Page 42 of The One for Me
“I bet I can ride better than you,” Hadley says to Austin, and I roll my eyes.
“Can not.”
“Can too!”
“All right, you two,” Dev says with exasperation. “You both ride great, and we’re very excited to do this together. If someone is not excited, then they can ride on the quad with Sean, who is afraid. Do you want to be a chicken like him?”
I glare at her. “Funny.”
She shrugs.
“Sean isn’t scared,” Austin defends. “He’s a professional ballplayer and a catcher who has to worry about pitches coming at him so fast it could break his hand.”
I smile at his obvious respect for my manliness. “Yup. What he said.”
Devney shakes her head. “Anyway, this will be a lot of fun, but we need to get along.”
The kids settle down, and we head out. The ride is nice, and I’m very happy to have my ass not on the horse. Devney, Zach, Austin, and Hadley ride out in front of me as we head out to the fields that run along the creek.
On our way back, we pass an old building that still haunts me, and I allow my quad to come to a stop.
They ride on, but I feel as though I’ve been transported.
That building holds a car.
A 1973 red Camaro that almost destroyed my life.
A life that I’ve tried to live and a past I’ve fought to forget.
But it’s all there, waiting to show me that secrets can be buried or unearthed.
“Sean!” I hear Devney’s voice as she rides toward me. I hit the gas and head her way. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say with a smile.
She eyes me curiously. “You sure?”
This is a story I plan to tell her, but not now and not here. “I’m good. Kids okay?”
“They’re worse than we were at that age.”
I laugh. “You know what they say about the thin line between love and hate.”
Devney rolls her eyes. “We all know that you have always loved me.”
“I also wanted to throat punch you several times a week. You were always so damn competitive. It was annoying.”
She gives me a crooked smile. “Yes, so annoying because you always lost. Hey, Sean?”
“Yeah?”
“Race you!”
She takes off before she’s even done throwing down the challenge, and once again, I’m chasing the girl who has always been too fast to catch.
Chapter Thirteen
Devney
