Page 58 of Spencer and the Younger Girl
Hadley
It was still mostly dark when Hadley woke the morning of her eighteenth birthday. She lay in bed waiting for some life-changing feeling.
She was an adult now, after all.
Wasn’t she supposed to feel… older? Wiser? Less confused?
Her phone lit up the room, revealing text messages from Charlotte and Cassie. Both of them messaged her at exactly midnight—when she’d been long asleep after her day at the farmers’ market.
Her day with Spencer.
Tracing her lips with her finger, she could still feel him. But he hadn’t truly wanted to kiss her. There was another girl, one older and probably better for him.
She shouldn’t care. By the end of the week, she’d be done working at the ranch anyway.
Was she supposed to have this many questions about her life now that she was eighteen?
Crawling from her bed, she pushed open the curtains. The sun had started to rise.
A knock on her door told her at least one person in her house was awake at this hour.
She opened the door to find her grandfather way too perky for this time of day. He grinned from ear to ear. “Happy birthday to my favorite girl in the world.” He held out a muffin with a lit candle stuck in the top.
With a laugh, she blew it out.
“Beach?” he asked.
Since she was a little girl, watching the sun rise on her birthday was a tradition she shared with her grandfather. Her mom never did much for birthdays or really any holiday, but Papa made up for that in spades.
Grabbing her jacket, she shrugged it on. The fish wouldn’t mind her pajamas. She slipped into shoes and followed him out the front door.
Outside, the air was heavy with coming rain. Dark clouds swirled above.
“We won’t get much of a sunrise.” She sighed.
Her grandfather looked sideways at her. “This ritual has never been about the sunrise, girly. If it was, we wouldn’t sit out looking over an ocean where the sun sets.” He laughed. “It’s about you and me marking another year.”
“You’re right.” She looped her arm through his.
They punched a code into the access gate to the beach, and it swung open.
Not even the surfers were out at this hour.
Dangerous waves curled toward the shore, whipped up by the wind.
Hadley pulled her hood over her hair.
“How does it feel to be eighteen?” her grandfather asked.
“Same crap, different age.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “I heard from your mother this morning.”
“That’s nice.” Hadley didn’t want to hear about the woman skipping her own daughter’s birthday.
“She’s still in Paris.”
“Good for her. I don’t suppose she mentioned me, did she?”
