These Three Words

by Holly Jacobs

  Praise for Holly Jacobs

  Just One Thing

  “Just One Thing is an emotionally compelling page-turner. I could not put it down.”

  —JoAnn Ross, New York Times bestselling author

  “This poignant story about new discoveries, hope, and love is truly unforgettable.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  Carry Her Heart

  “An unforgettable story of unconditional love.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Carry Her Heart is a beautiful story of love and friendship. And, Holly Jacobs’ message of love is strong and touching.”

  —Lesa’s Book Critiques

  ALSO BY HOLLY JACOBS

  Just One Thing

  Christmas in Cupid Falls

  Carry Her Heart

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 Holly Jacobs

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503949676

  ISBN-10: 1503949672

  Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

  To Jake: This one’s for you!

  Contents

  Start Reading

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Sometimes the deepest love isn’t discovered . . . it’s rediscovered.

  Chapter One

  Gray held my hand as we walked along the water’s edge.

  The sun slid toward the horizon, trailing a brilliant pink ripple after it, like the tail on a kite. Gray didn’t say anything, but a light smile played on his lips as we walked. That was enough to let me know he was happy.

  So was I.

  As the sun finally perched on the water’s edge, we stopped. We stood in ankle-deep water on small, round pebbles, and his arm settled lightly on my shoulders as I leaned against him. A few gulls flew overhead, crying their evening lament as water lapping against the shore provided a harmony.

  I thought I heard Gray whisper my name. “Addie.” I turned and I saw . . .

  I opened my eyes and looked out at the peninsula across the bay.

  The beach from my memory was just across the small spit of land that extended out into Lake Erie, creating this sheltered bay.

  The moment felt more like a dream than a true memory.

  So did my feelings for Gray.

  I must have loved him once.

  A rational part of me knew as much, and sometimes I thought I felt the whisper of that long-ago feeling. I’d grab for it, but it always slipped through my fingers.

  I couldn’t hold on to it, try as I might.

  I kept seeing that moment when I’d needed him most and he’d turned away from me.

  It’s for the best, he’d said.

  I couldn’t seem to move past that moment, nor could I look back before it.

  I knew that wasn’t fair, but that one moment obscured all the others—the happier ones I knew we’d once had. I knew they were there. Sometimes, like today, I’d capture a glimpse of them, and I could almost believe I could get my old feelings for him back, but in the end, the feelings eluded me.

  I could remember them but only in the most academic sense. It was akin to knowing there are moons around Pluto. We can’t see them with our naked eyes, but we know they’re there. It was like that for me. I knew we’d been happy once, but I couldn’t quite believe that we could get back to the way we used to be.

  And I certainly couldn’t bridge the ever-widening gulf between us.

  To be honest, I’d given up trying.

  Sometimes, I almost ached with a need to reconnect with Gray. To find a way to touch him. Not physically, but a way to shake him and make him remember the way we used to be.

  If he remembered, maybe he could remind me.

  I just knew that this wasn’t it.

  The half life we’d been living wasn’t how we began, and I knew that we couldn’t go on this way. The pain of knowing what we once were and what we’d now become was too profound. Each day I died a little under the weight of it.

  The knowledge sat heavily on me, threatening to bury me under its enormity.

  I should have felt happier now, or at least felt relief that I was doing something proactive.

  I fingered the crisp manila envelope on the table, but I didn’t pick it up.

  I let it sit there, and leaned back in my chair. It needed to be done. After months of inertia, I was pushing us forward.

  Yes, at the very least looking toward the future should have given me relief from the constant weight of where Gray and I had found ourselves.

  Instead, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I could have done more.

  That I should have done more.

  I sat on the small second-floor deck of JoAnn’s Ferncliff cottage.

  The cottage was nestled between a cliff and the bay, just one of a collection of old fishing shacks that had become summer homes on Lake Erie.

  I’d called the cottage home for months, and this deck had become my favorite spot. Today, the sun sat somewhere between rising and noon as the water lapped at the breakwall that separated the house from the bay.

  It was flanked by other old fishing shacks. The one on the left was renovated; the one on the right . . . was not.

  In the distance, I could make out Presque Isle peninsula, where Gray and I had once taken that walk. It arched gracefully out into the lake, creating the bay. Only a few boats dotted the smooth waters this morning, as if they knew that winter would be here soon and they wanted to squeeze in every last sail. Soon the boats would all be put in dry dock for winter. Then the bay would freeze over and I’d have ice-fishing shacks as my new neighbors.

