Forever Starts Tonight (Wilder Family #4)

Jax

Twenty-five years ago

My mom’s favorite flowers were red roses, but by the time I walked to the grocery store—the money I’d been saving from chores for the past two months wadded up in the pocket of my jeans—they were gone. It was my own fault, really. I waited until Valentine’s Day to get them, and by the time I got out of school and waited for her to fall asleep while she watched General Hospital, all that was left at the store was an almost empty black bucket with a sad looking bunch of daisies drooping in the corner. The crinkly paper around them was bright pink, and I tried bunching them together as I walked home, to see if it made them look a little bit nicer.

It didn’t. I found a big box of chocolates though, and threw that in my shopping basket, and then wandered down the next aisle and checked the prices on a new basketball because mine had gone flat. I was careful not to squish the flowers with the ball, because they were already small enough as it is.