Free Second Hearts (The Wishes Series) by GJ Walker-Smith Page A

going to happen.
    “Miss, Charli,” greeted Marvin, tipping his hat.
    “Hi, Marv.” I smiled because Marvin deserved the best from me. “How are you?”
    “Fine and dandy. Thank you for asking.”
    “Marv, can I ask you a question?”
    “Of course.”
    “Do you ever run, when you really should stay?”
    “I’m sixty-three years old, child. I’m too old to run. Are you on the run, Miss Charli?” he asked, pulling the door open for me. His smile voided the serious tone in his voice.
    “Only from myself, Marv,” I replied, stepping through the door.
    If Marvin was worried that I was on the run from someone, he should have been vetting my visitors better. I’d only been home a short while when there was a loud, frantic knock at my door. No one had ever knocked on my door before.
    As absurd as it sounds, I wasn’t expecting to see him standing there when I opened it. Adam looked like he’d had a bad shock and was trying to recover. “Flee-itis, Charlotte?” He didn’t say it jokingly. His tone was deadly serious.
    “How did you know I was here?”
    “It’s not rocket science,” he replied. “Gabrielle’s apartment was the first place I thought of.” His hands flew up in a stay-put-and-shut-up-for-a-minute motion. “Don’t speak. Just hear me out.” I braced myself, waiting to be told to get out of town and leave him and dim Whit in peace.
    “It took me a long time to learn how to live without you, but I did it. Life goes on, right?” He didn’t pause to let me answer. “You promised that you’d become nothing more than a girl I used to know.”
    The reminder crushed me. At the time I would have told him just about anything to make him leave. Barely a word out of my mouth that day had been truthful. And the fact that he was reminding me of it showed that of everything we’d shared, the ending is what he remembered most.
    “Forgetting you was never going to happen. There’s just no getting around it – or over it, apparently. That’s why I’m here, right? You ran and I chased you.” He sounded annoyed with himself, as if following me home proved a lack of willpower on his part.
    “Adam, I don’t know why you’re here,” I mumbled.
    He grimaced, clearly conflicted. “There’s so much I want to tell you. The problem is, I have two different conversations playing out in my head.”
    “Pick one.”
    “Would you prefer the heart wrenching tale of misery or the speech packed with magic and romance?”
    I shrugged. “You know me, Adam. I’ll take magic over misery any day.”
    He drew in a breath but didn’t seem to exhale, making his words come out in a rush. “I want to tell you that if you let me through the door, there’s a fair chance I’m never going to let you go again.”
    They were words I’d longed to hear, but it was somehow wrong. His pained expression soured everything he’d said. It was as if I’d put an invisible gun to his head and made him confess to his deepest, darkest secret.
    “Tell me the miserable part.” Hearing it would be nothing more than a formality. Misery had a name. Whitney.
    “I’m a realist, Charli.” The small smile he gave was nowhere near as bright as I remembered it being. Ryan was right. There was an emptiness about him. “I wouldn’t cope if I had to endure an ending all over again. The pieces would be too small to pick up a second time.”
    Dim Whit hadn’t rated a mention. That would have thrilled me if he weren’t shutting down my fairy-tale ending in the same speech.
    “So where do we go from here?” I asked, trying to hold myself together.
    He smiled again, more genuinely this time. I held my breath, awaiting his answer but the elevator doors opened, silencing him instantly.
    My neighbour, Oliver, stepped out into the tiny foyer we shared, cradling his little white dog like a baby. The spoiled rotten Maltese terrier – aptly named Fluffin – didn’t protest.
    Adam turned around and politely said hello.
    Oliver shamelessly