Eat Crow (Cheap Thrills Series Book 6) Mary Moore (read out loud books .txt) 📖

from for me to take you out on dates? I get paid to drive her around and do shit with her.”

I didn’t hear the gasp that came from the girl we were discussing, who’d walked up behind me to tell me she was leaving. If I had, I’d have turned around and seen the devastation on her face as she fought back tears and done everything I could to take it back, regardless of how many people saw me doing it.

I was just too focused on ending this bullshit.

“You fuck other guys. Where in your mind does that make us an emotionally invested and committed couple? No, Renna, it’s over. I hope you have a good life.”

I said the last bit as I turned around to walk back to my car, meaning that I frowned when I saw Layla Townsend holding a crying Renna.

And I totally missed Mark Montgomery’s fist as it flew toward my face, making contact with my eye and knocking me out cold.

Six weeks later…

Bexley

“Honey,” Mom said quietly as I sat on the steps watching my dad and his dad laugh about something as they turned meat on the barbecue. “Are you sure you’re okay? I’m worried about you.”

Picking at the label on the unopened bottle of sparkling water in my hand, I shrugged and watched the bubbles moving around inside it.

“You didn’t go to prom, you’ve stayed home every night for the last six weeks, you don’t go to any of the games at school when Logan plays—”

“Don’t mention his name,” I hissed, squeezing the bottle.

Shuffling closer, she leaned her head closer to mine. “Logan? What did he do?”

“I know you paid him,” I rasped and then choked out a laugh. “Everyone at school knows y’all paid him to hang out with me and give me rides. I’m that chick, the chick a guy gets money to hang out with.”

“I never gave him a dime,” she argued, sounding incredulous. “Why did he say that?”

Feeling only slightly better about it all, I opened the abused bottle and took a mouthful.

Once the sharp feeling from the bubbles left my throat, I shook my head to clear it. “I don’t know. All I know is that he said it, so whoever who was at the party heard it. Now everyone at school knows, and I can’t even list all the names I’ve been called, including Bexley Hooker.”

“What?” she shrieked as she jumped up, getting the attention of both dads. “Which one of you paid Logan? Which one?”

That’s where it all began, her questioning both men while I let the numbness grow inside of me. Even Pops coming over didn’t help, and he was one of my favorite people in the world.

The human heart can only take so much hurt, and your emotions at the age of eighteen were fragile. So, I shut them off.

I didn’t feel anything, didn’t want to feel anything, but I knew that me going to the college I was going to was for the best. I’d been upset when I’d made my choice because of the distance from my family, but now I needed it.

And then the man who’d started it all walked around the corner, just as my mom laid into the dads about “payments” and “bullshit.”

Dad looked like he’d had his heart stomped on as she repeated what I’d told her, and Logan’s dad, Will, looked like he was going to be sick.

Slowly, Logan turned his head to look at me, and I caught the look of regret and pain in his eyes before I looked away again.

Ask me if I cared.

Not one fucking bit. Not even a crumb of a bit.

I was never going to see him again, and I hoped he lived with this for the rest of his life.

Chapter One

Logan

Seven long, regretful years later…

“Now, Lawrence Heath’s granddaughter, his pride and joy, Bexley, is going to tell us about him,” the priest who was leading the funeral said to us all as we sat crammed into the pews of the church.

That’s when I got my first proper look at Bexley in seven years, as she walked up to where the priest was waiting for her, wearing a smart black dress. In the time that’d passed, she’d moved from being a beautiful girl to being a stunning woman.

At five foot five inches, she’d probably reach my collarbone, but the heels she had on would bring her to my chin. She still had her dangerous curves and long dark hair, but the innocence I remembered that she worn so well had been replaced by maturity.

Right now, it was also replaced with devastation because we were burying her grandpa, but I reckoned without that, she’d bring a man to his knees, because he’d know immediately she was totally out of his reach.

“I never wanted to think of this day happening,” she began, her lower lip trembling slightly. “I never wanted to imagine a day when I didn’t have my hero here to lean on, to talk to, to laugh with…” she cleared her throat after the last word came out sounding so raspy I almost winced.

“My pops was the best man I’ve ever met. When I was a little kid, he told me life would pass me by in the blink of an eye, and that I needed to make the most of it because I never knew what it’d bring. Last Sunday, when I rang him to see how he was, I never expected for a second that he’d have a heart attack while I was on the phone to him, or that he’d hold on until I got to the hospital to hold his hand.” On the last word, all of her strength disappeared, and she had to grab the lintel to stop herself from falling.

I didn’t think about what I was doing, I just did it.

I jumped up and walked quickly over to her, putting my arm around her waist, and taking Bexley’s weight to give