Cocky Cowboy: A Second Chance Romance (Cocker Brothers of Atlanta Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

four cars have driven by since I got here.
    It’s a quiet street, but I scan it for anyone who might see me, feeling the old adrenaline charge into my blood like I’m a kid trying to get Rachel to sneak out to go to the park with me like I did about a hundred times.

    * * *
    “ J axson , there are snakes here!” she whispered, ten years old and cute as hell since her silver braces got put in. She was always hiding them, trying not to smile. It made making her show ‘em a game.
    “So you better stay close to me,” I whispered, pushing the low-hanging live oak branches out of the way so we could get through.
    I never liked to stay on the cut grass portion of the park near our home. The forest that framed it was a better adventure. Mostly because there really were snakes.
    But I wouldn’t tell her we were there because I hoped to catch one.
    She would never have come with me.
    “Oh, like you can save me from a snake,” she threw at my back as we trudged along.
    I proudly announced, “I could kill fifty pythons!”
    Her bright blue eyes rolled. “Yeah, right.” But she came with me anyway.
    For a good distance we wordlessly crunched through dead leaves and living ivy vines, avoiding Spanish moss and the skin-digging chiggers that hid inside them.
    She lucked out that night.
    I didn’t.
    Not one snake slithered by.
    I felt totally jipped.
    The thing was I wanted to impress her by catching one but since that wasn’t going to happen I decided to climb the winding, centuries old branches of an oak tree instead.
    “Come on!” I waved her up.
    Muttering loads of objections Rachel followed, grabbing knots in the wood to pull herself up with. I walked along the thickest, horizontal branch as though it were a balance beam. She was right behind me but way less confident, so she slipped. I grabbed her arm just in time to steady her. “Whoa now!” Her legs shook and we both lowered our bodies to straddle the branch, facing each other, legs swinging below.
    “I wasn’t really going to fall,” Rachel lied.
    “You were.”
    “I wasn’t.”
    “Yeah, you were.”
    “I wasn’t!!!” Her eyes flashed and I dropped it.
    For a whole second.
    “You were.”
    “Jaxson!”
    Laughing, I pulled off some bark and tossed it as far as I could as though I were skipping rocks on a docile stream. She started to do the same, but her fingers faltered. I glanced over and saw she was staring down at the tree, not happy.
    “I was just messing with you, Rachel,” I said, thinking she was mad at me.
    I secretly hated when she was mad at me, even though I needled her any chance I could get.
    With her eyes locked on the resistant piece of bark she listlessly told me, “We’re moving away, Jaxson.”
    I blinked and stared at her for a long moment. “Where?”
    “New York. My dad got a job there.”
    I pulled off a larger piece and there was a sinking in my stomach as I tossed it. “That’s far away.”
    Her eyes rose to meet mine. “Yeah.”
    She and I picked at the bark for a long time while cicadas chirped unseen in the darkness. I sat on that branch with Rachel Sawyer feeling like something bad was happening but there was nothing I could do about it.
    “We should go.”
    “Okay,” she unhappily whispered. Sniffling, she looked at me and asked, “Will you help me down, Jaxson?”
    She’d never asked for help before and it made her leaving feel real. “Sure,” I whispered, my mind on a future without Rachel.

Rachel
    I can’t stop fidgeting . Even reading a book on my Kindle didn’t calm me down. I couldn’t focus on the story and that never happens to me. Ever. Books are my escape. I lean into them with the relief of an athlete after a hard game when they soak their aching muscles and let the battle wash off their souls.
    But for me the battle is simply day-to-day life.
    Books can usually make all my troubles disappear, except when my boyfriend ends things, leaving me to sweep up the ashes while my parents watched. What a