LITMIR.BIZ

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thought.”

      Clay couldn’t believe the gall of the guy—a respected man in the community, a coach on the high school football team with a kid and a wife—to contact a local girl repeatedly, pretending to be a teenage foster kid. It made sense that Covington would have known about Clay’s fledgling relationship with Gabriella, though. They’d met under the bleachers during football practices.

      â€œFor how long?” He couldn’t wrap his brain around it, but he realized he should be comforting her instead of focusing on how wronged he felt. How robbed. But damn it, Clay should have been the one enjoying those conversations with her online. “I mean, how extensive were these conversations? And what did he talk to you about?”

      He sat forward in his chair, too, closer to her. Belatedly, he remembered he’d brought his motorcycle jacket outside earlier and he grabbed it off the back of his chair to drape across her shoulders. The flannel he wore over a sweatshirt kept him warm enough.

      â€œThanks.” Her eyes met his in the moonlight, clear and blue even though the darkness grayed out most colors. “This is where things get awkward for me. I was kind of hoping when I confided this to you that you would have been on the receiving end of at least some of those messages I sent you.”

      Her gaze darted away again, searching the parking lot as if she’d rather look anywhere else. Across the lot at the diner, a couple of staffers closed the back door for the night, turning off the last of the lights in the building.

      Clay’s attention returned to Gabriella. Her pink fingernails flashed along the zipper of the brown bomber jacket, tugging the leather tighter while her words sent his brain on a kind of wild ride. Just what sort of things had she believed they were saying to each other in those chats?

      â€œI understand where that realization would be unsettling.” He nodded, starting to put the pieces together. “But consider my side. I can’t help but wonder why you were messaging with me, Gabby. I only remember a few cursory exchanges online about times we were going to meet for math tutoring when I wanted to know you so much better. I was pretty much crazy about you back then.”

      She went still. Slowly, her eyes tracked back to his.

      â€œThat helps, actually, to hear you say that. So, thank you.” She shrugged awkwardly in the big jacket, the fabric weighing down the gesture so it was just the slightest movement. “Because our conversations were fairly flirtatious. I looked forward to those chats, because I liked you, too.”

      And just like that, Gabriella Chance got under his skin all over again. He’d pinpointed the attraction between them alive and well earlier today. But right now, with her soft confession drifting on the night breeze, and her loose ponytail sliding along the shoulder of his jacket as she looked at him with trusting eyes...

      She tapped into a spot in his chest that he hadn’t cracked open in a good long while.

      Her cell phone vibrated on the porch rail, the light and the sound startling her. She reached for it.

      â€œSorry to check this,” she said a little too quickly, breathlessly. She flipped over the screen, and the light illuminated her face as she scrolled the pages. “I only leave the notifications on for family and for messages from the hotline for my victims’ support group, so it could be—”

      She went silent, lips pursed as she read.

      â€œSomething wrong?” He admired her for using her own experiences as a victim of cyber stalking to help others, even if it interrupted a conversation that had captured his undivided attention.

      â€œThere’s a local girl I’m planning to check on while I’m in Heartache—someone I’ve communicated with off and on over the last two years through my online group.” Gabby worked the keypad on the screen while she spoke. “I’m really worried about her. She’s so young and she’s alone taking care of her dying—” after an awkward pause, she stopped typing to peer up at Clayton, her eyes widening with what looked like a “lightbulb” moment “—father.”

      â€œWhat is it?” He’d been behind the eight ball from the beginning of this conversation, so it was no surprise he’d missed a step somewhere.

      â€œHer father is dying of cirrhosis and he lives just over the town line. Heading toward Franklin.” She frowned. “And you had mentioned that Pete—”

      The truth slammed into him.

      â€œYou’re meeting my half sister Mia?”

      * * *

      NOT EVEN CLAYTON’S warm leather jacket could ward off the chill that his words sent skittering over Gabriella’s skin.

      Gabriella had communicated with Mia Benson for two years online. And although she hadn’t built up enough trust for the girl to confide her name until a few months ago, Gabriella never had any reason to connect her to Clayton.

      They didn’t have the same last name, for one thing. Then again, Mia wouldn’t be the first offspring that didn’t share Pete Yancy’s surname.

      â€œYou know her.” She repeated the fact only because she was still having trouble making sense of it. “She’s your half sister?”

      Clayton gave a clipped nod. “Yes, she’s my half sister, but I didn’t even know about her until very recently. But why are you worried about her? Is she being bullied? You met her through that victims’ group you run?”

      He fired the questions fast. Impatiently.

      â€œShe’s not being bullied,” Gabriella assured him honestly, although she could kick herself for mentioning anything about the girl, even if she hadn’t used her name. “But I’m not at liberty to say anything more without her permission. I had no idea you would know her, Clay. I swear. She was in the foster system.”

      And just how on earth had Mia ended up in foster care when she had an older brother who might have stepped in? Defensiveness on Mia’s behalf simmered.

      Gabriella needed to call the girl back, but since Mia hadn’t flagged the message as urgent, Gabriella couldn’t walk away from this shocking conversation with Clayton just yet.

      â€œI had no idea she existed until Pete told me about her two weeks ago when he called to say he didn’t have long to live.” Clayton shoved out of the wooden chair he’d been seated in, edging past her on the narrow porch to stalk freely around the patch of grass in front of his motel cabin. He paced like a tiger—trapped and not happy about it.

      â€œI’m surprised the foster system didn’t—”

      â€œSo am I.” Cutting her off, he swung back toward the railing between them, grabbing the wood in two hands as he leaned closer, his knuckles turning white at the tight grip. “And you know what’s really messed up about that, Gabby? I made it my mission to find all my half siblings after I graduated high school. I ended up being so damn good at it—unearthing one heartbreak story after another in the form of my sad and disjointed family until I had eight of us accounted for.”

      The haunted expression on his face made it clear that not all of his siblings had navigated through childhood as successfully as he had. And Gabriella remembered firsthand how rough his experience had been. He’d told her once about getting separated from a younger brother when social services removed the boy from Clay’s father’s house.

      â€œIt was good of you to look them all up. Provide a sense of family for them.” She’d relied on her brother so much since her father went to jail and her mother wasted away waiting for him. Her mom had moved to the tiny town in Kansas where her father sat in a federal penitentiary.

      If not for Zach, Gabriella

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