Page 5 of The Run Home
As I always did pulling into the house my parents left me when they passed, I felt a pang of melancholy. I missed them so much. I appreciated the years I’d had them in my life and their gift of the house. Not many of my friends owned houses outright. I also felt a pull to look over at the Wolfe property, my gaze betraying me every single day.
Thankfully, I didn’t have time to think about that last Wolfe brother who had always stayed lodged in the back of my brain. Even twenty-two years later. Lydia nearly ran into the house with her tote bag weighed down with wine bottles and needlepoint. She and I were attempting Christmas needlepoints while the other girls were knitting or crocheting. We’d made a pact to bring back the old hobbies of the women before us. Next month, we agreed to attempt to churn butter.
All the girls arrived shortly after, their voices filling the usually silent house. That heavy feeling I got late at night all alone in this house fled instantly with their smiling faces and easy hugs. We snacked, drank wine, and then sat down with our projects, filling the space with chatter about work and life in Blueball.
“I heard we’re getting a new student on Monday,” Lydia said, catching my attention. That was the first I’d heard about it.
“Really? It’s two months into the year.” Welcoming new students and making them feel at home in a place that could be exceedingly intimidating was sort of my specialty. It was the arrival in the middle of the semester that had me seeing red. Why would a parent do that to their child? Hopefully there was a good reason for ripping them out of their former high school and dropping them into our town mid semester.
“Yep.” Lydia lifted her head, her needle stilling. Those icy blue eyes of hers held something I couldn’t place, but whatever it was, it made me nervous. “She’s a senior.”
Before I could give voice to my irritation about a senior being moved to a new high school during such a crucial year, she dropped a bomb.
“Kinsley Wolfe.”
The tip of my nose went numb and all the chatter stilled like a giant vacuum wrapped its nozzle around the house and sucked the life right out of it. Lydia stared at me unnervingly. She was the only one among the HAGS who knew about my beef with Boon Wolfe. She knew the whole sordid history, and that conniving female dog had waited until this exact moment to shatter my peace. I narrowed my eyes with a silent promise to bring retribution later, but she remained unfazed.
“Oh, that’s right! I heard the youngest Wolfe brother is back in town!”
That got my attention. I swung my fuzzy head toward Rosemary. She wagged her eyebrows up and down. Hattie shimmied her shoulders. Fifi looked around confused. I wanted to vomit.
“Remember when we tried to double-team Colson Wolfe? Right in front of Tully?” Hattie wheezed with laughter.
“Maybe we can try the same thing with Boon. I hear he’s single,” Rosemary singsonged, much to my annoyance.
I could feel Lydia’s stare burning a hole in the side of my head. I had to put a stop to this. Not one of my friends could flirt with Boon. I wouldn’t allow it. He’d eat them up and spit them out. The man was a serial flirter when he was still in high school. Now that he was a professional baseball player, who knew the bounds of his flirting skills? He’d decimate their hearts way worse than he had mine. I could not, in good conscience, let my friends be hurt by that egomaniac.
“Girls!” My voice came out wobbly and thready and a bit like a person about to have a panic attack.
Their heads all swung my way. I sucked in a deep breath, cleared my throat, and tried again. Lydia took a long sip of her wine, a little curve to her lips that said she was about to be highly entertained. I ignored her.
“You cannot, under any circumstances, flirt with Boon Wolfe.”
Rosemary’s mouth fell open in surprise. Hattie squeaked her displeasure. Fifi shrugged, and Lydia snorted into her wineglass.
I sat forward, needlepoint of a deranged baby Jesus in a manger completely forgotten. “Seriously! He’s theworst. Remember how I told you I got bullied in high school?” They looked at each other, brows furrowed. We’d all been bullied in some way, so I knew they remembered. “It was mostly by Boon!”
Rosemary clacked her teeth back together. “No. Boon? I heard he was…”
“Popular? Life of the party? Talented? Thought he was better than everyone else?” I supplied. “Doesn’t that sound like the classic characterization of every bully in history?”
Hattie’s shoulders drooped. “But he’s so cute…”
All of them were younger than me. Fifi, Rosemary, and Hattie had grown up here, but hadn’t spent any real time with the Wolfe brothers due to the age difference. They had no idea the kind of damage that could come from getting involved with someone like Boon.
“And he’s a single dad. That’s hot.” Rosemary lifted her wineglass in the air to emphasis her point.
Fifi held out her phone screen, showing it to each of us. “Damn. No kidding. Look at those arms!”
It was a picture of Boon, sweaty and shirtless, throwing a baseball while he grinned like he didn’t leave a string of crushed hearts in his wake. He looked like every woman’s dream man,thick dark hair, straight white teeth, muscles for days, and a flirty air about him that told you he knew exactly what to do to please a woman in bed.
My chest lurched like it always did when I googled his name to see what he was up to. Not that I would ever confess that habit to anyone in my life. He was dead to me. Except when it was late at night and my fingers flew over the screen, googling his name. Google searches after midnight didn’t count, everyone knew that.
All the ladies sighed, even Lydia. I gave her another death glare and she shrugged, like,what do you expect? The man’s hot.
“Ladies.” I jumped to my feet, anger flaring. “I don’t care how hot the devil is, you can’t flirt with him without getting burned. Stay far, far away from Boon Wolfe. You hear me?”
They sat there silently, blinking up at me in shock.