  I’d moved into the cottage in February, so I knew what I was in for when winter hit, but I was okay with that. The view was worth the cold and the feeling of isolation. Most of the neighbors in the handful of other cottages were summertime and weekend residents. Only a handful lived here year-round. But all of them seemed to be a tight-knit group.

  I’d kept my distance.

  Oh, I smiled and waved as I came home or left, but I declined invitations to cookouts and coffees. Frequently, I wished the cottage stood on its own somewhere without a neighbor in sight. When I said as much to JoAnn, she’d told me I needed neighbors as well as friends.

  I knew she was wrong. What I really needed was Gray.

  I felt as if I were half alive on my own. As if somehow I needed him in order to be me. At least I needed him the way he used to be. The way we used to be.

  Those last days we were together, I’d felt lonelier in his company than I did alone here in
JoAnn’s cottage.

  As if she’d come at the behest of some unspoken invitation, JoAnn called “Yoohoo” from the front door.

  “Up on the deck,” I called down. “Let yourself in and come up.”

  I tried to push away my heavy thoughts. JoAnn worried about me as if I were one of her kids. She’d taken to popping in unexpectedly. She used the fact that cell phone reception was horrible down here as an excuse for not calling first, but I knew that even if reception had been flawless, she’d have still popped in to invite me over for Sunday dinners and holidays.

  I might be able to decline the neighbors’ invitations, but there was no declining JoAnn.

  I tried not to bristle under her concern.

  A few minutes later, she came through the sliding-glass door that connected the master bedroom and the deck. She held a cup of coffee aloft. “I knew you’d have yours, so I helped myself.”

  She sat in the second deck chair next to the hammock.

  JoAnn was my friend and technically she was my boss.

  But in all the ways that mattered, she was the sister I never had.

  She was a tall, lanky dynamo with black hair that wore its first few streaks of gray, chocolate-brown eyes, and a toffee-colored complexion. She’d stepped back from the business—Harbor House Furniture and Design—in order to start a family. And though she frequently complained that her brain was turning to mush because of the kids, she was having the time of her life and we both knew it.

  I managed Harbor House now. JoAnn and I had talked about my buying into a partnership before . . . well, before everything that happened. She’d asked me once if I’d thought about it since I moved here. I’d shaken my head and she hadn’t mentioned it since.

  I nodded at her coffee cup. “Mi casa, su casa . . . literally.”

  “Thanks. I’d have called first, but the reception down here is so iffy there was a chance you wouldn’t get the call,” she said. “And of course, even if you did, there was a chance you wouldn’t answer. So, as always, I felt it was best to act first and apologize later. I’m sorry to barge in on you and interrupt your brooding.” There wasn’t even the slightest bit of real apology in her expression.

  “I wasn’t brooding,” I informed her.

  She rolled her eyes and took a sip of her coffee.

  “Where are the kids?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

  “I left them with Michaela down the street. I might not survive Wills’ potty training. I have to do potty dances after each successful . . . er, mission. And Harmon FaceTimed me two nights ago when I was at the store because Wills had gone to the bathroom and needed a Mama potty dance. Do you know how humiliating it is to have to go into the office so you can potty dance unnoticed?”

  “You love every minute of it,” I reminded her.

  She snorted. “Wills is addicted to a new book, Fi Fly Flo. He says Fiona’s his new best friend and he wants to keep a flying horse in his garage, just like her. If I had Piper George’s number I’d . . .”

  “You’d?” I asked.

  “Probably just thank her for writing such a brilliant book.” She sighed. “Not only do we read it every night, but Wills then requires that I make up a dream for him, just like the character in the book gets. So, yeah, I’d thank her. But seriously, Fi Fly Flo? Try saying that fast.”

  Despite my turmoil this morning, I laughed, which I knew had been JoAnn’s intent with that standup-worthy routine. “You are utterly fierce, you know that, right?”

  “I can keep it up,” she assured me. “Joey didn’t sleep more than three hours in a row last night. He’s almost eight months old. I don’t think I’m ever going to sleep again.”

  “You love every minute of it,” I said again, to which she snorted again.

  Before she fell into another mommy-monologue, I saw her spot the thick manila envelope on the table. “Is that it?”

  I nodded. “I’m trying to work my way up to it.”

  “Addie, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Gray’s not pressuring you. I’m not pressuring you—I wouldn’t have the right to even if I wanted to. You can take your time.”

  “I’ve given it almost a year—”

  Jo interrupted me. “Eight months, Addie. It’s only been eight months. You left right before I had Joey.”

  I shrugged. In my heart, our marriage died months before I moved out of our house and rented Jo’s lakeside cottage. “We did a round of counseling. Well, we did a session. It was awful. The three of us sitting in silence, staring at each other. It felt like that the last few months at our house. Gray and I just staring at each other, not saying anything.” I shook my head. “I live here now. Gray lives in Glenwood. I’ve given it time.”

