Page 12 of Whenever You Call

“Correct.”

“Care to fill me in?”

“I’m not an unreasonable man. I’ll let you have some time to wrap your head around this. I’ll give you two weeks more on the job if you take twoweeks off after that to get your shit in order.”

“And then you’ll leave me alone? Get Jerry to leave me the fuck alone, too?”

Buck sat back in his seat and shrugged. “Guess it depends on how much of a life you find while you’re out there.”

Chapter5

HANNAH

“Bella!” I slid her lunch into her small backpack and pulled it off the kitchen island. “Bella!”

I’d already called her ten times, and she’d yet to show. When it came to timekeeping, my daughter unfortunately took after her father. It had always been a point of contention in our relationship. I lived on the edge of my nerves, always wondering what other people thought of me. I panicked when we’d show up late somewhere out of fear of others whispering behind our backs. Cole had always told me to stop being ridiculous, which more often than not led to an argument minutes before we got in the car to leave for wherever we were headed.

I’d give anything to shout at him just one more time.

A sad smile rose on my face, and I stared at the kitchen island Cole had sat me upon a thousand times before he’d temporarily kissed all my troubles away.

The anxiety queen and the overconfident rock star.

We shouldn’t have worked, but we did for a while… before everything got messed up.

“Bella!” I cried louder, snapping myself out of another daydream.

Her little footsteps echoed down from the foyer before she came into view, wearing her dark green and navy uniform that made her seem so much older than I was ready for her to be. Her hair was its usual scraggly mess, but I didn’t have enough energy to argue with her over it this morning. I knew how to pick my battles.

“I’m here, Mommy, sheesh,” she said with a dramatic flair as she brushed the hair out of her eyes with the flat of her hand. “You ready?”

“I’ve been ready for a while, lazy bug. The question is, areyouready?”

“I’d rather be in bed.”

I couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped me.Just like her father.

Bella turned to make her way to the garage, and I followed, watching her every step as though I still couldn’t believe she was real or mine. She’d been the best thing to come out of my marriage. Actually, my life. I wouldn’t regret a single day that led me to her.

Before long, we’d loaded ourselves into the Range Rover, opened the electric gates, and were making our way to her school, only a ten-minute drive away. It was the one place I felt comfortable going, given the amount of security and privacy surrounding it. No press was ever allowed anywhere near the building, its reputation relying on the children’s safety. Their no tolerance policy had been one of the added bonuses that drew me to it knowing that Bella would, without question, be safe there and among like-minded children who also had parents in the public eye.

While Cole may have gotten to make the decisions on most things, I gave him no choice when it came to where our daughter went to school, and he backed down easily, seeing he couldn’t get the last word in on that particular argument. I had no plans to be a pushy mom, but I wanted her to have every opportunity Cole and I never had growing up, especially when it came to her protection.

After finally dropping Bella off and making sure she was okay, her teacher gave me a sympathetic smile and wave from the classroom door—the same smile she gave every morning, even though she could barely see me through the slight crack of my car window—and I gave her a half-assed wave back, hating that I couldn’t muster up enough strength to just get out of the car to go and say hello.

There’s a constant fatigue you carry around with you when you lose someone. It’s a weighted vest strapped around your chest, pulling you down to the ground, and I had to learn how to grow extra muscles to carry that around with me every day because the only other option was dropping to my knees and wailing.

I loved my daughter too much for that.

I closed my eyes, and a sharp stab of grief hit me out of nowhere.

“I’m trying so hard here, Cole,” I whispered. “Even when I was mad at you, just knowing I could call you and hear your voice always made me feel better. Now you’re gone, and I…fuck. I don’t know if I can do this alone anymore. How do I know I’m enough for Bella now without you?”

Heat rose up the back of my neck until it cupped itself around my head like Cole’s hands were there, pressing me to him.

“I just want you to hold me again. To annoy me again. To look at me like I’m your everything, even when we both knew it was a lie.” I sucked in a breath that stuttered on its way back out. “I miss you, you selfish fucking bastard, and I hate that I miss you because I’m still so mad at you foreverything. All of it.”

The silence lingered around me, much to my despair. I wanted to press all of his buttons, even in death, just so he’dhaveto come back and argue with me because Cole always had the last word in any fight, whether he’d been in the right or the wrong. Most of the time, I swore he’d done it just to see me angry. He’d always said I was at my most attractive when mad at him.

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