“The bed and breakfast isn’t too far. Maybe ten minutes. We took a wrong turn.”
Pulling back onto the road, I headed in the direction she said to go.
“Okay, turn right here and it’s down this road.”
I made the turn and stared in awe at the mountains ahead of us. “Holy shit. It’s beautiful up here.”
“It is beautiful. I feel kind of guilty for leaving Jamie like I did.”
With a quick look over at her, she was chewing on her nails. “I have no idea what came over me and why I left like that.”
Reaching for her hand, I kissed the back of it. “It all worked out. Like you said, maybe it was fate that brought you and Carter together.”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
We both took in a breath of air and said, “Wow,” as I pulled up to Four Mile Creek Bed and Breakfast.
“This place is stunning,” Emylie said with a huge smile. Pointing to the large log cabin, she added, “There is the office over there.”
After parking, we walked in. The smell of pine engulfed me and I couldn’t help but remember the times I’d come up to Colorado to fish with my father and Mason. Those were some of my best memories with my father. For a brief moment, I thought about Carter and his dad. I really hoped everything worked out for them. I especially hoped his father beat his fight with cancer.
The door dinged when we walked in, bringing a woman who looked to be in her mid-forties to the desk.
“Hello! You must be Emylie and Holden. Carrie called ahead and said you’d be needing a place to stay. She wasn’t sure for how many nights though.”
Emylie and I exchanged looks. “Two at the most?” I asked. I couldn’t read Emylie at all. If I hadn’t known any better, I would say she seemed disappointed.
With a weak smile, she glanced back to the woman. “Two nights please.”
“I have a lovely room upstairs with a king size bed that I think you’ll love.”
Emylie rocked back and forth on her feet. Something she did when she was nervous. “Um, is the suite room open? The one with two bedrooms,” she asked in a soft voice.
Ouch. If that wasn’t making a clear statement, I don’t know what would.
The lady glanced between the two of us with a confused expression on her face.
“Are you not together? Well what I meant to ask is … oh my, never mind. I’m walking on a thin line of none-of-my-damn-business.”
All three of us laughed as I pulled out my credit card and handed it to her.
“Well, at any rate, you’re going to love the red barn suite. It’s located in the milk room and the tack room of our historic barn. Very romantic and … oh, and well I mean, if you’re looking for romance, but even if you’re not, you will like it.”
I stood there staring at her as she tripped over her words. Someone really needed to put this poor woman out of her misery.
Clearing my throat, I said, “Romance is exactly what we need. But a little space as well.”
I could feel the weight of Emylie’s stare on me. Not daring to chance a look at how she reacted to my comment, I took my card back, smiled, and headed back out to the car. “I’ll grab our bags,” I called out over my shoulder.
The sooner I got Emylie to the room, the sooner I could finally tell her everything and we could start over again. Something I prayed like hell she wanted to do.
MY HEAD SPUN chaotically as I listened to Holden tell me everything from the very beginning. I finally knew the truth as to why he stayed with her after she lost the baby.
“I thought she would kill herself she was so depressed.”
I couldn’t even bring myself to feel sorry for her.
“Becca and I came up with the plan to have her take the pregnancy test. When she took it and it came up negative, it was like someone switched something on inside of her because she started confessing to everything. Becca and Mason heard it all too. She confessed to drugging me that night, that the first baby wasn’t even mine, that she had been trying to get pregnant ever since she found out I wanted to leave and she told me she was pregnant.”
My stomach lurched. She lied about both babies and came up with a scheme so crazy insane she actually believed it would work. She ripped the one thing I loved from me because she was a psychotic bitch.
All I could do was listen and stare at him. Every now and then I would nod so he would know I wasn’t in total shock.
“I don’t know how I was so stupid, Em. How I let her manipulate me like she did. I’ve been going over everything in my mind. I hate myself for what I let her put you through.”
I sat on the sofa with a stunned expression. My mouth must have opened five times to speak, but nothing came out. Holden had laid a whole lot of shit on me, and I was attempting to process it all.
“She … she cut holes in the condoms?”
With a nod of his head, he whispered, “Yes. She was never pregnant, and if she couldn’t get pregnant, she was going to say she lost the baby.”
I pressed my fingers to my temple. “This is so crazy.”
All the lies.
The wasted time.
“I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to leave her. Tried to leave her.”
My head snapped up as I looked into his eyes. I fought to keep the bile down.
“She would somehow suck me back in. I hated every moment I was with her, Em.”
I felt as if I was being split in half. I was so relieved to know the truth. To know that Holden hadn’t cheated on me, really. That he had been tricked and that he wasn’t marrying that witch after all. The other side of me was still hurt that he didn’t trust in our relationship enough to tell me the truth in the first place. I wasn’t sure how I would have handled it, but I at least deserved the truth. Not some made-up version.
“I’m so sorry to dump it all on you like this, but I needed you to know everything. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would have done it so differently.”
Staring into his eyes, I mumbled, “But you can’t.”
He slowly shook his head. “No, baby, I can’t. All I can do is try to prove to you how much I love you and to earn your trust back.”
