Page 113 of Holding On To Good

Willow was gone. So was Fucking Finn.

Craning his neck, he scanned the park, only partially relieved when he saw Finn and Siobhan heading down the sidewalk toward the pool.

Finn and Siobhan but not Willow.

“She’s in the parking lot,” Miranda said. “Near the pavilion.”

He whirled around and immediately spotted Willow leaning against his truck.

Waiting for him after all.

“Isn’t there something you could do?” Miranda asked, drawing his attention again. “To help get Josh on a team? He’s so angry with me,” she continued in a whisper. “So very angry that I left his father and I thought if I could do this… if I could do something maybe he’d stop hating me so much.”

“I’m sure your son doesn’t hate you,” he said gently.

She snorted, the sound watery and derisive and very un-Miranda-like. “Maybe not but he’s been doing an excellent impression of it for weeks. I just want to give him—him and Alayna—some sense of normalcy. I need to show him that life goes on. That it might be different than it was, but it can be just as good.”

But her tone, the tremble in her voice told him she didn’t believe that.

Not yet anyway.

He’d been there. Had faced an uncertain future. One he hadn’t planned for. One he hadn’t wanted. Life had ripped everything he’d known from his grasp and handed him something new.

He’d gotten through because he’d had to. People had counted on him. Had needed him.

But he hadn’t done it alone.

“I’ll talk to Joe,” he said. “See what I can do.”

“Thank you.” Head tipped down, she sent him a demure, flirting glance through her lashes. “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight? My treat. To thank you for your help.”

“Not necessary.” He stepped back and picked up the equipment bag. Slung the strap over his shoulder, anxious to get to Willow. “Have a good weekend.”

Miranda’s smile faltered, but only for a second. “You, too.”

And he walked away from his past.

Toward the only woman he wanted in his future.

Chapter Twenty

Willow stared intently at her Instagram feed because what else did one do to make them feel better when they were deep in the throes of an existential crisis but scroll through images of other people’s expertly filtered, perfect lives?

It wasn’t working. The feeling better part.

But it was giving her something to do while she waited for Urban to finish his conversation with Miranda.

And it had the added benefit of making it seem as if her entire focus was on double tapping pictures and not on what the once aptly titled Golden Couple of Mount Laurel was doing.

Eyes hidden behind her sunglasses, Willow lifted her gaze—and only her gaze. Chewed on her inner cheek as she watched Miranda and Urban. They’d always made a striking couple. And that’s how it’d always felt watching them.

Like Willow had been struck. By an arrow. Straight to the heart.

Urban didn’t have Miles’s movie star prettiness, but he was big and broad and darkly handsome, his masculinity sharply contrasting and complementing Miranda’s ethereal blond beauty.

Memories flashed in Willow’s mind, playing like a flipbook. Of Urban and Miranda walking hand-in-hand down the hall at school, her body pressed against his side. Miranda throwing her arms around Urban after a baseball game, rising onto her toes to kiss him. Miranda sitting on his lap at a bonfire at the lake, their arms wrapped around each other, their mouths fused.

It’d hurt. So much.

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