Random Acts of Love (Random #5) Read Online Free PDF Page A

covers to find my inner equilibrium. Trevor’s heart thumped hard and steady in his chest, my breathing soon matching it as if I were made for him.
    “You sore?” he asked as I cuddled against his chest. 
    Shaking my head, my hair ground into his pecs, making a husking sound. “Not really. Probably in half an hour.” His low chuckle made me settle in and take a deep breath. The scent of our sex was like a fresh morning breeze.
    It was missing a third note, the aroma of Joe and his intensity, dark and alluring. I could have sex with Trevor any time. How ironic that here I was, cuddled in Trevor’s arms while Joe was...gone. Off with Mommy.
    Stop it , I chided myself, knowing that the negativity had to stop. A woman I’d never met (when would we meet? Ah, that one plagued me on long, dark nights alone...) controlled so much of my inner life, my state of being pulled to and fro by puppet strings attached to Joe. I wasn’t in the habit of being someone’s marionette, and I didn’t much like not being able to confront my master by proxy.
    Some day.
    Some fucking day.
    The elusive Mrs. Ross would get an earful, and that’s exactly why Joe didn’t want us to meet. I took that thought in and chewed it around a bit, knowing it was bullshit. Joe didn’t hold back from introducing us because he thought I would explode on his mom.
    I knew better.

C HAPTER 2
    Darla
    The phone call came out of nowhere two days later.
    I mean nowhere . It was like being hit in the head by a chunk of concrete some asshole kids threw off an overpass at your car because they were bored and had nothing better to do than to huff glue they bought on sale at Home Depot and do stupid shit like endanger other people.
    My phone buzzed in my back pocket like it did any other time I got a call. There really ought to be a special ring tone for life-altering events, you know? Like a Darth Vader ring tone. Or something ominous. A voice that says, “YOU DON’T WANT TO ANSWER THAT, DUMBSHIT!”
    But no. I hit “Talk” like any other normal phone call and, naive and completely clueless, I said, “Hi Mama.”
    She was breathless. “Darla! Darla, I—”
    “Hang up, Mama,” I said in a low, calm voice.
    “What? Why on earth? We just started talking.” Her voice was choked and straining.
    “Because I’ll call 911 for you, and the ambulance will come,” I said in a soothing voice. She’d caught me at my apartment and no one was here. No landline, either. Fuckall if a plastic phone with a cord wouldn’t come in handy now, but I couldn’t worry about that. I needed to hang up on my Mama and be terrified as I called 911 in Ohio and get her some help for her obviously fatal distress.
    Fucking now .
    “You sound like you’re having a heart attack,” I added. “Get off the God-damned phone, Mama, so I can call.” Anger and outrage and pure, blinding fear built up in me like a giant zit ready to go Vesuvius on me.
    “Are you out of your God-damned fucking mind, Darla Jo Jennings?” My mother’s voice shifted in that moment from sounding like she was in deep distress to sounding like I was in deep shit.
    “What?” All these hormones and adrenaline coursed through me like soldiers getting the wrong orders. “What, Mama? I—”
    “I call you to deliver the happiest news of my life in twenty fucking years and you cut me off and threaten to hang up on me so you can call me an ambulance, like I’m sick and not delivering the news to my one and only beloved daughter—who, by the way, abandoned me nearly two years ago—that I’m getting married and all you can do is act like I’m some feeble-bodied soul sucker who needs to be carted off to the...” 
    Mama’s voice washed over me like a blanket of confusion, warm and wet and a little bit like a teen boy jizzing for the first time. It felt good and mystifying, yet shameful and a little sticky.
    “MAMA!” I called into my glass-covered case of buzzing misery. “What the fuck are you blathering