Bookstore Barbie (Magnolia Ridge #1) - Alexa Riley Page 0,45

clearly. She’d been a surprise for Chief and his wife later in life, and it was a difficult pregnancy. Kayla was born six weeks premature and her mom died in labor. It rocked the whole town and later when Ben passed I thought about how unfair life was.

After my mom and dad died, Chief took me in and treated me like his second son, and I loved Kayla like a sister. Ben and I were inseparable and we made our own version of a family. We always made what we could out of the broken pieces we were given, and although it was hard, I never felt alone.

I enlisted in the Marines and stayed there for nearly thirteen years. I came home after basic training for a few weeks and then I was called out for a deployment. That happened a few times, where I’d be home for a short stint and then have to turn back around for a year or more at a time. Each time I came home, things changed. Mostly Kayla changed. She went from a five-year-old that begged me to play dolls with her to a moody pre-teen that rolled her eyes at everything I had to say almost overnight. But during one of my last trips home, right before her eighteenth birthday, something shifted.

I knew that the next deployment I had would be my longest one yet and I made sure I was home for Christmas. That was always her favorite time of year and we had traditions. I knew she would kill me if we didn't stick to them. She’d long ago stopped believing in Santa, but we still stayed up late baking cookies on Christmas Eve, just the two of us. Chief always threw a party for his guys at the station and they invited most of the town. But after everyone left and the chief went to bed, we had our cookie tradition.

I remember seeing it snowing outside, and when I pointed it out, Kayla nearly came out of her skin with excitement. She pulled me outside and we had a snowball fight in the front yard in the middle of the night. At one point, I nailed her in the back and she started to fall. I ran over and caught her, but she ended up taking both of us down and we fell into the snow laughing.

I rolled her over so I was on top, and when I looked down at her I saw she’d become more than just a little sister who made me sing Disney songs in the car on full blast. I saw a woman below me that I loved more than my own life and everything changed. What I wanted to do out there in the snow would have broken everything we’d built and change our little family forever.

I left the next morning without even saying goodbye because I couldn’t look her or Chief in the eye. I didn’t even bother to open my Christmas presents and took the coward’s way out. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I would have been more ashamed if I’d stayed.

That’s when the letters began.

Kayla had always sent me a few letters and care packages when I was on deployment, but never this many and never writing so many things I shouldn’t have read. Things I couldn’t stop reading.

I’ve been gone from home for a long time and I’ve finally ended my service. My plan before this all started was to come back and then figure out where in the world I wanted to go. I dreamed about living in another country for a few years or just traveling until I found the place I loved most. But the longer I pictured what my life would be like, the more I couldn’t picture it without her.

She’s too damn young to know what she wants and she doesn’t deserve an old man like me holding her back. Her father is a damn good man and someone I consider a father and mentor. There isn’t anything I would do to break his trust, but my head and my heart are at war. I may not be the thing that’s best for her, but I know I won’t let anyone else try and do better.

“Hey, Joe, you back in town?” Amelia from the diner calls as I walk by the storefront.

“Yep, trying to find Kayla. You seen her?” I shove my hands in my jeans as she smiles at me.

“I might