Page 17 of Forsaken Vows

And I couldn’t remember the last time someone really had.

Chapter 9 – Sam

She was wearing these little shorts and a thin, plain white T-shirt to combat the Florida heat. The combination would have been simple on most women, but her wide hips and round ass made it something else altogether. And her scent—her scent had fingers that were crawling all through my brain. She smelled like vanilla and something warm I couldn’t place, something that made me think of sweaty, slow Sundays in bed. And I already knew her thick thighs were as soft as they looked—I had felt the give of her whole body in my hands—and now I couldn’t un-know it, and it was driving me crazy that I couldn’t, because the memory was causing me to want to do things to her that I knew would make our situation even messier than it was.

My knuckles ached around the steering wheel from gripping it so tight. I kept my hands at ten and two like a good boy, when I had been everything but most of my life, just to keep myself from reaching over and gripping a hand full of her. She hadn’t said much since we got in. Just buckled in, tucked herself against the door, and stared out the window like she was trying to outrun whatever she was feeling. Which was fine. Because I was feeling enough for the both of us.

She looked like she was overthinking. Too much time spent in one’s head could send a person spiraling. I wantedto ask her what she was thinking. Instead, I asked the safest question I could think of. “You have siblings?”

She blinked hard, like I pulled her out of someplace deep. “No brothers. No sisters. It was just me.”

I glanced at her. “That why you want a big family?”

She gave a soft smile. “Yeah. I used to dream about it. A house full of noise. Somebody to always love you.”

That hit something in me. I nodded.

“I got a little brother,” I said. “He’s eleven.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Eleven?”

“Yeah. My parents like each other a lot, with their old asses. I had to remember to put my headphones on at night growing up,” I said, chuckling. “It’s weird being thirty-five with a fifth grader calling me ‘bruh.’”

She laughed—really laughed—and it did something to my chest.

“My parents split their time between here and North Carolina. Still work at their restaurant when they’re here,” I added. “ Married thirty seven years.”

“Thirty seven years?” she echoed, like it was a fairytale.

“Yup.”

“That’s... beautiful,” she whispered.

I glanced at her again.

“You ever think about what you want now?” I asked. “Now that the lies are exposed?”

She looked down at her lap. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I think I’d want peace first, and just to be happy second.”

I nodded. That made sense.

She shifted in the seat, brushing imaginary lint from her jeans. “What does your wife think you’re doing today?”

I tapped the steering wheel once before answering. “She thinks I’m four hours away at a contractor’s conference.”

Zane looked out the window again. “Do you think she’s with him right now?”

I didn’t answer right away. Not because I didn’t know—but because I didn’t want to say it out loud and hurt her feelings.

“Probably,” I said.

She nodded like that made sense. Then went quiet again.

We ended up making it to the property about thirty minutes later. It was small—two bedrooms, one bath, an old-style house that I wanted to make open concept so it seemed bigger. It was nothing fancy, but in the right hands, it could be valuable.

We stepped out of the car. The gravel crunched under her sneakers as I walked behind her, watching her ass bounce. I unlocked the front door, standing there, making her have to slide past me, touch me. I was not ashamed of at all about it.

“This is…” Her words trailed off like she couldn’t figure out how to describe the mess we were looking at while being kind.

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