Unfinished Ex (Calloway Brothers, #2)
Samantha Christy
Chapter One
Jaxon
I’ve always had a sixth sense. Or good intuition. Or some kind of inexplicable awareness. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had it. Once when I was five, I told my parents I was going to have a little sister. Three weeks later, they told us Mom was pregnant with Addy. It happened again when I was thirteen. I knew Nicky was going to walk into my eighth-grade history class at the middle school.
More than that, even before I kissed her behind the dugout that Friday night, I knew she was going to be my wife.
At eighteen, when a local child went missing, I was the one who found her alive, albeit hypothermic, out near old Joe Henson’s cabin. I’m not sure why I looked there; my feet just took me.
The day I found out about my brother Chaz’s death three years ago was the worst. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. It was the strangest feeling. Cooper was his twin, but I was the one who ‘felt’
his death without really knowing it.
And now I’ve had a feeling all morning. Heisman knows I have. He’s stuck close to me. He didn’t even run after the stick I threw to him in the park after our run. Dogs have an even better sense of things than humans.
“What?” I ask him, as if he’ll answer. I pull out my phone and reread the text from my oldest brother Tag. “He said he wanted to tell me something later.” I cock my head, studying Heisman as he walks from tree to tree, picking his favorite toilet. “You think I should call him?”
He glances up at me as he pees, almost like he knows what I said.
Heisman isn’t just my dog. He’s my best friend. I know it’s corny, but it’s been true since the day I got the rambunctious golden retriever puppy from the pound two years ago—both of us rescuing each other in ways we couldn’t possibly understand at the time. And call me crazy, but I actually do think he knows what I’m saying sometimes. And I swear he would speak if he could.
He trots over and licks my hand.
“You’re right.” I put away the phone. “I shouldn’t call him. Whatever he has to tell me, we’ll learn soon enough.”
Still, this feeling—it’s nagging at me. I look at the sky. No looming storm. We cross from the park to McQuaid Circle, and I glance down the street. Nothing to see here. Just the normal Friday evening activities: kids running toward Calloway Creek Park, adults carrying coffee from Ava Criss’
Corner Coffee Shop. People coming and going from the eateries, the bookstore, and the flower shop.
I peek into Gigi’s Flower Shop, the establishment owned and operated by Maddie Foster, Tag’s girlfriend. She’s at the counter helping a half dozen people. And her daughter, Gigi, is by her side.
Her daughter. I still can’t believe my brother, the playboy of Calloway Creek, has a girlfriend. One with a kid no less. The world has definitely shifted on its axis. Gigi spies me peeking through the window and happily waves to me. I smile and wave back. Because I actually like kids.
Heisman nudges me. He knows our routine. Home is our destination, and once we get there, he gets his treat, a large Milk-Bone.
My house is just around the corner. I love the fact that Heisman and I can take this walk every day. Along the way, I say hello to every person we pass, and Heisman greets every pet. Not in the same way. I smile or extend my hand, while my sidekick smells buttholes and sometimes noses.
I stop walking and contemplate turning the corner when we come to Tag’s street. But somehow I know this feeling I have isn’t about him. Heisman grunts. He’s getting impatient. I reach down and pat his head. “Come on, buddy.”
As we approach my house, something is off. Heisman usually runs ahead, excited about the impending treat he knows he’ll receive. But he doesn’t leave my side. I’ve heard dogs can sense when people are ill. They can smell tumors, and they can even tell when their owners are going to have a seizure.
“Are you trying to tell me I’m sick?” I ask, trying to think of the last time I’ve been in for a checkup.
He presses his weight against my leg.
“Shit. I’m dying, aren’t I?”
He sits dutifully by my side at the gate by the front walk. I stare left and right and shake my head at the white picket fence in front of the perfect bungalow I bought for Nicky and me thinking it’d be a great place to raise kids. Yet now, Heisman and I are the only occupants, the second and third bedrooms sitting empty, if you don’t count the piles of boxes I never got around to shipping to Oklahoma.
Why is that?
I open the gate for Heisman. He doesn’t trot to the front door as usual. He’s glued to my side.
“Dude,” I say. “If I’m going to keel over with a heart attack, just tell me now. Give me a sign.”
He stares up at me with his innocent brown eyes.
“Some best friend you are.”
I open the door, the weather stripping on the bottom edge sweeping the mail across the floor inside. I love that I live in a town where they still drop mail through slots in the front door. I lean down to pick up the mail and freeze.
My eyes focus on the official government return stamp on an envelope. Immediately, I know what it is. And it has me feeling like I could very well be having a coronary, because it feels like a fist is closing around my heart. I thought the envelope would be bigger, thicker, more significant somehow.