Free Prescription For Love (The Kingsley Series) by Brandi Kennedy Page B

feel like he'd replaced me? I don't know."
     
    "You can't know," Mac said, his voice gruff. "You can't know until you've been there. But she wouldn't have wanted me to suffer. She was a hopeless romantic, in love with love. She wouldn't have wanted me to stay alone forever, and she'd have wanted someone to be here for our son. She told me once, before it was all over, that she wanted me to find someone new someday, to look after me," he laughed.
     
    "That's kind of her," Cameron said, nodding, her fingers tangled in the fabric of her quilt, a tear slipping down her cheek. "She was really sweet to release you in that way. Did she suffer greatly, Mac?"
     
    "Nah," he said, clearing his throat. "It was all very fast. She had a lot of headaches, and they got worse and worse, until nothing helped. She finally got irritated enough to see a doctor because the headaches affected her daily life in a lot of ways. Within a few weeks of her diagnosis, she was gone." His voice broke toward the end of his story, and Cameron's heart broke with it, cracking open with the sound of his pain.
     
    "Oh, Mac. That's so fast," she whispered, unable to find full volume.
     
    "It was, but it was merciful. She didn't have time to suffer a lot, and I think honestly, it was fear and her own grief that took her from us. She was so afraid and so guilty of leaving Logan, leaving me. I've often wondered if she wouldn't have had more time, if not for the way she felt about everything."
     
    "And how did Logan take it all?"
     
    "I can't believe I'm saying all this," Mac laughed, sniffling. "I hardly know you, and I'm telling you about the lowest moments of my life."
     
    "I don't mind. I'm not a one-night-stander, remember?" Cameron laughed back. "And if we're going to go on that second date, or any other dates, eventually we're going to have to talk about more than our favorite movies, anyway. Maybe it's good to cover all the heavy stuff from the beginning."
     
    "Your turn's coming, then, because I want that second date," he said. "I have to go for now, I need to get Logan from school. But I'll call you later to set something up, and I'll expect you to tell me something big one day soon. You owe me now."
     
    "Oh, is that so?" she teased, hoping he wouldn’t call in her debt anytime soon. "Well, I'll tell you what, daddy man. You go pick up your boy from school, and have a good time with him today. And I'll try my hardest to experience something major that I can tell you about."
     
    Because it'll have to be something new, she thought. I sure as hell can't tell you anything big from the past.
     
    ***
     
    "Dinner was really great, huh?" Mac said, reaching for Cameron's hand. His breath formed a soft cloud in front of his face, instantly dissipating in the crisp evening breeze.
     
    "It really was," Cameron answered. She kept her eyes focused on her feet, trying not to let her nerves get the best of her. Each time he came close to her, her past rose up in front of her like a screaming demon, and she had to squash it down, struggling to look through her fears and find the gently rugged face of the man in her present.
     
    She watched the toes of her boots peek out from under the hems of her jeans as she continued to move one foot in front of the other, allowing the quiet to grow between them. The spaces between her fingers burned with the presence of Mac's fingers, laced with hers as if they were made to fit together. It was an awkward feeling for her, the feeling of safety and certainty in the presence of a man who was not her family. She hadn't felt that in just under a decade.
     
    As they walked, Mac swung their hands gently between them, the thud of his boots on the pavement masking the slighter sound of her own footsteps, the low click of her heels. Clearing his throat nervously, he stopped, drawing her close to him at the railing and releasing her hand to drape an arm gently around her shoulders. Standing together, they watched the flow of the