Page 4 of Every Bit As Perfect
And Daire.Max’s friend from university, was a new addition since he decided to accept a teaching position at Sage Ridge Elementary.
I looked down at my precious nephew.
The beginning of the next of us.
A faint ray of hope brightened one of the cracks in my heart.Maybe, just maybe, we were healing.
“What about love?Marriage?Kids?Do you want those things?”
An unwarranted picture of Daire laughing at something I said last Christmas flitted through my mind.
Tall.Handsome.Broad shoulders, wide smile, long hair he wore pulled back from his face in a low ponytail or a man-bun.I loved it when he pulled his hair back into that bun.And why wouldn’t he with those cheekbones, those eyes, and that beautiful mouth?
When he entered the room, panties melted.But when women found out he taught kindergarten?Wombs opened and ovaries exploded.
He could have his pick of the entirety of Sage Ridge’s single woman population.If he was into the Brady Bunch, he was drinking from the bottom of the barrel.
I couldn’t judge him too harshly.He didn’t grow up with them.Hadn’t witnessed their unique brand of cruelty over the years.
Anyone who grew up here knew them well.Everyone knew everybody well here.That was part and parcel of living in a small town.
There were times I wished I could start over somewhere else, but they were few and far between.Mostly when I got sick of myself.
Accepting a job offer in a new town and packing up my entire life to move the way Daire did?I couldn’t imagine doing that.How was it so easy for him?What, or who, did he leave behind?
How Noelle survived for a decade without her friends and family around her was a mystery to me.
Not that any one of us had been functioning all that well.
When Hunter died, I fell apart.In the months and years that followed, with nobody left to help me, I picked up my pieces as best I could and carried on.
Hopefully the cracks of my shattered heart only showed on the inside where no one could see them.
“I wouldn’t rule out marriage and kids.But I’m not willing to settle next time.”
“What about Daire?”
“Ha,” I scoffed, the memory of him smiling at the queen bitch bee at The Beaver Dam engraved on my brain.“I hardly think I’m his type.”
2
Midas
Thewindwhippedtheends of my hair around my face in warning.While summer had not yet ended, the fresh bite in the air warned it would soon be too cold to enjoy the water.But it wouldn’t stop me from combing the beach in search of the myriad treasures tossed to the shore by the waves.
Where Max, Hunter, Hawkley, and Noelle hunted those flat gray rocks and spent hours developing the perfect arc for the maximum number of skips across the waves, I searched for sea glass, heart-shaped rocks, and the ever-elusive wishing stone.Over my thirty-six years, I’d amassed quite a collection.
There was only one I ever parted from, and there wasn’t a single day in the last decade I didn’t regret it.
True wishing stones were the hardest to come by and should never be hoarded once their magic was tapped.Heart-shaped rocks held no mystery, but they caught my eye just the same.Mine sat in a pretty china dish on my bookshelf.Placed beside my romance novels, they were a good reminder that a heart of stone is not so easily broken, and that romance, like dreams and wishes, is best indulged in between the pages of a good book and not for mere mortals like me.
Pretty glass jars filled with mermaid tears lined my windowsill, lit by the rising sun every morning.Amber, teal, crystalline, and brilliant blue shards of glass dulled by time, worn by sand, and tossed by the waves kept me company.
And I sought them religiously.
Ditching my sandals, I rolled up my pants.I had twenty minutes to walk the shoreline before I was due back at work.My feet left prints in the wet sand and the waves kissed my toes, frothy bubbles sparkling brightly under the late summer sun.I searched for treasure, my eyes trained to the ground as I mulled over my workload for the afternoon.
“Harley.”
