Page 58 of When I Should’ve Stayed (Red Bridge #2)

Clay

Josie is in my arms, and we’re kissing.

She’s kissing me and I’m kissing her, and for the first time since she handed me divorce papers, I actually feel alive.

I feel like the world isn’t shades of depressing gray without anything to look forward to. No. It’s bright and vivid and beautiful. It’s heaven, plain and simple.

I tell her I love her. I tell her I miss her.

I tell her I don’t want to be apart anymore.

And I kiss her harder after my words, savoring every soft, plush line of her mouth and the silky smoothness of her tongue.

She tastes like the white wine she’s been drinking all night, but she also tastes like Josie.

My Josie. My wife.

And she’s right there with me, kissing me right back, sliding her hands into my hair.

Until, she’s not.

With two hands pressed to my chest, she shoves me away from her. Both of us are breathing heavily, and her eyes are wide with emotions I can’t even discern.

“No,” she says, and her mood has shifted from soft and warm to cold. “This can’t happen,” she adds with a shake of her head. She swipes an angry hand across her mouth, like she’s trying to remove my kiss from her skin.

“Why not?” I question and try to step toward her again, but she lifts one hand in the air to keep her distance.

“Stop, Clay,” she spats. “Just stop, okay? This… Me and you…” She moves her hand erratically back and forth between us. “It’s done. It’s over. And it will not happen again.”

“I don’t fucking get it, Josie,” I retort and run an angry hand through my hair.

“I’ve never gotten it, actually. One day, we were happy and married, and then, all of a sudden, you handed me divorce papers.

It was out of the fucking blue, you know?

” I shake my head as my mind still tries to understand why it all went so wrong. “Why, Josie? Why?”

“Because we do not work,” she says, and I don’t miss the way emotion makes her lips turn down at the corners. “Because it was too much. Because everything in the entire universe was telling us we’re not supposed to be together.”

“That’s not how I see it. That’s not how I see it at all. The universe—”

“Stop, Clay!” she cuts me off on a shout. “Just stop .” Her hands shake as she pushes herself off the wall, and her eyes are watery with tears as she starts to walk away from me.

“Josie.” I reach out to grab her hand, but she yanks it away.

“File the divorce papers, Clay,” she says. “You should’ve done it five years ago when you said you were, but you didn’t. You lied to me.”

“I’m sorry, Josie,” I tell her, but I’m not so sure I actually mean it. I don’t like that I lied to her, but at the same time, I didn’t file the divorce papers because I can’t fathom a life without this woman being my forever.

“Fucking file them, Clay,” she says again, and she looks into my eyes. “It’s been five years, and we’re not together for a reason. We’re over. We’ve been over. It’s time to move on.”

And then, she brushes past me.

I want to stop her, but I don’t. I stand there, watching my wife walk away from me.

She told me to file the divorce papers, but she told me that after she kissed me.

She told me it’s over, but she showed up at my bar in a Snow White costume, knowing full well what that means. What that would mean to Summer. What that would mean to me. And she spent two hours being the Josie that I remembered, running the pool tables like we used to do together back in the day.

All of that tells me one thing. It’s not over.

The gloves are off now. I’m ready to fight for my wife.