Page 81 of Three Reckless Words

I’ll be fucked if Rina will be one more of those people.

She gives me another glance and smiles awkwardly at Mom. I think she knows as well as anyone that Mom doesn’t like her standing here, barfing up her heart.

“I’ll head out and find Colt, then. Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.”

We don’t speak until after she leaves the room. Then Mom sits on the sofa and looks at me.

“This could be a good thing, Archer,” she says.

“You really think so?”

“Yes. Rina moving on and getting her act together means a lot for Colt. He’s at such a tender age. More importantly, it givesyoua chance to move on.”

I snort impulsively.

Rina coming back won’t help me move shit—not that I need to move on, anyway.

If we weren’t psychoanalyzing my love life, it wouldn’t be a visit with Mom.

I’ve dated other women since Rina left. Even if those dates were more like coffee and a quick fuck. Enough to scratch an itch a few times a year when Colt goes away overnight with Mom or friends, never enough to mean anything, and that’s exactly how I like it.

It’s not like I’ve been celibate for a decade, pining away after my demented ex.

“Archer—”

“Mom, we’ll see,” I say. “Time will tell. I don’t trust a word she says.”

“I’m not just talking about Rina, honey.”

“Then what?”

“Why, the lovely young woman who’s been staying in your cabin. I heard you had a dessert date with her.”

Oh, shit.

This day just got better.

Damn Junie and everyone else who’s been leaking my personal crap to my mom of all people. Will I ever catch a break?

But Winnie dredges up the thought of what happened last time we met.

Try like hell, I can’t escape the memory. It stabs me in the head every time I have a spare second. Sometimes even when I don’t.

A three-minute make-out kiss never affected me like this.

It never wrecked me before.

Sometimes, when I’m alone, I think I can still smell her.

“Colt showed me the honey,” Mom explains. “It looks very special and very sweet. It was nice of her to give him some.”

Yeah, because in the brief time I’ve known her, Winnie hasn’t learned how to be anything but ‘nice.’

Maybe if she was meaner, bitchier, and more selfish, she would’ve avoided this entire mess. She could’ve told the dickwad who chased her away to take a hike, and she could’ve stood there in that pretty wedding dress with a worthy man who cherished her.

Still, I’d never change shit about that woman.

I just don’t want to think about her honey-sweet, sunshiny personality and the way it goads me into wanting to defile her.

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