Love, Utley (Love Letters #1)

I ball my hands into fists, and I lean into it.

I suck in another full breath and let it out again.

I pretend he’s in front of me, and I pretend I’m screaming loud enough to shatter the windows around us.

I pretend I have a different past.

I pretend I never met Maddox.

Picturing it, a week at HOP U, having never met Maddox, the pressure inside me finally pops, and I sag forward.

Another tear gets washed away down the drain as a thin layer of sadness settles over my jagged pieces, dulling the pain. Because I don’t want that either. I don’t want to lose those good memories.

I just need to find a way to keep those memories in the past. Because in the present, there’s no more thinking about Maddox Lovelace.

No more hoping for translucent dreams.

No more thinking with my vagina.

No more.

Reaching down, I massage my feet before I finally get up and finish my shower.

With towel-dried hair, I enter the living room.

Chelsea has a movie up on the screen, ready to play.

Mom is in her chair, and Chelsea is sprawled across the couch, so I take my usual spot in the creaky leather chair that’s so old it looks like it came from the side of the road but is actually perfectly molded to my butt.

The movie starts, and I prop my feet up on the footrest.

We don’t watch movies together every weekend, but we do it often enough that I’ve used it as an excuse not to date.

I look over at my niece.

The older she gets, the more she looks like her mom. And the more I’m reminded just how fragile life is.

How fragile everything is.

And it’s the perfect reminder of why I can’t get caught up in Maddox and lose my job.

Silently, I take a long, slow breath.

If I really think about it, taking emotions out of the equation, it doesn’t matter that Maddox never called. It never would have worked anyway.

I couldn’t go back to HOP U. I had to work full time— more than full time— at Petals. And even if he wanted to try a long-distance relationship, we never would’ve seen each other. Between his football schedule and my working and taking care of Mom, there was no time.

And then Maddox moved across the country and became a professional football player, becoming more and more famous as each year passed.

My heart squeezes.

And while he was doing that, my life changed again. Because my cousin passed away, and then Chelsea came to live with us.

I was twenty-five, supporting my mom, and suddenly, we had custody of a child.

It was ten years ago, but I still remember that day like it just happened. The call that Chelsea’s mom had passed away unexpectedly. And the news that she left her two-year-old daughter in our care, guardianship split between me and my mom.

My cousin was smart doing it that way. My mom wasn’t in a position to take full-time care of a toddler. And neither was I.