Page 56 of Finally Mine
Harper took a swallow of champagne. “That’s how I still feel about Luke. I know that I’d be okay without him—after an exceptionally long mourning period, of course. But I want to be great with him.”
“So now that I can cross off ‘get an apartment’ from my list, my next goal is to be great no matter who is in my life,” Gloria guessed.
“Bingo.”
“Men,” Gloria snorted into her mug.
“Tell me about it,” Harper sighed.
“Let’s order some pizza,” Gloria decided.
“That’s the best idea you’ve ever had in this apartment.”
* * *
That night,alone, tucked into clean sheets on her childhood bed in her very own place, Gloria grinned up at the ceiling of her very own home.
“I’m going to be great,” she whispered to the shadows. Tonight, she was enjoying the wanton freedom of sleeping naked for the first time in her life.
32
“Iwant to learn to run.” Harper bounced on her toes, dancing around him like an annoying, yappy dog.
Aldo growled from his hamstring stretch on the grass. She’d taken his PT homework seriously, and together they’d been working out in the park at the lake three days a week. He hated to admit it, but evenhewas proud of the progress he was making now. They’d walked two miles today. Two fucking miles on trails. He’d stumbled more than once. But he’d made it without feeling like he was going to keel over and die.
“What brought this on?” he asked, bowing forward over his extended leg and prosthesis. His hamstring argued with him.
“You and Luke run. I’ve seen him leave the house with his brain full of crap and come back from a run smiling. I want that. Plus, I’ve been eating a lot of pizza lately, and I helped Gloria move and couldn’t walk for three days.”
“Okay,” Aldo shrugged, pretending not to be hung up on thehelped Gloria movepart of Harper’s sentence. “So run to that tree over there and back.”
Harper squinted at the pine tree at the trail mouth about two hundred yards away. “That’s not very far. I want to run miles.”
“You’re not ready for miles yet, smartass. I’m going to check out your form and tell you how to do it better. Besides, for someone who sits at a desk and eats pizza all day, that tree is far enough.”
Harper snorted. “You’re missing a part of a leg, and you’re already working on slow jogs on the treadmill. I think I can handle running to the tree and back with two regular legs.”
His grin was sneaky. He couldn’t wait to watch her puke. “Quit stalling. Run. I’ll watch and judge mercilessly.”
Harper stuck her tongue out at him and turned away. She took off at what was an ugly half-sprint, half-flail, and Aldo laughed. Her shoulders were hunched, her feet kicked out at odd angles behind her, and her entire torso twisted from side-to-side as she hurled herself across the terrain.
He’d never seen anyone worse at running before.
Her pace slowed as she approached the big pine and then slowed again as she turned around. Not so cocky now that she was realizing it was all uphill back to him, was she?
“Let’s go, Harp!” he called. He could hear her wheezes from here.
Slowly, she shuffled her way back to him. “Please don’t throw up. Please don’t throw up,” she chanted.
Aldo laughed.
“AGH!” She clutched at her side and finally stumbled back to him, collapsing in front of him. “That wasn’t so bad,” she rasped.
“You sound like a pack-a-day smoker, Harp.”
“I think I have appendicitis. It hurts like a bitch,” she hissed, her hand digging into her side.
“Welcome to your first side stitch.”
