4
KNOX
Her whispered words were part confession, part regret. There was more there than she was saying, but she wasn’t lying to me.
She was a stranger. A beautiful, curvy, enticing stranger, but still a stranger. We’d slept together, and we’d talked for months, but there were truths we’d never shared. Big truths. I had no idea she was the woman who showed up at Valentina’s house last spring. And she didn’t know that I wasn’t just a guy who worked behind the counter of the town’s one and only hardware store.
“Okay, so heavy topics out of the way, how’s your pool shot?” I asked, hoping to see that smile I’d been dreaming about for months.
She looked up at me from under those lashes, a tentative smile lifting the edges of her lips. “Pool?”
I nodded toward the tables on the other side of
