Read Long Shot for Free Online Page B

staring at him through the passenger-side window. Maybe in New York she could’ve gotten away with hitting the gas and peeling away. She could’ve lost herself in the traffic and there’d have been a good chance she’d never run across him again. But here?
    She’d never been a coward her whole life, and she wasn’t about to start now.
    Opening the car door, she swung her legs out and stood, turning to face him. She smoothed her dress that didn’t need smoothing, then lifted a hand in greeting. He was wearing thick working gloves, and he slowly tugged them off, finger by finger. Then he pulled one of those dark blue handkerchiefs with the white swirls out of his back pocket—the kind she remembered his dad always used to have—and wiped his hands on it.
    She started toward him. He didn’t move.
    “You were right, Leith. I do love you.” Her palm went damp around the phone.
    He didn’t say anything for a long time, but she could hear him breathing and it sounded labored. “Why the fuck are you calling to tell me this now, when you’re half a country away?”
    “Because.” She swallowed, and it hurt. “I thought you’d like to know.”
    “Well, you’re wrong. I don’t want to know. Not now.”
    Jen almost stumbled on the ragged asphalt of the driveway. That had been so long ago, when they’d been kids. And he was sort of smiling at her now. Sort of. Maybe he’d forgotten the crappy way she’d ended it. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore. They were both adults.
    “Hey, you,” she said, throwing on a smile of her own.
    His brown hair had gotten lighter at the ends. A bonus—at least from her point of view—from working outside. It curled around his neck and ears in a way that might have looked like an overdue haircut on any other guy.
    He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket. “So you’re really here.”
    She stopped, the heel of one shoe clacking loudly. “You don’t look all that surprised.”
    He glanced over her shoulder, down Maple where it dipped and curved around in front of the elementary school. “Small town.” His eyes drifted back. She’d forgotten how intense they were. How he always looked people in the eye. It was that personal attention, that charm, she remembered, that drew people to him. “I
was
surprised. Yesterday.”
    “Ah. Yeah.” She nodded at the sidewalk. “It was a crazy day. To be fair, I had no idea you still lived here until I got into town. And then I was pulled in a million different directions.”
    He just looked at her. How did he manage to stand so quietly when such violent tremors were rocketing through her body? She’d always been a fidgety person. Always had to move, to think about her next step—where to go, what to do, what to say. Standing there under this scrutiny, wearing this strange uncertainty, she had no idea where to channel her energy.
    Leith was as still as his image on that poster. She knew what he was thinking:
You never asked Aimee about me?
But then, she also knew that he’d never once asked Aimee about her, so really, weren’t they even?
    All kinds of awkward floated in the air, mixing with the midday June heat and the fine mist coming from the sprinkler in the yard of the small brick house next to 738.
    He ambled to the back end of the truck, closer to her, his fingers trailing over a taillight. “So you’re here to save the games?”
    Of course he would know why she was here.
    “Small town,” they said at the same time. It cracked some of the tension, but didn’t break through completely. Her purse strap dug into her shoulder.
    “I’m going to try to,” she told him. “Aimee called me, what, only three days ago? She begged. I had an opening in my schedule. Here I am.”
    “An opening in your schedule,” he said, his voice flat as a board, as though he didn’t quite understand. “So this is what you do now? Plan . . . things?”
    “Yes. All kinds of . . . things.” She smiled, proud. “I’m pretty good at