Finding everything out that had happened didn’t make the hurt any less. The fact was, Holden thought he had slept with another woman, then lied to me to cover it up. He broke me so badly I wasn’t sure I would ever really heal.
My body jumped when he took my hands in his. The feel of him touching me was almost too much to take. I wanted him to take me in his arms and tell me all of this was a bad dream. That none of it had happened.
“Em, your silence is scaring me. Please say something. Anything.”
My eyes stung as I fought to keep my tears back.
“I … I don’t know what to say to be honest. I’m glad she’s not pregnant and that you’re not marrying her. She’s evil times ten. But, the sting of everything else still hurts. You didn’t trust what we had enough to tell me the truth, Holden. Instead, you tore me in half.”
He shook his head. “I did it because I thought at the time it was the right thing to do. That’s why I never came back home, Em. For one, I was too much of a coward to face you knowing what I did. And the other, I knew the moment I saw you, I’d want you in my arms. Your lips on mine. What I thought was the right thing to do was the exact opposite. I will never be able to tell you how much I wish I could go back and change the fact that I didn’t come home that Thanksgiving. Or that I didn’t tell you what happened and let you make the decision about us. I’ve lived in hell with the bad choices I made.”
A tear slipped free and slowly made a trail down my cheek. Holden lifted his hand and gently wiped it away.
“I’ve never stopped loving you. I never will stop loving you. I can’t breathe if you’re not with me.”
The pain in my heart hurt even more. The fact was he had asked her to marry him. He was trying to give their relationship a go and he brought her home for me to see. “You seemed
to do fine before. You brought her home because you were marrying her. You worked at that relationship more than you gave ours a chance.”
His wore a pained expression. “No, Em. I brought her home because I knew I would never be able to marry her until I saw you. Told you the truth about everything. That day I wanted to meet you for lunch, I was going to tell you everything. I didn’t know the whole truth at the time, but what I did know, I was going to tell you. I wanted to ask you if there was any way you’d ever forgive me. If you said we had a chance, I was prepared to do whatever I had to do. The only true thing holding me to her was that I thought she was carrying my baby.”
My head was spinning. What was he saying?
“So wait. When you still thought she was pregnant, you wanted to know if we had a future? What were you going to do, Holden?”
“If I thought I had a chance with you … that you would forgive me … I was going to leave her. Figure out custody after the baby was born. I couldn’t marry her, Em. Deep down inside of me, I knew I would never marry her. Then, I found out about you and Mason and I was confused. I wasn’t sure if I should let you go so that you could move on with your life, or if I should tell you the truth and fight for our love.”
My stomach dropped and for some reason, guilt flowed through my veins. Holden’s eyes turned sad. “When I saw y’all together, I thought maybe the right thing to do would be to let you live out your life with him. I only had myself to blame for you being with Mason.”
“It was never like that with Mason. Ever.”
The corners of his mouth rose into a smile that had my insides shaking. God how I love his smile.
“I didn’t know that at first. The insane amount of anger and jealousy I felt was over the top. All those times I talked to Mason on the phone and he never once mentioned the two of y’all.”
“No one knew, really. We used each other to forget. It was that simple.”
Holden’s gaze fell as he looked at the ground. “I have no right to be angry, but I won’t lie to you and tell you I wasn’t angry. Because I was fucking furious.”
A small chuckle slipped from my lips. “Imagine how I felt seeing you with Daphne.”
Throwing his head back, Holden laughed. I loved the way the sound rumbled through my body. When his muscles flexed under his shirt, I sunk my teeth into my lip. I watched as his throat moved as he chuckled more. The memory of moving my lips over his skin hit me. They tingled as if I had actually just done it. The pulse between my legs grew and I had to press my thighs together in an attempt to ease it. I hadn’t felt like this since … since the last time Holden touched me.
When he lifted his gaze and caught mine, his breath hitched. He saw it. Surely he felt it. There was no way he couldn’t. The energy in the room instantly changed. My body came to life for the first time in months. Years. And it was because of this man.
The intensity of our gaze only grew stronger the longer we stared each other down. My heart pounded so loudly in my ears I barely heard anything else.
“Em,” he whispered before drawing away from me.
I reached out and grabbed his arm. The only thing I could do was look down at his mouth. I wanted it on mine. Needed it like the air I breathed.
He had been kneeling on the floor in front of me, trying to read into my response.
“I don’t know how this is going to go, Holden. You hurt me and my trust feels like it has been shattered.”
When his eyes glassed over, my heart squeezed in my chest. Could I do this? Would I be able to forgive Holden and start over?
I wanted to.
More than anything.
The nights I laid awake thinking about him. Dreaming for things to be different.
Well, things certainly were different now, and I had two choices. Walk away from the only man I’ve ever love, or mend the hurt between us.
“There isn’t a day that will go by where I won’t prove to you how sorry I am. How if I could take back what happened—”
My fingers pressed against his lips as I dropped to my knees.
Tears fell freely as I swallowed hard and shook my head. The fear in Holden’s eyes was evident. We needed to start the healing by being completely honest with each other.
