“I’m done with the tour. I want to be home.” He stroked her hair, then whispered back the words he’d said to her eight years earlier. Words he said to her every time he returned from a trip. “You don’t know what it’s like to miss you, baby. No fucking idea.”
“I have some idea,” she said back, her chest swamped with bittersweet emotion. “Are you sure?”
“It’s the second most sure I’ve been about anything in my life. You are the first.” He pulled her into a bear hug. “I want to be home to love you more.”
She blinked back tears. “I’ll take all the love from you I can get.”
“Good. I’ve got a lot of it.”
“Me too.”
They stayed that way for a long time, Josephine sensing he needed the anchor.
“Retired at thirty-seven,” she said, finally, kissing his shoulder. “What are you going to do with so much time on your hands?”
“Coach Little League. Help out at the shop. Take the occasional commentating gig. Make love to my wife. Be her trophy husband.” He sighed into her hair. “Golf.”
They laughed their way into a kiss while he continued humming the rest of “California Girls” and they started to dance. And life stayed just like that.
Blissful.
Happy.
Together.
Forever.
Acknowledgments
I ramble through a lot of story ideas on social media, but they don’t always get made into a book. This is one of those rare
times a brainstorm kept me in a chokehold and every once in a while, a reader would message me, asking when I planned to write
the book about the grumpy pro golfer and his superfan who disappears. Thank you for the encouragement. In this case, it really pushed me to write Wells and Josephine’s story . . . and it turned out to
be an all-time favorite.
This book is dedicated to my daughter—and also anyone out there without a working pancreas. But it’s not a book about type 1 diabetes, in the same way people living with T1D are about so much more than the condition. This is a love story. With a side of insulin. Someday this will be the first book of mine that my kid
reads. Please, for the love of God, may she skip over the butt stuff.
Thank you to Nicole Fischer for editing this book with love and honesty—you’re going to be truly missed. Thank you to my husband
for answering my golf questions. And as always, thank you to my readers for being the best in the business.