Fall by Winter - Cara Dee Page 0,3

each room. The living room had two units I’d already filled with books, pictures, and knickknacks.

Aurora picked up one of her old dolls and combed down its hair with her fingers. “Brady says he’s never having kids.”

“Well. Your brother can be full of shit sometimes.” I took a swig from my water bottle and nodded at the doll. “You should save that one. Remember what you named her?”

She grinned wryly and set it aside behind her. “Trixie. Dad hated it and asked if she was a stripper.”

I chuckled, remembering it. In William’s defense, Aurora had been eight at the time. He hadn’t thought she would know what a stripper was.

Oh, this was making me nostalgic. Every damn toy came with a memory, and it saddened me that those days were over.

I pouted to myself and picked up a slingshot that must’ve ended up in the wrong box. It used to be Brady’s.

My two beautiful children. Brady was looking more and more like his father with each year that passed. Same dark hair and kind, slate eyes. Same features, though where William was tall and bordering on lanky, Brady was a few inches shorter and carried more bulk. Aurora took after me more, but she had William’s eyes.

I could still see the kids stumbling around in diapers.

I blew out a breath and told myself not to get emotional.

This weekend when Brady came home for a visit, I’d treat him like the adult he was. William had reminded me that I spoiled him too much, so instead of helping him decorate the tiny studio above the garage, I was going to give him a budget. He was twenty years old. He could paint and buy his own furniture. Or so William kept insisting.

“Mom, you’re all sad again.” Aurora sent me a troubled look.

I mustered a smile and shook my head. “Not at all. I promise. It’s just bittersweet that I’ll never go through this again. My mommy days are gone.”

It made me feel a bit lost, if I was completely honest with myself.

Two

“Oh, I love this.” Sharon flicked my ponytail when we met up outside the gym the following evening. “Perfect color for you, hon.”

“Thank you.” I beamed and opened the door. “You’re sort of the first one to notice without my pointing it out.”

Aurora was as selectively observant as her father. They could pick up the slightest shift in someone’s mood, but if someone painted the world purple, they’d be none the wiser. She’d said she liked it once I’d mentioned it, though.

Sharon could commiserate. She had a husband and three sons. If she wanted her family to notice something new, she had to draw a map.

After getting changed in the basement area, we headed upstairs again and joined another fifteen or so men and women who’d signed up for tonight’s spin class. And Sharon wasn’t the only one who silently cheered when we saw who the session’s instructor was. Ethan Quinn. He owned the fitness center and only led very few group workouts, presumably when he needed an ego boost of everyone fawning over him.

I could admit, he was charming as hell. When he spoke to someone, he gave them all his attention.

But, too polished for me. He was also an obvious attention whore. If he’d been younger, I wouldn’t have cared. Brady was going through a phase like that at the moment. He wanted validation and attention. William and I were working on it.

Ethan was my age, and I’d never be able to relax around someone who constantly needed an audience to shower him with compliments. I had seen the man’s Instagram. He had many, many abs. I mean posts. Many, many posts. Of his abs.

“Imagine being married to that,” I muttered, finding a bike somewhere in the middle. “He’d wake you up at six every morning with a shot of some ginger-beetroot-kale-vitamin boost.”

“Right?” Sharon tossed her towel over her handlebar. “When all we really need is just a shot of the D.”

I let out a laugh—and shit. Sorry. I hadn’t meant for it to be so loud. Everyone looked over at us.

I cleared my throat and avoided Ethan’s quirked brow.

I had a meeting in Seattle on Thursday, meaning I had a boring-as-hell two-hour commute on the way home. So I called a bunch of people to get that over with, checking in with my parents first, then deciding on dinner with Aurora before I made Friday night plans with Sharon. I was maybe twenty minutes away from home