The Newcomer (Thunder Point) Read Online Free PDF

little right now. I can’t get home every weekend during baseball—I’m playing every game. It’s not like football where I’m the junior player and mostly warm the bench. I’m starting. In fact, the baseball coach will probably make me quit football—we can’t start the season with injuries. We should use this time to...you know...branch out. Date around, maybe.”
    “And summer? What about summer?” she asked. “You just plan to get back together again in summer?”
    “I don’t know. I’m thinking about staying up here. Taking some classes, getting a job...I’ll play ball all summer if we make finals and it’s too far to commute. Then football camp is in August. If I’m still playing football then.”
    She sobbed so hard all the way back to Thunder Point she could hardly breathe. She had to pull over once because her chest started hurting. She knew her mother was going to be furious that she’d taken the Jeep but she didn’t care. There were moments on the drive home that she wondered if life wouldn’t be easier if she just went off the road at one of the high-cliff curves, but something kept her going.
    When she was alone in her room, she called Eve’s cell phone. She could barely tell her story, the sobs came so hard. And Eve was outraged. “Want me to call him, Ash? Give him a piece of my mind?”
    “It won’t matter—it wouldn’t help. He dumped me for a college girl. And she’s beautiful, Eve. She owns him. You could tell in one second!”
    “He’s slime. He’s scum. I will never forgive him for this!”
    “But...what do I do without him?” Ashley had cried.
    After they hung up, Ashley just cried for another hour. There was a light knocking on her door and she knew it was her mother. She didn’t answer or say “come in.” She laid there, her head on her pillow, leaking tears, gripping her cell phone in case Downy called her to say he’d made a terrible mistake.
    Gina came into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “I brought you some tea,” she said, her hand on Ashley’s back.
    “No, thank you,” Ashley said thickly.
    “Ash, I’m sorry this happened.”
    “Really, I can’t talk about it anymore.”
    “Just a little, please? So I can understand where you are right now? Emotionally.”
    Ash rolled onto her back, her wet eyes red and swollen. “He has another girl. A beautiful, snotty college girl who he’s screwing because he says it’s not that big a deal. And right now I just don’t want to even live.”
    “Ashley, please, don’t say that. Don’t ever say that.”
    “I’m not going to school tomorrow. Maybe not the next day, either. Maybe never.”

Three
     
    C ooper noticed Sarah had been preoccupied over the past couple of days. Quiet and maybe a bit sullen. She said the inspection was going to be hell and while she might not be worried about her team, a strong leader always worried about the inspectors. They had to be ready for anything.
    All Cooper could do was be available, support her in any way he could. He found himself fighting the worry that Sarah had changed her mind, that something had caused her to reconsider those three little words. I love you. Yet when he possessed her, when she was joined to him, her passion for him drove worry from his mind. During those times she was one hundred percent his and he was completely hers.
    In the meantime, he had a business to learn. This beach bar was unlike anything he had ever done before. Ben’s old helper, Rawley Goode, old being the operative word, might be a little on the strange side, but he had turned out to be a damned good assistant. Rawley was somewhere in his sixties and he’d been ridden hard. Rawley told Cooper that Ben used to only be open in the mornings and evenings. Ben had put in his longest days during summer, and he bumped up the schedule with the help of part-time teenage help. Rawley said, “I clean and get supplies. I can work in the kitchen or behind the bar, but I ain’t social.