Page 51 of Now to Forever (Life on the Ledge Duet #2)

Thirty-Six

“Is that a mile?” Wren asks, barely out of breath as she jogs next to me.

I nod.

“Ha,” she huffs out, slowing to a walk. “We’re getting better.”

I slow to match her pace, Molly doing the same. “I’m definitely feeling less pissed about the situation.”

“What happened to you this weekend?” she asks as we turn back toward the house. “After my dad’s declaration I thought you’d, like, live at my house or something.”

“Just because your dad went all ’90s rom-com with a microphone doesn’t mean I don’t have a life.”

She rolls her eyes with a light shake of her head. “Okay.”

“What about you and Luke?” I ask in a sing-songy voice. “You make out behind a barrel of cider?” She makes a face but her cheeks flush. “You did!” I shout, bumping my shoulder against hers. “And? ”

“And what?” she asks, unable to hide a smile.

“And, I don’t know, are you a thing or like, you know, taking blood oaths and eloping?”

“No.” She snorts a laugh before her expression turns serious. “I’ve been thinking about my arms. My scars, I mean—no.” She reads the look on my face, answering my unspoken question. “I haven’t done it. Just, I don’t know, at some point I might need to explain it. If I’m wearing less clothes.”

I suck in a sharp breath. “Sex?!”

“Scotty! I’m fifteen.” She says it like I’m preposterous.

“Right. I was sixteen when your dad got the goods from me.” She groans. “I’m just saying there’s time.”

“Anyway. Do I just tell him? Or hide it? Or lie? Or . . . ?”

We stop walking and I look at her. She looks young—so young—and scared.

And, as different as our problems are, I get it.

“I think, when you decide he’s worth seeing more of your skin, you know he’s worthy of knowing.

If you own your choices, they can’t own you.

” Wanda and Blair flash through my mind.

“And if he can’t handle it, that’s a him problem, not a you problem. ”

Some of the worry leaves her face. “Okay.”

We walk until Molly stops to sniff a tree.

“Remember that girl I was telling you about that I thought liked Luke?”

I scoff. “The Letts girl?”

“Yeah, Becca. Well, so weird, since the festival she’s been nice. Really nice. I guess I read her wrong. We’re hanging out after school this week. ”

I stop dead in my tracks in the middle of the road. “Why in a shit-swirled milkshake would you want to do that?”

“Uh, because she’s being nice,” she says, using a tone that makes my middle finger twitch. My eyes narrow as I recall just how nice the Letts girl was before I squashed her like a cockroach. “And my only friend can’t be a forty-one-year-old loner.”

“Okay,” I drawl, walking again as I grip Molly’s leash so tight it burns my skin. “Do you think it’s smart? I knew her mom and, I can tell you—”

“Everyone isn’t their mother,” she snaps.

And there it is. All roads lead to us not being our mothers.

I wonder if she wants to slap me as badly as I want to slap her. We say nothing as we walk. I debate telling her about the festival and what the girls said, but it will crush her. All the progress she’s made will be erased.

“Right,” I finally say, taking the route less violent. “All I’m saying is be careful.”

She rolls her eyes. “Let’s run the rest of the way.”

Before I can object, she takes off ahead of me, leaving me in her dust.

Wren stays long enough to greet Ford with a quick hug and grab her bike.

As she rides away, I decide teenagers are assholes .

Ford, however, standing in his uniform with arms folded over his chest and leaning against his patrol car looks like a delicious snack I’d like to devour.

It’s only been a couple days since the festival—since I left him in the middle of the night—but I’ve kept my distance.

I texted him a few times, but other than the LL meeting, I haven’t seen him.

And I’ve missed him. I wrap my arms around his waist and lean my cheek against his chest.

“You know,” he says, the deep timbre of his voice vibrating my face, “I think girlfriend status means I’m supposed to see you more, not less.”

“Told you labels were stupid.”

He laughs, wrapping his arms around me. I prop my chin on his chest to look up at him; he plants a kiss on my lips. “You want to talk about what happened the other night?”

“Not yet.”

He kisses me again. “I can handle that.” Another kiss. “How was Wren today?”

“Fine.” I push off his chest with a sigh. “She’s hanging out with the Letts girl.”

He chuckles. “Let me guess, you told her all about how you felt about her mom.”

