Page 14 of Until You

“What? Accuracy matters.”

I laugh despite myself. The sound comes out lighter than I feel. “I never truly experienced his oral skills outside of the kissing, so I can only surmise he’d be a boss downtown.”

The truth is, I had thought about finding him. For approximately ten thousand embarrassing minutes.

Late at night, mostly, when the house is dark, and the ceiling fan turns slowly overhead, and I can’t sleep because the nausea hasn’t quite learned the difference between morning and midnight. I lie there with one hand on my stomach and replay every single detail. The roughness of his palms. The way he’d said like honey with my fingers against his lips. The weight of his hat on my head—warm from his body, smelling like cedar and rain and him.

But all I had was Cowboy, a truck, and the memory of hands that could make a woman forget her own zip code.

Not exactly searchable data.

I’ve even gone into Ace’s a few times, hoping to run across him.

“No,” I say quieter. “I haven’t.”

Another lie. They’re stacking up like dishes in a sink I keep meaning to wash.

Every morning, I wake up carrying a tiny reminder of him. Every morning, the nausea rolls in and I think, You did this to me, you beautiful, nameless disaster of a man. Every night I remember the way he’d looked at me, like he was seeing me. Past the piercings, past the ink, to the girl inside. That part of me that no one ever seems to truly see.

Nobody had ever looked at me like that.

I’d be stupid not to think about him.

I set my mug down on the kitchen counter and tug the towel tighter around my chest. I’d just gotten out of the shower when my stomach had growled… loudly. I’ve learned in the last few days that when that happens, food is imperative and needed immediately to stave off nausea.

So with my hair damp and dripping cool trails down my shoulders, I’d moved into the kitchen to make myself breakfast. I butter my bagel and don’t even wait for the butter to fully melt before taking a bite.

The ink on my forearm is vivid against my clean skin—the star on my wrist, the vine that wraps my ribs, all the marks I chose for myself when nobody else was choosing me.

I should get dressed and be productive.

Instead, I’d been walking around barefoot in Mimz’s kitchen, listening to nineties country. Occasionally singing along to Reba with a wooden spoon as a microphone. Until Jules called, so I could talk about the man who’d knocked up my heart before he ever knocked me up for real.

Healthy.

Very healthy.

“Okay,” Jules says. “What’s the plan today?”

“Laundry. Maybe reorganize the pantry because Pops organizes everything by height, and it’s a travesty.

“Hot.”

“And maybe I’ll sit on the porch and imagine a future where I’m emotionally stable.”

“Dream big, babe.”

A truck door slams outside.

I freeze. Every muscle in my body goes rigid, my fingers tightening on the edge of the towel.

“You hear that?” I ask.

“Hear what?”

Another slam. Heavy footsteps on the porch—boots, deliberate, the kind of stride that belongs to someone who walks like they own the ground beneath them. The old wood of the porch groans under the weight.

My pulse jumps, quick and sharp, pressing against the inside of my wrists.