Always the Best Man Read Free Page B

clothes,” she said, pointing to the shirt still balled in his fist. “No one needs a prolonged view of your bony bod.”
    It was meant as an insult and a reminder of their history. She’d nicknamed him Bones when he’d grown almost a foot the year of seventh grade. No matter what he’d eaten, he couldn’t keep up with his height and had been a beanpole, all awkward adolescent arms and legs. From what he remembered, Emily hadn’t experienced one ungainly moment in all of her teenage years. She’d always been perfect.
    And out of his league.
    He pulled the shirt over his head and grabbed his gym bag. “I’ll remember that,” he told her and walked past her off the field.

Chapter Two
    E mily lifted the lip gloss to her mouth just as the doorbell to her mother’s house rang Saturday night. She dropped the tube onto the dresser, chiding herself for making an effort with her appearance before a casual family dinner. Particularly silly when the guest was Jase Crenshaw, who meant nothing to her. Who probably didn’t want to be in the same room with her.
    Not when she’d been so rude to him after the football game with her reference to his body. He had to know the insult was absurd. He might have been a tall skinny teen but now he’d grown into his body in a way that made her feel weak in the knees.
    That weakness accounted for her criticism. Emily had spent the last year of her marriage feeling fragile and unsettled. Jase made her feel flustered in a different way, but she couldn’t allow herself be affected by any man when she was working so hard to be strong.
    Of course she’d known Jase liked her when they were younger, but she hadn’t been interested in her brother’s best friend or anyone from small-town Crimson. Emily’d had her sights set on bigger things, like getting out of Colorado. Henry Whitaker and his powerful family had provided the perfect escape at the time.
    Sometimes she wished she could ignore the changes in herself. She glanced at the mirror again. The basics were the same—blond hair flowing past her shoulders, blue eyes and symmetrical features. People would still look at her and see a beautiful woman, but she wondered if anyone saw beyond the surface.
    Did they notice the shadows under her eyes, the result of months of restless nights when she woke and tiptoed to Davey’s doorway to watch him sleeping? Could they tell she couldn’t stop the corners of her lips from perpetually pulling down, as if the worry over her son was an actual weight tugging at their edges?
    No. People saw what they wanted, like she’d wanted to see her ex-husband as the white knight that would sweep her off to the charmed life she craved. Only now did she realize perfection was a dangerous illusion.
    She heard Jase’s laughter drift upstairs and felt herself swaying toward the open door of the bedroom that had been hers since childhood. Her mom had taken the canopy off the four-poster bed and stripped the posters from the walls, but a fresh coat of paint and new linens couldn’t change reality.
    Emily was a twenty-eight year old woman reduced to crawling back to the financial and emotional safety of her mother’s home. She dipped her head, her gaze catching on a tiny patch of pink nail polish staining the corner of the dresser. It must have been there for at least ten years, back when a bright coat of polish could lift her spirits. She’d had so many dreams growing up, but now all she wanted was to make things right for her son.
    â€œEm, dinner is almost ready,” her mom called from the bottom of the stairs.
    â€œBe right there,” she answered. She scraped her thumbnail against the polish, watching as it flaked and fell to the floor. Something about peeling a bit of her girlhood from the dresser made her breathe easier and she turned for the door. She took a step, then whirled back and picked up the lip gloss,