Page 63 of Cajuns. Love. Curves.

“Wait. What does getting vitamin D have to do with anything?”

“Most Americans are vitamin D deficient. Which can have all kinds of long last effects on your health. So better safe than sorry.”

And before she can say anything else, she’s in the reception area and I close the door between us. I lean back against the door and swallow a groan.

Fucking Wade Guidry.

Why?

Why did that man have to move back to town?

Okay, sure. He has family here. And he’s served in the military, defending our country. He’s a true American hero and all that stuff. Technically he lived here before I did.

But still … that man makes me crazy.

Well, in reality, I’ve never met that man.

The last time I saw Wade Guidry he was an eighteen-year-old boy, heading off to the navy after graduating from high school. The last time I saw him was about eight months afterthe incident, aka the football game that shall not be named, aka the most humiliating thing to ever happen in the history of humiliating things.

Wade was two years older than me in school. He played defense for the high school football team. Because he was enormous. Tall and broad and ineffably cool in that way that arrogant high school boys are.

Every girl I knew had a crush on him. I did, too, obviously. And that’s all it would have ever been if it hadn’t been for French.

We were both in French together, him as senior, me as a sophomore. Which also wouldn’t have been a big deal, if I hadn’t had the highest grade in the class and if he had bothered to do his homework, like, ever. But he was failing French and the football team couldn’t function without him, so I’d been roped into tutoring him.

Which was when I got stupid. Epically, disastrously, stupid.

Stupid, even by the standards of a nerdy sophomore with a crush on the coolest senior in school. Like, doodle our names together stupid. I wasthatgirl.

That swoony, stupid, doe-eyed fool.

I convinced myself that I saw a side of him no one else did. That I knew the real Wade. That the smirky, arrogant asshole everyone else knew was just a façade. And even though he never even spoke to me outside of tutoring, I convinced myself he felt the same soul-deep connection that I did.

In retrospect, I know the truth. He tried to dodge all my hints. He tried to let me down easy. But I was young and oh, so very stupid.

I asked him to the Sadie Hawkins dance. In the most public, humiliating way possible. While dressed in the high school Wildcat mascot outfit. In front of everyone in town.

So, yeah. When I say it was the most humiliating thing in the history of humiliating things, I mean it.

chaptertwenty-nine

Wade

It’s hard to imagine my small home town of Saddle Creek, Texas, population 5072, has a state of the art physical therapy facility, but they do. And it’s just what I need to continue the work I was doing at the Navy facility in San Diego before I was officially discharged from the Navy.

This wasn’t the plan. I wasn’t ready to retire. I was a Navy SEAL for fuck’s sake. And a damn good one too. But you can’t be a SEAL when you’re missing half a leg. Learning to walk with the prosthetic was the hard part.

No, that’s a lie. I’m still dealing with the fucking hard part. Not being a SEAL. I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know what the new plan should be.

My phone rings and I slide it because I’m a good southern boy and I was raised that when your mama calls, you answer.

“Mama?”

“Hey, baby, you going to physical therapy?”

“Yeah, I just parked outside. My appointment is in ten.”

“Are you nervous?”

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