Page 71 of Love Me Gently

He wanted this. He wanted this so desperately, and yet I froze. My fingertips clung to the phone. Twelve years of memories I had with all of them flashed through my mind.

“It’s hard,” I admitted. “And scary.”

“I know it is. It’ll get easier.”

Shoot. My vision was blurry, and I could hardly see the screen across from me. I reached out and paused the show and sniffed. What would Isayto her? To friends I abandoned and whose lives I vanished from with no explanation.

“Does Robbie know?” I asked Cole. Because they’dreallyhate me then. For sure.

“Told him a long time ago, back before Marie came along. I assume he told Ashley, yeah, but I never asked, and she never brought it up.”

“They foster kids,” I whispered. “They’ll…”

“They won’t,” he assured me. “They might have, back then, but they’re the same good people you’ve always known.”

“If it goes bad?—”

“It won’t, but if it does, they’re gone. Trust me on this, like you’ve been doing.”

I hadn’t been actually. I just had no other options and no choices considering I’d gotten the crap beat out of me in my home and then woken up in a strange bedroom. The hospital was a blur, and I still couldn’t remember the plane ride.

But I was trying. The last twenty-four hours I’d tried a lot.

Maybe I could do this too.

“Okay,” I rasped. “I’ll try.”

“Proud of you, Trina.”

And there it was again—that sensation that wasn’t quite right, but it wasn’t entirely wrong, either.

“Thanks, Cole.”

Twenty-Six

Cole

She’d agreed. I still couldn’t believe it.

“Everything okay?” Eddy asked. I glanced at him and then back to the phone still in my hand. The call had ended, but I was still gaping at the app-filled screen.

“Yeah. I have a quick errand to run.”

“Where we headed?” He pulled his feet off his desk to the floor.

“Notus, me.”

“Oh, come on. It’s so dang slow today.” Eddy waved his hand in the air, but the gesture was unnecessary. Itwasslow today.

It was also a Thursday at two o’clock in the afternoon, and we were a town of four thousand.

“It’s always slow this time of day, unless we’re in the middle of some kind of storm. I have something personal to do, and then I’m picking up the girls and taking them to Marie’s.”

“Fine,” he huffed, crossed his arms over his chest and pouted. The move was so similar to June’s I had to tell him.

“Screw you,” he muttered, and stuck his tongue out at me.

“See? You two have clearly spent too much time together.”

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