“I’m trying,” I answered. “Now that Josh is at Fort Campbell, I can eek out my PhD there. We might have another few months in lag time apart while I finish up, but it’s my best chance of getting it done between PCS moves.”
She sighed, shaking her head. “I don’t know how you do that.”
“Do what?” I said, sneaking a shirt out of the pile to fold.
She tilted her head at me but let it slide. “Plan everything out so far in advance around Josh’s moves. I hated moving from here when we went to Colorado. We’re lucky my brother kept the place up for us, rented it out while we were there.”
I shrugged. “This is the only life I’ve ever known. I moved as a kid, as a teenager, and now as an adult. I’d like to stop, that’s no secret, but I’ll follow Josh anywhere.”
She paused, looking at me way too deeply with those Josh-like brown eyes. “You should go to Turkey. Have something of your own.”
“Josh told you.”
“Just enough. He’s right. This is about you, and looking at the way he lives, the way you’re already maneuvering around his choices, well, this would be for you.”
“I can’t leave him, not now. There will be other digs, other schools, other deadlines. If I can’t get into Vanderbilt’s program, there will be another.”
She put the last folded shirt onto the pile. “Ember, I raised Josh on my own. I worked two jobs to afford hockey. I moved us to Colorado to keep him from ending up a criminal with that stupid bike—or worse, in a body bag. I know what it is to sacrifice for someone you love, to put their needs first. I get it, and I admire and love you all the more for it. You are, in every way, Josh’s perfect match because you both do whatever the other needs. But you have to understand—loving yourself, honoring your intelligence, your ambitions, that doesn’t mean you love Josh less. It means you’re staying true to the woman he fell in love with in the first place.”
“Do you regret it? Putting him first?”
Her eyebrows rose. “No, but he is my child. Children always come first. In a relationship, there’s got to be some give and take so you don’t end up looking like a parent and child.” She smiled. “Want to know a secret?”
“Sure.” I added my last shirt to the pile.
“I’m going on a date tonight.”
Her joy was contagious, and suddenly the woman in front of me wasn’t Josh’s forty-five-year-old mother. She was just a girl excited to see a boy. “With who?”
She shrugged but couldn’t fade her smile. “A very handsome police officer. It will be our third date this month.”
“That’s great!”
She nodded. “Well, I have to go get ready. You two are on your own tonight, so you know…just don’t do anything that gets the cops called to the house. That could put a damper on our evening.” She tilted her head toward the kitchen. “He’s in the garage.”
“Thank you, and have fun tonight. You more than deserve it.”
“I think I will.” She walked off with a little spring in her step.
I crossed the living room to the kitchen and opened the door to the garage. The sound of “Paint it Black” blasted me along with the heat, and I shut the door quickly behind me so they didn’t lose the cool air in the house.
Holy shit…he did not.
Josh’s mom’s car had been backed into the driveway, and in its place was the bane of my fucking existence. Josh’s silver Ducati Superbike.
His Harley, the cruiser? Yeah, I was okay with that. It was a laid-back form of biking in my mind, more about the ride, enjoying the moment. This thing? It was death, shined up and sexy. He’d won it when he was seventeen, in the race that eventually got him kicked out of Winslow, and unable to break her son’s heart, his mom had put it into storage.
I just wished it had stayed there.
My eyes didn’t linger on the two-wheeled death machine once Josh stood up on the other side of it, putting his tools on the workbench behind him. One glimpse and I wasn’t just hot because of the temperature.
My future husband was incredible.
His shirt was off, little beads of sweat glistening on his skin. Every line of his abs was carved, dipping down toward his low-slung board shorts, where the very fuckable V-shaped lines from his stomach disappeared. His tattoos rippled as he lifted his hands above his head, resting them on his backward Avs baseball cap.
You get to marry him. Sleep with him the rest of your life, laugh with him, kiss him, make—
“Earth to Ember,” he called out, turning off the music, and my eyes snapped from his abs to the grin that told me he knew exactly where my head was.
“Yeah, hi,” I said, blinking excessively.
“Good nap?”
I stepped down onto the concrete floor and walked around the bike until I was toe to toe with him. “It would have been better with you.” My fingers had a mind of their own and pinched his waistband, running just inside, against his skin. It was damp with sweat, and I had the most incredible, overpowering urge to lick it off.
“You need your sleep,” he said, his voice dropping.
I ran my hands over his abs, and his grin faded, his eyes darkening. I leaned forward and placed a kiss over the pink line from his splenectomy, then lightly traced the scar with my tongue.
Josh’s fingers tangled in my hair, then gently pulled me back. His attention darted between my eyes and my lips. “What’s on your mind?”