Page 33 of The Best of Us

She was working hard to get a read on me again.Good luck with that.She’d never guess what was on my mind.

“You’ve been acting weird ever since you tracked down that boy to get your wallet back.”

And close enough.“Just cover for me so I can go, will ya?” I tipped my head toward the door, a plea with my eyes not to press and to just do what I asked.

“Fine, fine.” She patted my shoulder, nearly spilling her coffee on me. “Ooops.” Another wink came from her, and then she took off.

The second I was alone, I reached into my pocket and wrapped my hand around the heart locket. I’d been sitting at my desk, staring at the image inside it ten minutes earlier when my father came in unannounced, and I’d shoved the evidence of my distraction in my pocket.

The heart felt like it weighed a hundred pounds inside my hand. The weight of over sixteen years lost with my son was more like it.

I missed out on her baby bump and watching our son grow inside her.

The cutting of his umbilical cord.

Learning to swaddle him the way Enzo had to do with his twins.

His first tooth, and the first one lost.

The measurements on the wall as he grew up.

All of it.

Then there was the weight ofseventeenyears lost with his mother that I couldn’t wrap my head around, either.

Grinding my back teeth, the pain in my head and heart was too damn much. I couldn’t breathe or think. I had to get out of there. I took off from the building, narrowly avoiding conversations with staff on my way to the parking garage.

The moment I sat behind the wheel of my car, my first thought was to text Juliette. We’d swapped digits after I’d dodged answering her question about the ring Colin had mentioned. I went from not having a son yesterday to covering for him today. What the hell was going on?

Me: How were things after I left? You okay?

Me: This is Constantine, by the way, in case you didn’t save my number.

Juliette: Hey, I did save it. And you caught me just getting out of the shower. One sec.

Thank you for that image of you naked and wet. Fuck.I bucked my hips forward, unsure what the hell that was all about. I didn’t get aroused from a text, let alone an innocent one.

My car remained in park as I waited for her to put on some clothes.

Juliette: Things are . . . weirdish? But he’s good. Well, as good as a 16-yr-old can ever truly be. And I’m okay. I think? Nervous to tell him. Excited . . . but nervous. Make sense?

The woman texted like she talked.

And was I grinning because of a text? Another thing that never happened.

Me: Why weird? (I’m nervous, too.)

I rolled my eyes at my use of parentheses, deleted them, then sent the text.

Juliette: He thinks something sketchy is going on. (His words.)

I smiled at her parentheses.

Fuck. I’m so fucked.

Juliette: He asked if you’re . . . this is too embarrassing to say, and it was even more mortifying to hear him ask me.

I straightened in my seat.

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