Page 8 of Could Have Been Us
Chapter 3
Jack
Stella Parkerson is off fucking limits.
I say it for the one-hundred-millionth time. She’s not for me. Never has been and never will be. The night we made love was the only time I was ever stupid enough to think I could walk in her light.
The darkness is where I belong.
It’s been twelve years since Kinsley was born, and I’ve done a pretty good job of pretending it never happened. I think about her randomly, but I force it away before I can ever wonder.
But now, Stella spoke our daughter’s name into the murky water of the present, and I’m drowning from it.
“Well, you look worse than I feel,” Danny, the bartender, says as he puts a beer in front of me.
“I’m fine.”
He laughs once. “Yeah, convincing.”
I lift the bottle, taking a long pull, letting the liquid slide down my throat. How the hell did I get here again? I have been fine. Doing just fine ignoring the way Stella walks, the sound of her voice, the way her breathing reminds me of a night long ago. It’s been . . . fine.
And now it’s not.
“Keep these coming,” I tell Danny.
He nods once and leaves to help someone else.
I reach into my pocket, touching the sealed letter I got two weeks after Kinsley was born.
I have never been tempted to open it until now.
No. I’m not doing it.
There is no point. Reading it won’t change anything, and neither would talking to Misty and Samuel. They are her parents, not us.
Someone sits beside me, but I don’t need to look to know who it is.
“What are you doing here?” I ask Delia, Jessica’s best friend and also one of mine.
“I could ask you the same.”
I turn my head slightly. “Bad day.”
She waves her hand to Danny and he brings her over a vodka and cranberry. She turns to me, lifting the glass. “To bad days.”
“Are you sure we should toast to that?”
Delia shrugs. “Might as well. They happen anyway.”
“That they do.”
We both take a drink and then she turns her chair to me. “What’s got you coming two towns over for a beer?”
Because drinking anywhere in Willow Creek Valley means I may run into Stella. And I do not need to run into Stella.
“Just needed a change of scenery.”
“I see.”
