Page 257 of Out of Left Field

“Yep.”

Only his eyes moved. “Willa. Baby. You’re getting my hopes up here.”

Why was it so exciting to make him happy? It was like a drug. The more I had the more I wanted. “Well, you should get them up. They should be sky-high and stay there.” I placed my hand over his. “I don’t want to keep us a secret any longer.”

He spun me into his arms and kissed me breathless. “You’re sure?”

I wanted him to look at me like this forever. So happy. So full of love. “I mean, if you’d rather we stay secret…”

He kissed me to shut me up. “Oh no. I cannot wait to tell everyone you’re mine.”

“Good. We can tell your brother in the morning.”

“Seth and Annalise are going to lose it!” He grinned. “We should prank them.”

Now that was a brilliant idea. “You should tell him you need to come over. You’ve got something super important to tell him, but make it sound bad. Like truly terrible news.” Teasing Seth would never get old. Not ever. “That way he won’t suspect that we’re together.” And it would be perfect payback for his meddling.

“I don’t know why I was ever jealous of Seth. You’re diabolical.”

I gave Everett my sweetest smile as I reached for my backpack. “Never upset me, sweetheart. You’ll regret it.”

Everett laughed hard. “You ready?”

“Yep.” My heart skipped a beat as he took my hand, threading our fingers together.

Everett took a half-step towards my office door and froze. Then he moved in front of me like a bodyguard about to tell a fan to fuck off. “Can I help you?” he growled.

Growled. Everett had flipped into full protector mode.

“I’m looking for Willa Cooper. Is she here?”

That voice. It was familiar. Old memories—really old—hit me at once. I felt small. Sad.

No.

It couldn’t be.

“What do you want with Ms. Cooper?” The bite in Everett’s voice was sharper.

Which told me that the woman was indeed who I thought it was. A part of me wanted to disappear. To simply vanish in the same way she had, once upon a time.

But the other part of me wanted to punch her in the face.

“It’s just that I was told this was her office and that she’d be here for a bit longer.”

I touched Everett’s arm, partly to get him to move, but mostly to steady my knocking knees. But instead of moving out of the way, Everett wrapped his arm around me, placing his hand firmly and possessively on my hip as he tucked me against him.

Sure enough the woman standing in my doorway was my height. She had my face, but with more wrinkles and age. Her hair was colored a shade of honey brown and cut into a bob. She wore jeans and a sleeveless blouse.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out who she was.

“Hello Mother.”

18

EVERETT

It took everything I had to keep from squeezing Willa’s hip too hard because all I wanted to do was punch the woman standing in her office. I’d never wanted to punch a woman before. But I didn’t really see this older version of Willa as a woman. I saw her as the person who ripped out Willa’s heart. The person who abandoned her. The person who hurt her so deeply it was part of her.