Page 175 of Hold Me Until Morning

She seemed reluctant to push to her feet, but she did, the girl standing over him.

Appearing an angel who’d been sent to assuage his failure.

Awkwardly, she gestured in the distance. “I should go. Brooke will be wondering where I am.”

Disappointment pulsed in his spirit. “Okay.”

She started to walk, though she hesitated then shifted to look back at him. “Brooke is wonderful. You’re lucky you have her.”

Without saying anything else, she turned and hurried back up the path she’d come from, Cody watching her go, regret thick in his throat.

“Fuck,” he muttered, shaking his head, though he sat there and ate every bit of that strawberry shortcake.

This was for the best.

Hailey chalking his and Brooke’s non-relationship up as something that counted.

Once he was finished, he packed up his things and wandered to his truck to put his lunch pail inside so he could get back to work.

He startled when a presence came up to him from behind, then he let go of an easy smile when he saw the ranch manager standing behind him, acting cool and casual though he was praying to God he hadn’t caught him sitting next to Douglas Wagner’s daughter.

Brent was tall and fairly muscled, though not close to Cody’s size. He was maybe in his mid-forties and had been pretty chill since Cody had started working on the fencing project.

“Hey, Brent. What’s up?” Cody asked.

A question lifted Brent’s brow. “Heard you need to make some quick cash.”

Hope jumped into Cody’s system. “Now that I am, brother. You know of something?”

“Sure do.”

“Good because I need a lot of it.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

CODY

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Hailey asked it from where she sat in the passenger seat of my truck, staring out the window at the modest house tucked in the middle of Time River.

My childhood home.

“What?” I asked her, needling her a bit since I could feel the frazzled nerves zinging through her body.

The woman had itched the entire way over here.

Hailey swiveled her attention to me, those eyes the color of the river washing me through, so intense as she looked me straight. “Take me in there.”

Reaching out, I set my hand on her cheek, and I brushed my thumb across the apple. “Now why would I not want to take you in there?”

Hailey lowered her voice to keep it from her daughter who was anxiously waiting in the back. “Don’t you think this has all become too much, Cody?”

“Nah, darlin’, it’s not close to being enough.”

“Cody.”

Hailey was still warring with it, her spirit dampening after the verbal altercation with Pruitt last night. Once she’d gotten back in my truck, she’d been quiet on the way home, almost distant, like she was looking for a way to put the walls back up between us when there was no chance that they could stand.

Not when she was meant for me.

---