newborn reader - 74 > Recent Status Updates

Such a great start to the story! Can’t wait to hear what is the go with Church!!!

“Alas, you’ll have to wait until Monday morning. I have an opening between nine thirty-three and nine thirty-six. I’m entertaining now, as you can see.” Offering me three minutes of his precious time. “Entertaining who?” I narrowed my eyes. “You possess all the personal charm of the bubonic plague.” Lovely, Gia. You couldn’t even be nice to him for five minutes.In my defense, he deserved much worse.

“What’s your fascination with this book?” I cleared my throat, wanting to break the ice. “It is the first children’s book in the world without a lesson or a moral.” “What’s wrong with morals?” I wrinkled my nose. Tate looked up, eyes as dead as the useless heart in his chest. “I wouldn’t know. Haven’t got any.”

“If you could try to make me like you a bit less, that’d be really helpful, Em.” His grin is lazy on his lips as he looks at me. “Can’t help it, I guess. I think we both know I’d do anything for you.”

And it’s a liberating, yet terrifying, realization. Because I’m pretty sure Emmett Montgomery is everything I wasn’t ever planning to go looking for.

“Is that why you’re so close with the guys on the team?”

He inhales a breath as he thinks it over. “Yeah, I suppose so. Sometimes you’re just needed. Whether that’s as a coach, a mentor, or a friend. And I like being able to be whatever is needed for them. I like taking care of people too, I guess. Or maybe it’s just that I really love my job.”

My heart broke a little with that realization. It likely stemmed from the breakup, as well. I took a few bites of my food as I mulled over how to ask what I wanted without starting another fight. Between Joshua's baggage and mine, every conversation was a potential minefield. If we didn't try to work through some of it now, then we would keep setting each other off.

“Honestly? This is going to sound dumb, but I have been pushed around by so many people for so long. I just wanted to feel like I had some control in my life.” My heart broke watching the girl who usually radiated confidence shrink into herself. I’m a forty-year-old man who barely knows what he is doing day-to-day. How could I expect a girl in her twenties to have shit figured out when I didn’t?

So why did I despise the thought of him looking at another woman the same way?

Because you are selfish. You want him all to yourself. The attention excites you as much as it scares you. You love the power he lets you wield over him.

No, not power. Control. My time with Joshua was the only time someone else wasn’t telling me what to do. It wasn’t selfish to want control over your own life.