Page 3 of Make Me Whole

His chest heaved with chuckles that never exited his lips. Once I was in front of him, Max grabbed the back of my neck and kissed me hard and passionately.

Let the news sharing begin . . .

1

MAX

Three Months Earlier

Cool air hitme in the face as I stepped out of the stuffy house my best friend and business partner, Al, and I were just viewing. Considering the size of the lot, the square footage, and the location by the foot of the hill, the place was a steal, and it was no wonder. Aside from being cheap, the house was also a dump. It was a good-boned dump with all the requirements for a profitable flip, but it was a dump, nonetheless.

The back yard, however, was gorgeous.

I’d never been one to be awed by leaves, flowers, and that kind of shit, but even I couldn’t deny that the way the about-to-turn-orange leaves danced in the breeze was pretty. It made me want to walk to the little pergola—how in hell I knew what that was beat the crap out of me—and just sit a while.

Like a retired woman with a cross stitch project.Wonderful.

Though I hated to admit it, Al was right. Staying celibate for such long periods of time did no good for a man. The problem was that unlike Al, I didn’t lose my wife—and sex life—by choice. She didn’t cheat on me, and I didn’t leave her.

She was taken from me a decade ago, and I never understood how, after loving the same woman for eighteen years, I was supposed to get her out of my head to get off with someone else.

Though we were both once married and were now single, there was a tremendous difference between being divorced and being a widower.

“What do you think?” Al asked as he followed me outside, luckily, breaking the spell those damn leaves and pergola had on me.

“Place is a dump,” I blurted out and shrugged. “Like looking at a man’s bare ass.”

Al laughed and came to a stop next to me. “I happen to have a very nice-looking ass, if you care to know.”

I rolled my eyes and looked at my best friend. He had one of his loose smiles and arched brows that took me back a quarter-century into the past, and I couldn’t help but chuckle. Even though his dark brown hair was now peppered with grays, Al was still the same idiot I'd lived with in college.

“Unfortunately, I’ve seen your bare ass more times than I care to remember, and it’s as square, ugly, and hairy as every other dude’s.”

He shrugged. “It’s been twenty-five years since college and you still remember my ass. You may say it’s ugly, but clearly, it made an impression.”

Unable to help myself, I burst into a fit of laughter and mock punched him on the shoulder. It was like we were those dumb kids again, and I liked it.

After a while, we settled back into adulthood and Al asked, “Seriously now, should we buy this dump or not?”

Quickly shifting my gaze from him to the yard and then to the vomit green house behind us, I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, the colors and wallpaper are bad, the layout is awful, the windows don’t open, and the place smells like old rat shit, but it’s dirt cheap and from what I saw, it’s solid. I can do most—if not all—of the work myself, and we can turn a good profit. Let’s do it.”

Al clapped his hands, his lips spreading wide with excitement. “Awesome.”

His excitement was contagious, and after a month of only supervising crews instead of working with my hands, I was more than ready to have something I enjoyed doing again.

“I can have my share to you by tomorrow if you score for asking price or less. And I can start as soon as you have the keys,” I informed him as we walked around the side of the house. There was no way in hell I would enter that place without a mask on again.

“No,” Al said adamantly. From the corner of my eyes, I saw him shake his head, emphasizing the point. “I’m not saying no to the money thing. I’ll call them on my way home, and if all goes well, we can finish the purchase by the end of the week. They’re dying to sell, and I want to get started on this thing ASAP, but we can’t start before the permits.”

I pulled my eyebrows together in confusion. “It’s just clean-up and demo. We never wait for permits to start that shit.”

“This time, we will.” With no wiggle room in his reply, I kept staring at him with eyes widened in a clear demand for an explanation.

In silence, he worked his jaw for longer than usual before letting out a sigh and spilling. “Eli, Sky’s soon-to-be ex-douchebag-husband was just elected mayor of Windy River.”

“Okay,” I said, more like a question than a statement. The relevancy of that information regarding our starting clean-up and demo before the permits escaped me.

Al rolled his eyes, and his pale face grew red with anger. “She left him a month ago and got full temporary custody of Ella in the separation. Despite being a dick to my baby girl for seven fucking years and ignoring his daughter for just as long, he’s now decided that he’s not happy with the situation and wants them back.” Hands balled into fists, he muttered, “Fucking clown.”

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