Page 69 of A Kiss for Carter (The Laws of Love 3)

Chapter 17

When Carts reached his car, he clicked the boot open, then the fuel tank, and finally set off the alarm as he fumbled madly with the remote.

“Fuck, fuck,fuck!”The words spluttered out through gritted teeth as he finally managed to stop the beeping and flashing.

Inside the car, he sat shaking uncontrollably.His eyelids pricked and he dashed the back of his hand angrily against his lashes.

Just twenty minutes ago he’d believed that he was invincible.As though some mysterious forces of nature had suddenly aligned and for once everything in the universe was comprehensible.He’d left his parents’ place confident that Avery was okay, that Mum understood, and that little idiot Duke had bean taught a valuable lesson.

He’d got the message across, without violence or losing his cool.

And he’d been so fucking proud.So self-assured as he’d walked up the path to Judith’s house.Because finally he, Carter Wells, knew what it meant to be a man.

And then…

Wham.Yet again he’d been slammed into a brick wall.

When that guy walked out of the bathroom he was right back in the moment when Lucy…fuck, it was almost the exact same scene, except Lucy’s personal trainer had only been wearing a towel…

His fists crushed the steering wheel and he ground his teeth into his cheek to stop himself from weeping piteously.

Suddenly the words of Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love” taunted him.Oh, the fucking irony!At the most tragic moment of his life, the lyrics of a bloody eighties song had to tunnel their way into his brain.

Yeah, it sure was over now.

There was no kidding himself about that.

He blinked back a big salty tear and stared blindly out into the quiet street.His future yawned empty in front of him; images of eating cold baked beans out of the can in his sterile little kitchen as year after year passed him by.Taking his stupid old records out of their dusty covers and playing them incessantly as the paint peeled off the garden fence and his dreams of happiness lay buried under weeds and broken pavers.

A life without Judith.

A sudden knock on the window took him by surprise.He glanced up, blinked.Itlookedlike Judith, so now he guessed he could add hallucinations to the list of things wrong with his existence.

The hallucinatory Judith made a winding motion with her hand.

He rubbed his eyes this time, but she stubbornly refused to disappear.

She even smiled.

Hope flared in his chest as he found himself groping for the electric window button.

The window slid down.A little.Then jammed.Damn that weird hitch he’d meant to get checked at the last service.Another jab at the button sent the window up again.He tried again; down an inch.

Judith’s smile turned into a lopsided grin.And he couldn’t help but return it.

She made more pointy signs, which he realised meant she’d come around the other side of the car.

He grabbed a tissue from the centre console and swiped at his eyes as she made her way around the front of the car.

And then she opened the passenger door and slid in beside him.

He shifted in the seat, not sure where to look, just knowing that the space felt too small, too cramped suddenly.And she smelt fresh and citrussy, which took him back to the night they’d…

Ah,shit.

He scrubbed at his forehead.

“You ran away,” she pointed out.

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