Reclaim: A Standalone Friends-to-Lovers Romance by Aly Martinez

Author:Aly Martinez [Martinez, Aly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: novel
Publisher: Aly Martinez
Published: 2020-11-11T16:00:00+00:00

“Thank you for coming,” I said, hugging a random old lady for the billionth time that day. My mom stood beside me, looking every bit the part of the devastated widow despite the fact that my parents hadn’t shared a bedroom in almost five years.

“He was such a good man,” old lady number twelve hundred and seventy-eight said, giving my hand a squeeze.

I nodded and forced a tight smile.

A few days earlier, my dad had dropped dead of a heart attack in my parents’ driveway while climbing in his truck to go to work. It was truly shocking. I hadn’t known that my dad had a heart until that day.

It was weird thinking how I’d never be the butt of one of his jokes again—a relief but still weird.

Old lady number twelve hundred and seventy-nine stepped up. “He’d be so proud of you.”

Yeah, right. When I was a kid, I’d always assumed when I got older and bigger—maybe more coordinated—he’d be proud of me. In my twenty-two years, that day never came.

My cousin Jonathan scoffed. “He probably died to avoid being embarrassed anymore.”

Now, it should be noted that Jonathan wasn’t a prepubescent kid who had spent the last decade trapped in time. In fact, he’d grown up quite a bit. Jonathan Caskey was a twenty-six-year-old police officer in Clovert now. In a true show of how fucked up that side of my family was, he’d carried a framed picture of Josh with him the day he’d graduated from the police academy. At least that was what I had been told.

There was no fucking chance I attended that shit show.

Yet there he sat, at my father’s funeral, insulting me from the second pew. I scratched the side of my head with my middle finger, hopefully hiding it from old lady twelve hundred and eighty as the line of condolences continued.

The end was near on this circus. Since my father had been cremated, there was no graveside service to attend. Before I headed back to New York, Mom and I were planning to scatter his ashes near the overlook behind his precious papermill.

Nothing like dying and going right back to work, I guess.

The church was almost empty. Even our family had started to thin out, no doubt heading back to our house to eat the mountain of food people had delivered. Seemingly bored with my lack of a reaction, Jonathan got up and walked out too.

Right.

Past.

Her.

My back shot straight, and a smile I had no business wearing at a funeral spread across my lips.

Black dress. Black heels. Scarf wrapped around her head and huge shades covering half her face. It didn’t matter if I hadn’t seen her in three years—it could have been decades. I recognized her immediately. Part of that had to do with the hum in my bones which had always accompanied her presence, as if my body was a flesh-and-blood Nora Stewart detector.

“Would you excuse me for a moment?” I mumbled to little old lady twelve hundred and eighty-one before quickly ducking out the side door.

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