Page 4 of The One Who Got Away

“Yes?” Josie shrilled. “That’s all I get?!”

“Jesus, Josie, give her some room to breathe.”

I’d never been so happy to hear my brother’s deep growl in my whole life.

Robert was still in his uniform, which wasn’t an accurate indicator of whether he was fresh off a shift or heading in. He'd joined the force after taking a couple of courses at the community college and hadn’t taken it off since.

He looked so much like Dad with his mop of curly brown hair and days-old scruff that those damn tears were back in full force. I covered it with a sniff as I tossed aside the pillow and hugged his neck. When we separated and I looked into his eyes, I saw a few tears of his own.

“How are ya, Rob?” I playfully punched his arm. “How’s Meredith and Syd?”

“I’m hanging in there. Meredith has turned the house into her workshop and is driving me insane.” He groaned, but the twinkle in his eye told another story.

He met Meredith when he signed up for a pottery class, expecting an easy A. Meredith was the teacher and even the Wilkes charm wasn’t enough for an auto pass. He failed the course, but on the last day, Meredith slipped him her number. A year and a half and a country wedding later, my adorable niece Sydney was born.

“Syd is all attitude and lives off Disney movies and Cheerios,” Rob chuckled.

I glanced past him, on the lookout for the cute li'l booger, but there was no mini, toddling version of Meredith.

“She’s under the weather, so Mer is at home with her,” he explained.

Before I could say how much I missed that bundle of never-ending energy, he was Facetimeing his wife. I got to chat with a bleary-eyed Meredith for a few minutes and meet Syd’s favorite new stuffed animal, Mindy.

I left my siblings and wandered into the kitchen where my mother was laying out plates. I vaguely recognized the cluster of old women crammed into our tiny kitchen. They buzzed around her, transferring casserole dishes to the dining room table. Mom wouldn’t let me lift a finger to help, calling me the guest of honor. I re-met the women, all from church. With heavy perfume clogging my nostrils and my body aching from a round of bone-crushing hugs, I glanced at the open back door. The sound of Dad’s old radio hummed through the patched up screen.

“Take this out to your dad and tell him dinner in five.” Mom handed me a Coors Light and swatted my behind when I hesitated.

“I’m going!” I hissed as I took my sweet time, fingering the label on the bottle.

She leaned in and whispered, “He hasn’t stopped talking about your visit since you said you were coming for sure.”

My face warmed several degrees. I swiped the beer and acted like her admission didn’t make me ten times more nervous. Dad gushed about three things: football, James Patterson’s latest release, and classic rock. Hearing that he was excited about my visit, and had been talking about it since I’d confirmed that I was coming a week ago, was enough to make my heart float right out of my chest.

I inched down the stairs that spilled into the backyard. The smell of the woods and the country filled my nostrils. It was a welcome scent.

Dad was where he always was on Sunday afternoons, stretched out in his lawn chair, some high stakes thriller paperback folded on his thigh, ball cap tipped over and covering half his face.

I knew he wasn’t sleeping. He knew that I knew he wasn’t sleeping. Still, I paused fifty feet away and announced myself.

“Daddy?”

Usually, he’d grunt ‘What?’ then wink while he pretended I’d disturbed him from some fantastic dream. This time, he nearly knocked over his chair when he scrambled to his feet.

It had only been a handful of months since we’d seen each other but I saw every minute, second, and hour of worry dash across his hardened features. He wrapped me in a hug that was all muscle, freshly mowed grass, and the cigarettes he wasn’t supposed to be smoking.

He pressed a kiss against my forehead. “Welcome home, Cat.”

Chapter Two

There was no cover of darkness, no covert way to sneak into Raleigh and pretend I wasn’t scared shitless about running into Lincoln, or any sign of him. Just as I took the Hillsborough street exit and allowed myself to exhale as I eased around the curve, accepting my fate, his name punched me right in the face.

Up on a billboard, touching the sky, ‘Carraway Consulting’ shouted in big, sparkly letters, shining as brightly as the family that grinned down on me from the signage.

‘Investing in today...for tomorrow.’

I pointedly looked straight ahead, but my stomach had other plans, twisting and knotting relentlessly. I had a light breakfast for this exact reason and a bottle of Canada Dry perched in the cup holder beside me, just in case.

There was no escaping the dread that twisted and tugged at my insides. I knew that his life went on after he nuked mine. I had too much pride to stalk him on Facebook or any of those standard social media investigations that one did after a bad breakup, but when the heir to a massive fortune takes the reins of the family business right out of college and the profits skyrocket to the moon (and you look the way Lincoln Carraway looks), you become a household name. CNN, Forbes, People —everyone wanted a piece of the twenty-something billionaire.

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