Into the Fire (Bridge Book 2) Read Free

lima bean, but they seemed happy enough. He was loyal, reliable, and seemingly equally as committed to living life in one spot as she was.
    “Oh!” Her voice went up an octave. “You’ll never guess who I saw at the town hall. Phil and I were paying the tax bill, and we ran into Michael Browning. Did you know he’s running for mayor? He’d be our youngest mayor. They say he’s got a real chance at winning too.”
    “Good for him. Listen, I’ve got to run.”
    “You do not,” she admonished. “He asked about you. Wanted to know how you were doing. He’s just as handsome as he was when you were together. I’ll never understand why you two couldn’t make it work.”
    While my mother was busy making meals and keeping house for her new husband, I’d somehow gotten on the radar of Callaway’s reigning prom king, to the disappointment of the many girls who’d been waiting in line for a chance at him.
    Michael Browning was the kind of guy all the girls wanted and all the other guys wanted to be around. Funny, good family, promising future, and a soft spot for girls from the wrong side of town. Just the kind of boy my mom wanted for me. Someone who couldn’t be more different from the rolling stone who’d neither had the time nor the inclination to raise me.
    “We couldn’t make it work for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was because I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life in Callaway where he was clearly destined to be.”
    “You talk about it like it’s the worst place on earth. Why you’d rather live in that dirty city with all those people, I’ll never understand. You had a life here.”
    “That’s your life, and I’m happy for you, really. But right now, I’m standing in front of David’s apartment. I need to go in now. He’s waiting for me.” I was still a block away from my boss’s Soho loft, but I had to get the hell off the phone before this conversation took a real turn for the worse. “I’ll text you when I land,” I added.
    “Thank you. You know I’ll worry the whole time.”
    “I know you will, but there’s nothing to worry about.”
    She paused a moment. “Love you, sweetheart,” she said, soft and sweet again, like the sound of a mother putting her baby girl to bed, with the promise that everything was right in the world.
    My irritation melted, and for a second she was my mother again, not a woman who’d given up all her dreams and didn’t understand why I couldn’t give up on mine.
    “Love you too, Mom.”
    I slowed in front of my destination, replaying the conversation I was too quick to end. I looked up to where the architecture met the edge of blue-and-gray sky, delaying my entrance while the cool spring air whipped around me. I shook my head, annoyed with my train of thought and the unwanted emotion that kept bubbling to the surface.
    Melody Hawkins and I didn’t always see eye to eye, but she was the only mother I’d ever have. She was a part of me, no matter how far away I ran. I’d long ago stopped trying to catalogue all the reasons why I couldn’t live the life she wanted for me because I couldn’t do it without insulting the life she lived too.
    I didn’t want to do that to her, because as much as we disagreed, judging her for making the most with what she’d been given wasn’t fair. She’d grown up poor in a big family that never had enough time for her. She fell in love with the wrong man and followed him down a path that led to having me, but she’d done the best she could for both of us.
    Still, I’d come a long way from Callaway and didn’t want to look back. I didn’t want to think about the little town she’d raised me in or Michael Browning rising among its ranks. My life moved too fast to go backward. None of that mattered now.
    I breathed in the city air, exhaled with a tired sigh, and went inside. When I approached the reception desk, a young man in a poorly tailored gray suit lifted his gaze to mine.
    “I’m Vanessa