Falling Fast (Falling Fast #1) - Tina Wainscott Page 0,20

beyond her. “You should.”

She reached for his hand, pulling it between her own. It was bigger than she remembered, bearing a recently healed cut on one finger. “Most young people don’t think about dying, even when they’re doing something dangerous. It always happens to someone else. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. I did think about dying, had been thinking about it every day for years. For the first time, with you, I was living. That’s what you gave me.”

His fingers curled around hers, agony in his eyes. “Mia…”

That one word filled her with an emotion that she couldn’t identify. She knew only that it rushed into her soul and clenched her heart.

“Guess what!”

A voice drew their attention to the open bay, where a brown-haired boy in faded plaid shorts and a tank top jumped off his bike and dropped it in one fluid motion. His bare feet slapped across the concrete as he ran over.

“Hey, buddy. What are you doing out on your bike so late?”

“Mom wanted me to pick up gum at the store. She’s trying to quit again, you know.” The boy’s eyes shifted to Mia, then back. “She says thank you for the money.” Then he focused on Mia. “Who are you?”

“Manners, Cody,” Raleigh muttered, shaking his head. “This is Mia, Nancy’s granddaughter.”

“Oh. She was nice.” His smile faded, and he flicked his gaze to Raleigh and recited, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Mia accepted the condolence with a nod, wondering who this boy was. He bore a stark resemblance to Raleigh, with his vivid blue eyes, light-brown hair with more than a touch of red, even his general facial structure—the wide cheekbones and the square chin. Could he be…Raleigh’s son? She tried to do a quick calculation as the boy rambled on about using his eight-weight fly rod with a minnow and catching a bonito at the beach. Mia studied his gestures and his inflections, so much like Raleigh’s. The boy could be ten, which would mean that Raleigh was sixteen when he was born. Unlikely, but possible.

She didn’t know much about Raleigh’s sexual past, other than that he’d obviously had one, because he knew what to do. Very well. With the dirty looks the girls at the races had shot her, Mia suspected they had been part of it.

Raleigh scrubbed the kid’s mussed hair. “Get on home, okay? And wear shoes when you’re riding that bike. A stump almost took off my toe when I was riding barefoot at your age.”

Cody’s mouth twisted in derision. “My shoes are too small, and my toe sticks out of a hole. Looks stupid.”

“Keep riding barefoot and you won’t have to worry about that anymore. That’s what some of that money’s for—new shoes. Go shopping with your mom, and don’t give her any grief, hear?”

“ ‘Kay.” He bobbed his head, respect and adoration on his face. “See ya later.” He raced over to the bike, then threw back a “Nice to meet you, ma’am!”

“Good job,” Raleigh said, a proud smile on his face as he watched the boy hop on his bike.

“See, I listened to ya!” He rolled his eyes and mimicked, “Manners, manners, manners.”

Raleigh chuckled as he watched the kid disappear around the bend. When he looked at her, his smile also disappeared. “What?”

“Is that…your son?” Though Mia’s face didn’t blush on the scarred side, she could feel the heat of embarrassment sear the normal skin on her left side. “Sorry. That was rude. Talk about manners. It’s just that he looks a lot like you.”

He chuckled, thank goodness. “No worries. He’s my half brother.”

Hopefully, he couldn’t see the relief on her face. “Oh. I don’t remember seeing him back when we were—”

“Dating?” he finished.

“Is that what you considered it?”

“Sure. We weren’t seeing anyone else. We saw a lot of each other. And we were…” This time he let the sentence drift off.

Making love. “I considered it dating, but I wasn’t sure if you did.” She glanced toward the open bay, anxious to move the subject back to Cody. “Anyway, I’ve never seen him before.”

“He was only four when you and I met. My dad got his mother, Rose, pregnant and actually married her. But then he went back to his useless ways, drinking, carousing. Disappearing for supposed jobs out of town for weeks at a time and coming back with excuses instead of money. So I got more involved in their lives. A year ago, he bailed altogether. Nobody’s seen or heard squat from him since. Even on