 of As the Years Pass

“So, you’ll just go wherever she does?” he asks.

“That’s where my kids will be, so yes.”

“You won’t try talking her out of it?”

I’d love to. But there’s no talking her out of anything.

“I don’t know,” is what I say, and I know that’s a shitty answer.

From the corner of my eye, I see him watching me, like he wants to say something but he doesn’t. Emmet always speaks his mind, so I’m surprised he doesn’t say anything.

“You can mess with the radio if you want,” I tell him.

He does, switching on a classical rock station.

“Do you know where we’re going?” he asks after a few minutes of driving.

“Yeah, there’s a place downtown.”

“How long have you been living here, exactly?”

“February will make a year. Leslie couldn’t manage as a single mother, so she wanted to move closer to her parents, which I guess meantwithher parents.”

“And you were stuck in your contract at work,” he adds.

“Yeah, so I went back and forth. It was stressful at first, but the routine got easier.”

“I bet the cost was killer.”

I huff out a laugh. “Fucking awful.”

I expect him to go on about the Leslie thing. It’s clear in his facial expressions and responses that he doesn’t agree with the way I’m doing things, but it’s really none of his business. They’re my kids and I’ll do whatever I need to see them. And maybe he gets that and it’s why he isn’t saying anything about it.

“So you know your way around Seattle then,” is what he says.

I let out a quiet sigh of relief. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“Great. After breakfast, I want a tour.”

I smile to myself. “I can totally do that.”

Chapter Nineteen

Emmet

I don’t know how we got here, but here we are at some downtown bar, drunk off our asses.

One minute we were having breakfast, then he was showing me around town, and we stopped for lunch. I got more of a tour, then it was dinner, and suddenly dark. Neither of us wanted to go home, so we ended up at a bar, and now… we’re playing pool against two college kids who are kicking our asses. We’ve already bought them two rounds of drinks because of losing, yet we keep coming back for more. We’re determined, if nothing else.

“Adam. Hey,” I say gripping his face and holding it still. I blink a few times to clear my vision, then laugh. He’s looking at me so seriously. “We have to win this one.”

“Yeah,” he says with a firm nod, swaying from side to side—or maybe that’s me. “We’re going to win.”

I watch his mouth as he speaks, and it takes everything in me to not smash my lips to his. I so badly want to. I miss him, and I want to show him how amazing he is physically. Things with Adam and I were always so physical, and I miss that. And fuck, all this alcohol and him bending over the pool table is making me horny.

I’ve never been attracted to someone the way I am to him. The years between us did nothing to tamp that down.

“Yo, hello! It’s your turn!” one of the guys yells.