Page 4 of Long Road Home

So what that the first words I said to her made me sound like a dick. Ten years without Destiny Matsen in my life and she still made my blood race like she’d always done since the moment I noticed her back in school.

In front of her, she had her boy wrapped in her arms. His shoulders shook as I spoke, and trim muscles in her arms appeared as she tightened her grip on him. Time seemed to stop as I took her in, unable to help myself. For the first time since she’d ripped my heart out of my chest and stomped all over it, we were face to face.

“Jordan,” she whispered.

Her pink lips formed my name, one I’d always loved hearing her say so damn beautifully it sounded like a tortured song.

“I didn’t think you’d be here.”

The boy next to her was no longer in front of her, but at her side, curling into her. Huge light blue eyes were on me, jaw so tight he risked cracking a tooth.

“Could say the same about you.” My hands went to my hips. The only thing I could do with them, so I didn’t reach out and shake the shit out of her. This freaking beautiful woman.

My downfall. My siren.

“Where ya’ been?” I asked when she didn’t say anything.

Her eyes were hidden behind her sunglasses, but the small movement she made told me she looked down at the boy.

Damn. He was cute. Floppy black hair on top of his head. His arms around his mother’s waist like a death grip. Something fizzled in my brain as he looked at me with obvious suspicion in his narrowed eyes.

“We should go,” she said. Her voice sounded like she rubbed her throat with sand. “We have…things to do.”

“What’s your name?” I asked, looking back to the boy. I couldn’t pull my eyes off him. “I’m Jordan Marx. An old, friend, of your mom.”

Friend. Vomit pooled in my throat and that heat in my chest flared hard and fast. We’d been friends, but not just.

He stared at the hand I held out in front of me to shake his hand. His hold on his mother went granite. “I know who you are,” his little voice said. His chin wobbled, and his shoulders gave a violent tremble.

Destiny hissed in a harsh breath. Her arm went to his shoulders and held him tight.

Shit. I stepped back. I was being an ass to his mom and he was here, obviously upset about Tillie’s death.

I dragged my gaze off the boy who was staring at me. His statement was strange, but hell, maybe he was a baseball fan. I’d played in the majors a few years before blowing out my knee and heading back to Carlton. But he wasn’t looking at me with the awe of a small fan I was used to. This was…meaner.

And something about him glaring at me set me off.

“Guess everyone was right, weren’t they? You did end up like your mom.”

“Shut up. And don’t be an asshole,” she hissed. “You don’t know anything.”

She hurried around me and I was too stunned to stop her.

Too stunned at the entire day, the last forty-eight hours, hell, the last two years since I’d come back.

That still didn’t stop me from watching them, or when the boy turned back to look at me over his shoulder as Destiny hurried him to a small black SUV, it didn’t explain why I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of him.

Fucking Destiny Matsen.

She was the only girl I’d ever loved. We were supposed to beat the odds of the star-crossed lovers bullshit. From the moment I recognized her in high school, a slim and sexy pipsqueak of a thing, I wanted her. But she’d been quiet and aloof, and gave me zero opening. Then I caught her in the hallway, surrounded by four girls, getting bullied. They were giving her a hard time about something I couldn’t hear, but their body language had said enough. I did hear Destiny telling them to back off, but they didn’t. I’d stepped up to put a stop to it, so damn sick of Jenni Akers and her crew thinking they ran the damn town. Then Destiny’s hand had gone flying through the air, landing smack into Jenni’s nose and blood went flying.

She took off out of the school as Jenni crumpled to the floor with a scream, her friends freaking out over the blood, but I’d only had eyes on Destiny.

She’d just punched the biggest bitch in school and I had to learn more.

Two years later, we’d made plans for our future. We were headed to the University of Kansas where I had a full-ride baseball scholarship. We were going to stay together. Get married right after college. I’d never been more certain of my path, despite the fighting it took, sticking up for her constantly even with my own family who never gave her a decent chance.

Then, she’d shown up at my house, weeks after graduation, and without a single hint of sadness in her eyes she’d looked directly into my eyes and hurt me just as bad as she had Jenni, except she used her words and not her fists.

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