He took her oth­er hand. “I’m not going any­where, Mila.”

“You say that now.”

“I mean it. I like the slow­er pace in Drift­wood Bay. The oppor­tu­ni­ty to remain a head coach while also serv­ing as a dis­trict ath­let­ic direc­tor means I’m not inter­est­ed in look­ing else­where. Pro­fes­sion­al­ly, this is a great sit­u­a­tion for me. Per­son­al­ly, I want to give Lily con­sis­ten­cy. That means stay­ing in one place. I don’t want her to have to make new friends every few years when I change jobs. I want to raise her here in the Bay. Give her a real home, with a com­mu­ni­ty that is like extend­ed family.”

Car­son gazed deeply into Mila’s eyes. “I’ve put my life on hold these past two years in order to focus on Lily, I’m ready to do some­thing for myself now.” He paused. “And that some­thing is get­ting to know you, Mila.”

“Would we be mak­ing a mis­take, start­ing some­thing between us?” she asked.
“You’re my boss. You over­see all aspects of ath­let­ics in the dis­trict. You’ll be respon­si­ble for eval­u­at­ing my per­for­mance and decid­ing whether or not to keep me on con­tract. The optics of dat­ing your sub­or­di­nate don’t look good, Carson.”

“Is that the only thing hold­ing you back?”

She was afraid to voice how she wor­ried about liv­ing up to his mem­o­ries of Ang­ie, and so Mila said, “That’s a pret­ty big concern.”

“If I can get that straight­ened out, are you will­ing to take a chance on me? On us?”

“More than any­thing,” she replied truthfully.

“I think before we decide to pur­sue this any fur­ther, there’s some­thing we need to do.”

“What’s that?” she asked, her heart ham­mer­ing against her ribs.

“Kiss. If we’re going to fight for this rela­tion­ship, we should see if we have chem­istry. We need to see if that spark is real.” Car­son gazed at her. “May I kiss you, Mila?”

“I thought you’d nev­er ask.”

“Are you all right, Layne? It’s Keaton. Keaton Maxwell. From the wedding.”

She bit her lip, nod­ding wood­en­ly at him. “I remem­ber you.”

“What can I do to help?” he asked, see­ing she was clear­ly dis­tressed. “Can I call Mila for you?”

“No,” she said emphat­i­cal­ly. “I just need some time to myself.”

Reluc­tant­ly, he pushed him­self from the booth. “Okay. I just want­ed to see if there was any­thing you needed.”

Her gaze met his, tears swim­ming in her eyes. “Oh, I need a lot of things, Keaton. Most of all …” Her voice faded.

He knelt beside her. “Tell me. I’m here for you.”

“I could use a friend right now.” She gave him a crooked smile. “Even if it’s a new friend. Of course, if I start dump­ing on you, you may run scream­ing for the hills.”

He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Try me. Not much scares me—or scares me off.”

For some rea­son, hold­ing her hand felt like the best thing in the world. Dif­fer­ent from any oth­er time he had ever touched anoth­er woman.

Reluc­tant­ly, he released it and rose before tak­ing a seat across from her again. “Fire away. Antic­i­pat­ing tor­pe­do num­ber one,” he teased, hop­ing to light­en her mood.

She eyed him sad­ly. “For starters? My dad killed my mom and then himself.”

Her words stunned him. Keaton was rarely left speech­less, but he had no idea what to say. Layne pulled an enve­lope from her purse. “He left me this. Chief Roberts came to Dal­las and gave it to me. I’ve read it at least a dozen times since Wednes­day. Every time, I keep hop­ing what’s in it will change. That this night­mare loop I’m stuck in will dis­solve and every­thing will go back to normal.”

She gazed at him, her eyes brim­ming with tears, sad­ness radi­at­ing from her. “But then I have to real­ize that this is my new normal.”

His heart ached at her words. Reach­ing for her hand again, he took it.

“Let’s read it togeth­er. Then we’ll go from there.”

*Excerpt com­ing soon!

*Excerpt com­ing soon!