“As much as I want you, I need to move slow. My heart has to heal, and I truly believe the only way for it to heal is with you … with your love. But I’m wounded, Holden. The scars are going to take time to heal.”
His hands cupped my face and I watched the man I love openly shed tears. It was more than my heart could take.
The way he searched my face before he pinned me with the intense stare. “I don’t deserve you, but I’m greedy.”
His lips pressed against mine. Rediscovering each other was going to be both amazing and gut wrenching. I truly believed that if we fell into bed right then, it would do more harm than good.
My hands gripped onto Holden’s forearms as we both moaned into each another’s mouths. The feel of his unshaven face against my skin was both painful and delicious.
Holden’s hand slid up into my hair as he gripped it, tugging slightly back, opening my mouth to him. The move turned me on as I struggled to maintain my control. When Holden bit down on my lip and deepened the kiss, I felt a little bit of my resolve slip. I had forgotten how much of a hold this man had over me. His kisses were like crack, and I was in desperate need of a fix.
My body shook as every emotion possible rushed through my veins. Love. Desire. Fear. Hurt. All of it swirled around pulling me deeper into him. When his other hand wrapped around my waist, drawing me flush against his body, I whimpered. The feel of his own need pushed into my stomach. I was two seconds from begging him to make love to me.
Then his lips were gone.
Our foreheads rested against each other and each breath was a labored chore. My chest rose and fell to the same rhythm as his.
“My God, I forgot how lost I get with you, Em,” Holden said between breaths.
With a smile, I wrapped my arms around his neck. His hands snaked around my waist, luring me as close as he could.
“I’ve missed you,” I whispered as I placed soft kisses over his face.
Drawing back, he gave me the same smile I fell in love with when I was five years old. I couldn’t help but return it. “I’ve missed you too.”
He lifted his hand and pushed a piece of my brown hair behind my ear. “Do you know what I think we should do?”
I tilted my head and lifted my brow as I asked, “What?”
“Go dancing. I miss having you in my arms.”
My heart fluttered at the idea. Dancing was something Holden and I were good at together. Well, one of a few things.
“That would be amazing fun!”
His hand rested on my cheek, and I leaned into it. “You should call Carter and see if he and Tori want to come.”
The excitement at the thought caused me to smile even bigger. “Really?”
“Yes! It sounds like you’re working hard at getting these two together, so why not give them another nudge.”
I kissed him quickly on the lips. “I love you!”
Standing, I went to turn and grab my phone when Holden reached for my hand. He stood and laced his fingers with mine. When his gaze caught my stare, I held my breath. The look on his face was serious.
“You have no idea how wonderful that sounds coming from you. I love you too.”
I turned away as I felt my cheeks burn. Not from embarrassment, but from desire. When I felt like I was strong enough to look back at him, I did. “I’ve never stopped loving you, Holden.”
“I’m going to work my ass off to gain your trust back, Em. I swear to you.”
Squeezing his hand, I nodded. I wanted to believe that everything was going to be okay, but deep down inside, I knew this was only the beginning of the battle.
EMYLIE AND I sat on the front porch of the bed and breakfast holding hands as we waited for Carter and Tori.
“So did he say h
ow the lunch went?”
Emylie chewed on her lip. “I think he was happy he got to spend some time with Tori, but he’s upset with me because I had a friend of mine refer him to a specialty doctor.”
My interest was piqued. “What kind of doctor?”
With a frown, she said, “Promise you won’t say anything to him?”
“Of course not.”
“Carter got sick with a virus when he was younger. He can’t have kids. That’s why Tori broke up with him. She got freaked out because she wanted kids.”
The ache in my chest for Carter was genuine. “Damn. What about adoption? They could always do that.”
Emylie nodded. “Carter hasn’t been tested since they originally told him he couldn’t have kids. There have been tons of cases where men who have thought they were sterile actually are not. Carter needs to be seen again.”
My mouth dropped slightly open. “And you’re pushing him to do this?”
She nodded.
“Wait. How in the hell do you even know this about him?”
The jealousy was quickly bubbling up to the surface. Pushing it away, I waited for her answer.
Wringing her hands together, she looked at me. “I was telling him about what happened with Daphne. It was Carter who planted it in my head that you were probably drugged and he even questioned her truth on being pregnant. When I asked him how he could take your side, he told me it had happened to him.”
“What? With who?”
With a shrug, Emylie answered, “Not sure. The girl drugged him and said she was pregnant. When Carter told her she couldn’t be pregnant with his baby because he couldn’t have kids, she confessed to making it all up and drugging him to sleep with him.”
My stomach clinched and I instantly felt sick. “What in the hell is wrong with some women?”
Emylie let out a long sigh. “I have no clue.”
Before I could say anything else, a truck pulled up and honked. “That’s Carter,” she said standing. My heart caught fire as we headed to the truck. She never once dropped my hand until she slid into the back seat of the truck.
“Hey guys!” Tori said spinning around and smiling at us. She wiggled her eyebrows and Emylie gave a slight smile in return. “Are you ready to try and keep up with Carter and me on the dance floor?” She looked at Carter who beamed back at her. “It’s been a few years, but I’m sure we haven’t lost our touch.