Cold Foot Komodo (Wreck’s Mountains Book 2)

He liked her.

Reed rubbed his jaw and glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror. He wore a big dumb smile, and he didn’t even care if the car that pulled up next to him saw him grinning at nothing.

The red light was a long one. He pulled up his phone, looked at her texts, and laughed again. She was funny, and light, and playful, and all the things he hadn’t been for so long. He’d felt so heavy for years, but when he was around her, or talking to her, or thinking about her, everything inside of him loosened up.

He was set to clear the roads for a shopping center near the hospital and was waiting to turn left.

The phone rang again, but it wasn’t his boss this time. An unknown number came up on the ID on the screen of his truck. Probably one of his road crew. He didn’t have all their numbers yet.

“Hello?” he answered.

Silence.

“Hello?” he asked again.

“You really escaped Cold Foot.”

The familiar woman’s voice dropped his heart right to the floorboard of his pickup. He hadn’t heard that voice in a decade. The breath froze in his lungs.

“Why didn’t you call me?” Farrah asked.

Shock turned to anger in an instant. “Are you serious?” Reed gritted out.

“Of course I am. I missed you.”

Honk! The car behind him blasted his horn, and Reed pulled out of a dozen flashbacks of his old life to see the light had turned green.

His foot was heavy on the gas, and his wheels spun out. He had to ease off and try again. He caught traction and turned through the now-yellow light, and pulled over into the shopping center immediately, skidding the last few yards.

“I’m hanging up—”

“Wait,” Farrah pleaded, and she did it in that damn soft voice that she’d wrecked him with.

“How did you get this number? I don’t give it out.”

“Oh, you’ve given it out, haven’t you? Recently? To a pretty girl in your new Bank, perhaps?”

How did she know? How did she know about Sasha? How did she know any of this? “Who is talking to you about me?”

“Oh, did you think your new Bank understands loyalty?” She laughed.

“It’s a Crew, not a Bank. I don’t hang with Komodos anymore. They’re all fuckin’ traitors. I have nothing to say to you—”

“Reed—”

“No!” he yelled. “No to whatever manipulative bullshit you have to say. You missed me? Really, Farrah? The best thing that ever happened to me was going to Cold Foot because you couldn’t reach me there.”

“You’re not in Cold Foot anymore.” There it was. There was the grit to her voice. There was a hint of the real her. She lowered her tone. “And I could always reach you. You’re mine, Reed. Always were. Always will be. Lose the bitch.”

“You moved on. Now it’s my turn,” he gritted out.

“I forgive you!” Farrah yelled. “I just wanted to tell you that.” She dragged in a shaking breath. “I forgive you.”

He’d never heard anything so ridiculous in all of his life.

She forgave him? She forgave him? Really?

“I don’t need your forgiveness. I need you to leave me alone.”

“You need to lose the bitch,” she ground out in that gritty tone that made him cringe. “For your son’s sake.”

The line went dead, and so did Reed. That’s what it felt like. It felt like a death. Drained of the hope and the life he’d felt this morning before he’d heard Farrah’s voice, he sat here frozen, gripping the steering wheel, staring at a snow-covered parking lot and repeating her words over and over in his reeling mind.

For your son’s sake.

For your son’s sake.

For your son’s sake.

What son?