Page 7 of Unsteady in Love

“Is there anything I can do for you?”Like pay the giant stack of bills sitting on your table.

“Can you turn back time?”

“If I could, I would,” I replied honestly.

I knew that she meant to bring her dad back, but I couldn’t help but think deep down she meant about after our high school graduation too.

Abruptly, Prue stood and wiped her tears away with the tips of her fingertips. “Well, thank you for coming back and explaining. I’ve got a lot to do. I need to try to get my job back, and I have very little time to do it in.”

“What happened with your job?”

Was that why her bills were left unpaid?

“Oh,” she looked away. “I asked to take leave to take care of my dad. I needed my job for the health insurance, but it didn’t cover the expense of someone looking after him. I couldn’t have both. Instead, after a week of me taking leave, they fired me. No one else would hire me with the hours I needed.”

“Fuck, Prue, I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault, but I really need to figure things out before…” She bit her bottom lip and it took everything within me to not to pull it loose and crush my lips to hers.

Standing, I headed to the front door. “I’d like to see you again before I have to leave. Would that be okay?”

“I don’t know, Holden. While it was nice to finally know why you up and disappeared, it’s still hard to be around you. Too many memories.” She peered up at me from beneath her wet lashes, and all I wanted to do in that moment was hold her in my arms.

Her heart wasn’t the only one that broke when I left. I wanted to mend both our broken hearts and start living the life we had planned all those years ago.

“Don’t you pull those sad, puppy dog eyes on me, Holden Montgomery. You know I could never deny you when you pulled those out.”

Was I? Well, if it worked so I could see her again, I wasn’t going to stop.

“Fine,” she huffed, tapping her foot. “I have a few job interviews tomorrow, so why don’t you come by sometime in the late afternoon?”

“Or I could take you to dinner,” I offered, knowing I was pushing my luck.

She looked as if she could use a good meal or a hundred. Did she not have the money to buy the food she needed or was it from taking care of her dad and not herself?

“I don’t know, Holden.”

This time, I intentionally pulled out the puppy dog eyes and even stuck my lower lip out a little.

“Fine, but don’t think you can keep pulling that shit, and I’ll fall for it. Just to let you know, the pouting lip thing doesn’t work anymore. You’re too…” she tilted her head in a way that meant she’s trying to find a nice way to say what she was about to say.

“What?” I laughed.

“You’re too manly,” she shrugged. “Too rugged to pull it off.”

“Whatever you say, Prue,” I chuckled. This had turned out better than I thought it would. “I’ll see you tomorrow night. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“Uh, yeah, sure.” She nodded awkwardly.

I could tell she didn’t want to meet again, but I wasn’t going to give up until I got what I had come for.

And that was Prue.

The love of my life and the one who had kept me going after all these years apart.

4

PRUE

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