Page 52 of Boots, Bucket Lists & Bad Ideas
Leather-bound with dried flowers and featuring a thick strap hanging off the side for the lock.
Even from Bucky’s side of the bar, I recognize it, but I watched her throw it in the trash can the night of my last game—the one that finished any chance of a football career. She made damn sure I saw. She’d waited for my play to end, caught my eyes from the sidelines, and tossed it away like it meant nothing.
So, I have to be wrong.
But the closer I get, the more certain I become.
I step through the exposed brick hole and onto Kiwi’s shiny wooden floor. I strut to the booth where my brothers and the Fox women huddle.
The familiar handwriting sharpens, the doodles take shape, all etched in my mind since my teen days.
A stain on the book’s corner looks just like the Dr. Pepper she spilled on it that one day, still there after all this time.
My jaw tightens.
And now it’s back. And worse? They have it. My moonshine-brained lunatic brothers. All hunched over the thing like it’s a treasure map.
“Where’d you get that?” I growl.
“Told y’all he’d sniff us out eventually.” Dean points to a heart. “Find love.”
“That’s so lame.” Josie steals the book, and my heart jumps at the thought of her tearing a page. “Going from cringy creep to corny that fast is a talent, but you suck at this.”
At what?
What the fuck are they doing?
Josie slides the book across the table, and it takes everything in me not to snatch it up and warn them about wrecking the cover. “Wheeler, you try.”
Try what?
“You have a kid, and she’s a girl, so maybe you can relate.” Josie lifts both hands like a scale, weighing invisible options.
Wheeler spins the book upright. I love my brother but watching him manhandle the book really tests that love.
“She draws horses and frogs, not whatever this is.” He flips a page, shaking his head.
They’re trying to decipher it.
Why the hell would they do that?
My brain is about to bloody burst.
“Hey.” I clap a hand on Dean’s shoulder, my bloody knuckles a distant thought. “What are guys doing?”
“We’re decoding it.” He glances at my hand. “Dude, what happened to your knuckles?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
He shrugs. “Got a wager going.” He reaches across and points to a thunderbolt. “This definitely means lightning.”
Josie shakes her head. “No shit, Sherlock.”
“Nope. We’re leaving,” I say.
Levi holds his beer to me. “And there he is, ladies and gentlemen. Our grumpy, bossy mascot.”
I liked it better when he was the grumpy mascot, pouting around after his divorce, before he decided to chase after Hope selfishly.
