Page 2 of Sneak Attack

Hell, as soon as word got out, I’d probably be run out of town anyway.

No.

I reached for my phone. Marley would be upset, but I’d explain.

Movement on the swings at the playground grabbed my attention as I dug through my purse for my phone, and I stilled. Hand wrapped around my screen.

A woman stood nearby, smiling at the boy who pumped his legs fiercely to get as high as he could. The woman brushed hair back and my breath stalled. Their smiles matched, but that was where the similarities ended. From her well-highlighted blonde hair and blue eyes so vividly bright I could never forget them, my jaw unhinged itself as I sat there, hand still holding the phone and frozen as Selma Holden brushed her hair off her shoulders.

Shit. Of all the people to see first. I couldn’t do this. Could not see her, could not move through the same small town as her again. My phone rang in my hand, startling me. Expecting Marley’s call, I was surprised to see another name on my screen.

Mom.

I silenced the ringer and stuffed it back into my purse.

Shit. Was my entire past determined to push me today?

Selma said something, laughed and waved for the boy, her son, to hurry up. I should have been shoving my car into reverse and hightailing it out of Marysville and back to Pensacola as fast as my Toyota could take me there.

But that boy…Jasper…Cole’s son. Everyone in the entire country knew the story of Cole and Selma and Jasper. Knew Cole’s tragic history that had kept him rooted in his hometown. As soon as my parents and I left Marysville and headed south, I’d tried as hard as I could to avoid the mention of his name. It’d worked for a few years. Until Cole Buchanan was drafted to his hometown football team the Nashville Steel after making a name for himself at Vanderbilt University.

Yeah, I needed togo go go,but I couldn’t.

Because Cole’s son, looking so much like him, was flying through the air, landing on hands and feet in the mulch while Selma waited for him to dust himself off. She settled her hand at his upper back and somehow, my feet were forcing me out of the car.

I should have stopped. Should have done all the things I’d already decided I’d do and yet I followed them, past the park and around the corner and with the sun beating down on me, my gray cardigan hugged tightly across my chest, despite the roasting summer heat, and my keys in my hand the only thing I grabbed from the car.

I stayed my distance until the boy screamed, “Dad!”

My keys fell to the pavement and the world around me ceased to exist, narrowed to only the view I had of him taking off down the sidewalk, Cole Buchanan crouching low, arms wide out as the boy jumped into his arms.

Cole Buchanan.

The boy I loved.

The boy who was never mine to love, never mine to have, but we hadn’t cared in the end.

Cole Buchanan, hugging his little boy on the sidewalk while Selma, his high school girlfriend’s best friend until I swooped in, smiled down at both of them, ruffling his hair.

Cole and Selma had asontogether.

I’d known it. Of course I had. As soon as Cole was drafted in the first round, his story made national headlines. The boy who’d lost his high school sweetheart in a tragic accident. The boy who gave up his athletic scholarship to play at Vanderbilt so he could stay close to home. The man who had a son his second year of college and stepped up to raise his boy, moved back to his hometown. The man who was drafted to the NFL andstillstayed living in his hometown, twenty miles north of Nashville.

I’d known it all. Gotten swept away in stories of him for weeks before I managed to pull myself out of the darkness seeping back into my mind.

But seeing it? I staggered back a step and around the corner of the building, where I slammed my back against the harsh brick. It scraped and snagged on my sweater as I furiously blinked away tears, trying to will the vision of what I just saw into a false reality—where Cole was mine. Where Selma minded her own business.

Where Hilary was still alive.

“No. No, no, no.” This was worse than all the nightmares I’d had combined. This was worse than the nights I woke up screaming, drenched in sweat and couldn’t fall back asleep for days.

This was so much worse—because it was real. And I was viewing it in person, well, hiding behind the building like a lunatic because if Cole and Selma were together like the media so often questioned—

Why in the hell had Marley wanted me to come back and have that thrown in my face?

Why in the hell was I here?

Screw the favor. It’d been years since that night in the barn. She could go ahead and tell my parents. It wasn’t like I talked to them anyway.

---