I give him a flat look. “I told her I didn’t think it was a good idea and then she got, I don’t know, pissed. Short. Like a different personality came out to play that made me . . . murdery.”

“She’s a teenager. Murdery is the name of the game.” He takes my hand in his and kisses my thumb as we walk toward the house; I consider his explanation and decide I hate it but bite my tongue. “What’s that one?” he asks.

I follow his gaze to the bird feeder and grin. “Carolina chickadee.”

“You trying to seduce me again?”

I laugh, climbing the steps and push the front door open. “Only if it’s working.”

“You saying the alphabet would seduce me.”

“Bet you really enjoyed preschool with Ms. Mitchell.”

He drops my hand and swats my ass, grin on his face as we step inside the house. “Damn, Scotty. Looks good in here.”

I pinch my lips between my teeth, a futile attempt to hide my smile.

Because he’s right. It looks good. Damn good.

The tan leather sofa is complemented by the dark wood floors; the natural light from the windows paints the whole house so perfectly it could be in a magazine or on one of the many blogs I scoured to pull it together.

Canisters of flour and sugar, a coffee maker, and a toaster sit on the kitchen counter under shelves of mismatched mugs and glasses Wren helped me pick out from a local thrift shop.

Zeb’s record player with a box of records sits in a corner opposite a tall cactus in a large terra-cotta pot.

The walls are bare, open for whomever comes next to fill them.

Ford runs a hand over the white marble countertops in the kitchen, tracing a subtle gold swirl. “What’s next?”

“Well,” I sigh, toeing off my tennis shoes.

“Wren picked out a chair—some purple monstrosity—and I got a coffee table made by a guy who makes custom pieces from Rocky Ridge. That comes next week.” I go over the list in my head, having just sent an update to Vince this morning.

“They’ve been working on the bathrooms, which are still a demolished disaster.

I have to pick tile for the backsplash, which, it needs to be the right color, you know?

” I look around, shrug. “I guess that’s it.

Host Thanksgiving for June next month and get it listed.

” I pause, rework the list out in my head, then add, “Oh! And I got a huge-ass bed coming in a couple days.”

I grin, proud of how far it’s come.

Ford works his teeth over his bottom lip.

“You let Wren pick an ugly chair?”

“Yeah . . .”

“And you picked out a huge bed, custom table, and can’t find the right color tile?”

My eyes narrow. “So?”

His eyebrows lift. “Doesn’t sound like you want to sell.”

I scoff. “I do.”

“You say so.” His lips twitch, making a look like he doesn’t believe me as Molly trots over to him. “Sit,” he commands. That bitch does.

“That dog is an asshole.”

He chuckles as he scrubs her head. “How was work today?”

“Fine. Wanda tried to kill her husband. I guess I knew that.” Ford’s eyes widen so dramatically I laugh. “But . . .” I sit on the couch, he follows suit.

“But?”

I drop my head onto his lap and stretch my legs out; he runs his fingers through my hair. It strikes me how easy this feels. How comfortable and safe.

“But for the first time I imagined not being there. Doing something else.”

“Like what?”

I stare at the apex of the ceiling.

“I don’t know. Some days it feels like the reasons I started doing it don’t match who I am today.

Or who I want to be tomorrow.” I make an exasperated noise and rub my hands on my face.

“I don’t know. It was a weird day, I guess.

And I’ve known if I move I would sell it and do something else, but today I really pictured it. Me not there.”

His hands are still in my hair, and he drops his chin to his chest to look at me. “ If you move?”

I stare at the ceiling; I’m not talking about this. I don’t know what I’m doing so my only plan is to vocalize none of it.

“Ah,” he says, amused. “We’re doing that thing where we pretend you didn’t say something real.

” I sit upright and elbow him in the ribs without looking at him; he grunts through a laugh.

“But,” he says with an exaggerated pause, “I get that better than anyone. You want to do something different, do something different.”

Those words hang between us as I try to picture it.

“I can think of a few things I’d like to do differently,” I say, biting my lip and leaning into him.

He rumbles with a laugh. “Not in Archie’s bed you don’t.”

“Prude. ”

“That’s not what you said Saturday,” he says in my ear, kissing the lobe and making a delicious warmth trickle over me. “But I have to go. Wren has something at the school I need to drive her to.”

I groan again. “First the Letts girl then my good time, kids are the worst.”

He laughs, stands, and tugs my hands so I do the same. “Only sometimes.”