Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 60933 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60933 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Besides, Nash had his own house now, and there were several people coming into town that might need a room. I’d leave his three-bedroom house available to them. It was more house than Nash required, but he’d finished college in three years by taking summer classes, gotten his teaching degree in physical education, then gotten hired full-time by Lawton High as not only an offensive coach but a phys ed teacher. He made a nice salary for a single guy.
I winced at the idea of Nash single. I hadn’t been back to Lawton since he and Tallulah broke things off a year ago. I didn’t know all the details, but she had been offered a great opportunity in Chicago as an intern. They had done the long-distance thing until she had hooked up with her new boss or something like that. I wasn’t sure.
Putting my duffel bag on the white king-size bed, I walked over to the window. This was a new hotel. It had been built three years ago. There was nothing fancy about it, but it was clean with big rooms. It also sat diagonally across the street from the Ramoses’ store. Moving the curtains back, I saw what I had expected when I walked into my room and realized which way it was facing.
My view was the Ramos Stop and Shop. Great. Just what I wanted to look at every day I was here. Shaking my head, I walked over to the minifridge to take out a water that the guy at the front desk had said would be inside it. Along with the water were three chocolate bars, a bag of trail mix, and two apples. I grabbed an apple and bottle of water, then went to sit down on the chair beside the window.
Might as well look at the damn place and get it over with. Once I got my mind off Ezmita, I could focus on my future. She wasn’t a part of that. I used to measure every girl I dated up against her, and they failed. It took me until my third year in college to stop doing that. I still didn’t have any serious relationships, but at least I could date a girl more than once.
Damn if Ezmita Ramos wasn’t gonna be my girl that got away for the rest of my life. I took a bite of the apple and stared at the store. I recognized a few faces as they filled up their cars with gas or went inside to get groceries. Being back here was weird. It didn’t feel like home. Not with my mom buried in the cemetery. I hadn’t spoken to my dad in five years. Last I heard from Ryker, my dad was living in Little Rock. His momma was real informed by the gossip mill in town. It was believed that my father was also remarried.
I was the reason we hadn’t spoken. He had tried to call me a few times over the years, but I never answered. He had sent me a handful of letters that I never opened. Eventually he stopped. It was how I wanted it. I preferred a world where my father did not exist.
My thoughts didn’t get much further about him. Standing up, I walked closer to the window. My eyes locked on the girl I hadn’t thought I would see. But there she was walking outside carrying a bag of groceries for Gran Lee, Ryker and Asa’s grandmother. Even from here I could see that damn smile that still haunted me in my dreams. Hell, it haunted me in the daytime, too. When I least expected it, Ezmita would always show up in my thoughts.
Last time I had asked, which had only been a few months ago, Nash said she was still in Nashville after graduating college. He hadn’t known much more than that, but I didn’t expect him to. Her hair was shorter, but it looked good on her. She looked older, like a woman. Not the young girl who had broken my heart.
It had taken me a while to accept that she had been right. That day in my truck, she had chosen what was best for her and in the long run best for me. I’d been ready to do anything to get her to come with me. To choose me. In the end, Ezmita had chosen herself. She had been more mature at eighteen than any girl I had dated.
The last time I had seen her, she had been holding hands with a tall guy who was speaking Spanish because he was talking about the night before when they had been making out in the stockroom of her parents’ store and her younger brother caught them. The guy had tossed Ezmita’s bra over the boxes to hide it from her brother and they still hadn’t found it.