Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 70444 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70444 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
I had a moment of panic when I turned onto the street she’d turned on and couldn’t find her.
In my moment of panic, I looked frantically around and then passed a house as I realized that’s where she’d pulled over.
She was getting out of her car, coffee and purse in hand, and I stopped four houses down from the one she’d stopped at.
I opened the rear sliding glass window and put the truck in park before unbuckling and turning around in my seat to watch.
At first, there was nothing to see.
Nothing suspicious.
Nothing that pointed out her crazy.
Nothing.
Then the front door opened.
What I saw damn near brought me to my knees.
A young boy ran out of the house toward Rosie, but Rosie didn’t so much as crack a smile. The kid, on the other hand, looked ecstatic to see her.
Rosie still didn’t smile.
Then everything started to come into perspective, and the breath left my lungs.
Holy. Shit.
Holy, holy shit.
That kid couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than what he was.
A mini version of Johnny.
Oh. My. God.
My heart felt like it was breaking into a hundred thousand pieces right inside my chest, and I was finding it hard to breathe.
I licked my lips, then begged my eyes to see something, anything, other than what I was seeing.
But it was no use.
That little boy was Johnny’s. There was no fucking doubt in my mind.
And I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Johnny had no clue about him.
After our talk the other day about how much he wanted kids, about how he wanted six, and he wanted them close together in age…I knew that he wouldn’t have a child whose life he wasn’t a part of—even if he hated his mother.
Which left me with no idea what to do.
Did I call Johnny? Did I try to get proof?
I don’t know what to do!
***
I knocked on the door—an hour away from where I’d seen Rosie and that little boy—and waited.
I heard muted thuds against the floor indicating the approach of large booted feet and tensed in anticipation.
With little else to do, I made a rash decision that I hoped didn’t bite me in the ass later when Johnny found out what I’d done.
The door opened and there before me stood a man who looked so much like Johnny, it made my heart skip a second beat for the day.
One thing was certain, the men in this family had some excellent genes, and apparently, this man was definitely carrying all the dominant genes seeing as he’d passed them down to his son.
“Hello,” he rumbled. “Can I help you?”
I swallowed, nerves making my heart beat so fast that it couldn’t be healthy and said exactly what I shouldn’t have said.
“I need you to come with me.”
He frowned, and his eyebrows rose. “I don’t even know who you are. Why would I come with you?”
He looked me up and down as if doing so would jog his memory of who exactly I was, and I smacked myself on the forehead.
“I’m June.”
“Johnny’s June?” he asked.
I nodded my head. “Yes.”
I was. I was Johnny’s June.
My heart healed somewhat from the earlier shatter, but I knew that it’d only get worse from this point on.
I took a deep breath and blew it out.
“Is something wrong with Johnny?”
You could say that…
“Ummm, I’m not sure. Not yet. Kind of. Oh, God. This is tough. Can you just come with me?” I pleaded, unsure what to do or what to say.
My hands were shaking so bad that I was honestly worried about the state I was in and my ability to drive.
Johnny’s father took the keys from my hand, though, and gestured for me to get in on the passenger side. Once there, he opened my door and gave me a look that clearly said to get in and don’t complain.
I didn’t.
He rounded his son’s truck once I was in, and then followed suit, buckling himself in and then staring at me, obviously waiting for an explanation.
“It’s an hour drive,” I told him.
He grunted. “Tell me where to go.”
***
We arrived, and I was so fuckin’ nervous that I was finding it hard to breathe.
The boy wasn’t outside this time, and I was unsure what to do to get him outside without actually going to the door and ringing the doorbell…which is what I ultimately decided to do.
I hadn’t played ding-dong-ditch in a long freakin’ time, but here I was, about to do it.
“Just…stay here, okay? I’ll be back.”
Then I ran across the street, up to the front of the house, and did the unthinkable. I rang the doorbell, then sprinted.
I hadn’t run like that since high school.
But I made it back to the truck and dove inside before the door opened.
Thank God.
“What was…” Sebastian’s words fell off as the door opened, and he saw Rosie.