Page 58 of Whenever You Call

Logan: Be safe. Any trouble, get out of there. Don’t let anyone corner you.

Me: You’re starting to sound like you really care, Logan Thomas.

Logan: No shit.

With a chuckle to myself, I tucked my cell into the waistband of my leggings, and I made my way downstairs to the garage. It wasn’t long before I was driving through the streets of Beverly Hills, heading for the one place I sought solace but hadn’t allowed myself to go to since losing my husband.

I went to Malibu Beach.

He’d always hated the ocean, and he despised any form of sand. It had been a dream of mine to wake up to both things every morning for the rest of my life, but because Cole had hated it, living on or even by the beach had never been an option. Even going for walks out there with Bella had been out of the question.

The thing that gave me joy, he denied so easily.

Now he didn’t have that power anymore, and it was time for me to figure out whatIwanted again.

My stomach twisted the moment I parked the car, trying to convince me to turn around and head back home. My gut didn’t stop in its efforts to destroy any confidence I’d managed to muster, but all I had to do was read through Logan’s text messages again, and imagine his smile and nod of encouragement, and I found myself climbing out of the car and slamming the door shut before I made my way to the beach, just like we’d planned.

The soothing sound of the waves crashing against the shore was an instant tonic to my soul. The moment I took off my sneakers and let my toes sink into the sand, I looked up to the sky, closed my eyes, and I inhaled a deep, healing breath.

And for the first time in years, I remembered what it felt like to be alive.

DISTRAUGHT WIDOW OF COLE NEWMAN SPOTTED OUT IN PUBLIC FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE HER HUSBAND’S UNTIMELY DEATH EARLIER THIS YEAR.

I scrolled through the article,taking in the pictures they’d caught of me looking wistful as I stared out at the ocean, inhaling every breath as though each one was a hidden treasure I wanted to lock away and keep to myself for eternity.

It had been an amazing hour of calm energy, self-love, and freedom, yet they chose to see me as distraught.

It always amazed me how two very different things could be pulled from the same image and how two different audiences could take whatever message they needed from it, whether that message was accurate or not. But still, the deed had been done. My face was out there now, and I’d been in control of when and where it happened. A strange sense of empowerment ran through me, knowing I had all I needed to do that again if I wanted to, as many times as I felt necessary. I didn’t need my husband to write the script for me. The pen had been transferred to my hand, along with the paper I was bound to write upon.

Scrolling back up to the article’s title, I read over it one last time, and I whispered to myself, “I may always be widow of Cole Newman, now… but my name is Hannah Moore, and don’t you fuckers ever forget that again.”

Chapter24

LOGAN

“I’m starting to worry,” Jerry said, glancing between the road and me as he drove the ambulance back from our last callout, where we’d been turned away when the patient refused to be taken to the hospital to get checked over.

I’d been back on the job a week already, which had dragged like hell. I never thought I’d miss being on vacation. I never thought I’d dread having to go to work—the thing that had given me purpose and kept me going for the last ten years of my life.

I glanced up at Jerry with my cell in my hands. “Worry about what?”

“You,” he said, nodding to the phone. “You’re on that thing at any given opportunity. Before your leave, you barely ever looked at it. Sometimes I wondered why you even had a phone. You never answered calls or texts. Now, though…”

“What?”

“Well, I’m starting to believe you actually went out there and got a life, LT.”

“Pfft. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“A defensive response is usually a sign of a truth you want to keep hidden, too.”

“Oh, fuck off.” I smirked.

He laughed. “At least I know I’m on the right track. Now, I’ve just got to find out who it is that’s gotten under your skin so quickly.”

The hair on the back of my neck rose, and a tingle of dread ran down my spine before I rolled my eyes at him, lifted my ass off the passenger seat, and pushed my cell back into my pants pocket before I sat down again.

“That better?” I asked with a brow raised.

---