  I hoped that if I severed our legal ties, I’d be able to get over him.

  I wasn’t sure it would work, but moving out of the house hadn’t worked, and I didn’t know what else to try.

  Jo nodded. She sat quietly next to me. We stared at the bay and sipped our coffees.

  Seconds gave way to minutes and finally to a solid part of an hour. My coffee cup was empty and I suspected so was JoAnn’s.

  Some people would have pestered me with their opinions and advice. Maybe that’s the mark of a true friend—the ability to sense when all that’s required is your presence.

  I reached over and took JoAnn’s hand in mine and squeezed it. “I should go. I’m sure he’s at the office by now.”

  She nodded. “Okay. I’ll come back later with a bottle of wine and we’ll watch the sunset together.”

  “I’ve already got one chilling. You could bring the boys,” I offered. Despite JoAnn’s complaints, Wills and Joey were delightful. There was a comfort in seeing myself through their eyes . . . and in their eyes I was a fun surrogate aunt who could be counted on for stories, snacks, and an occasional hug.

  JoAnn laughed. “I think Harmon should have some quality father-son bonding time with them.”

  “Poor Harmon,” I said with a grin. Like JoAnn, Harmon was reveling in parenthood.

  “Poor nothing,” she said. “He spends all day at the hospital talking to adult human beings while I’m home potty dancing and reading the same books over and over. I can recite half a dozen by heart, you know.”

  In a sing-song voice she recited, “Then Fi ran up to her magical horse. ‘It’s time to fly!’ She shouted, of course. “Fly, Flo—”

  I interrupted before she recited the entire book just to prove her point. “You love it.” That was my mantra whenever she vented.

  She laughed. “I do. But don’t tell Harmon.”

  I didn’t need to tell him because I was sure he already knew it without either of us saying a word.

  We both stood and I took one last look at the bay.

  “Thank you,” I told her.

  She smiled. “Any time, Addie. You know that.”

  I did know that.

  What I didn’t know was what I’d have done without her these last few months.

  I picked up the envelope and my cup, then followed her back through the bedroom to the stairs. I looked down and noticed I had on holey jeans and a ratty old wool sweater. In another time and place, I might have changed before heading to Gray’s office, but that time had passed.

  Though we both lived in Erie, Pennsylvania, my place was here now, in a renovated old fishing shack on the shore of the bay, while his was in a very proper house in the old, established Glenwood neighborhood.

  JoAnn followed my gaze and gave me a nod, as if she knew what I’d been thinking and approved.

  “Do you need anything else?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  Rather than taking me at my word, she pulled me into a hug. “This is a new chapter for you, Adeline Frasier Grayson. You can make it anything you want.”

  I nodded. I
didn’t disagree with her pronouncement, but I saw the flaw in her logic . . . I had no idea what I wanted.

  After JoAnn left, part of me wanted to take the envelope and slink back up to the balcony, but I sucked up my courage, grabbed my purse, and left.

  I drove across the city of Erie. Trees were awash in the autumn colors—blazing orange and deep reds—their leaves carpeted the lawns and roads.

  On tree-lined streets, if there was the tiniest breeze, the leaves fluttered down and fell like rain.

  Normally I’d lose myself in the beauty of the drive along Bayfront Connector. Views of the bay peeked out intermittently from between houses and businesses that dotted its shoreline. The marina was already brimming with boats that were bundled up for the upcoming winter. Between the amphitheater and the dock, those last few non-docked boats were clearly visible on the lake for quick blinks of an eye.

  I drove from the dock, up State Street to Gray’s office. I pulled into an empty parking space. I tossed my giant black leather purse over my shoulder and clutched the large manila envelope in my hand as I got out of the car.

  Rather than going inside I leaned against the hood of my car and stared at the modern-looking building Gray and his partner, Ash, had bought for Steel, Inc.

  Their offices were on the fifth floor. I knew from experience that the views of Lake Erie were breathtaking from their windows. But I wasn’t here for the views.

  After today, I’d probably never need to come here again.

  I could almost see the ghost images of the first day Gray had showed me this building. We’d stood on this very spot, craning our necks and looking up. Then he’d reached down and scooped me into his arms, as if I weighed next to nothing. He proclaimed he was going to carry me over the threshold.

  I could almost see our reflection in the glass as he carried me toward the door. Gray was tall and kept his brown hair very short. I was on the tall side for a woman, but I’d always felt small next to Gray. My dark hair had been longer then and pulled back in a ponytail.