by Amie Knight
Most of the time I had a blast with Harper. She was loud and crass and completely the opposite of Holden, but sometimes she would smile a certain way and I’d see her dimple and she’d look just like him. It would hurt me, that dimple, but I’d deal with it to have Harper’s friendship.
“I can’t believe you don’t think that Harper is coming over because he’s told her to.” Adrian shook his head in disbelief.
“Why would he do that when he could just come over here himself if he wanted to? He knows where I live,” I snapped.
Adrian flinched at my rough words before changing the subject. “So, have you been getting out to the library and holding the babies lately?”
I just stared at him. He’d only asked me this two weeks ago and the answer was the same now as it was then. I hadn’t gone yet, but I would soon. I was almost ready. I hadn’t been ready to hold the babies while I was mourning my own. Soon, though, I told myself. As for the library, I hadn’t been reading much except for work. Everything reminded me of Holden. Every book I tried to pick up, I’d find a little bit of us in it. It made me miss him and I missed him enough without a book reminding me.
I missed his dimple, his scowls, our long walks in the morning, and our cuddles in the evenings.
I couldn’t even bring myself to make lists anymore. They all seemed stupid now, unimportant in the grand scheme of things. They felt juvenile, and I didn’t feel like a kid anymore. I felt all too adult.
“Why are you really here, Adrian?”
He was clearly here to tell me I was failing at life. I realized I wasn’t being great at life at the moment, but I was trying to get on track. I really was. I took my plate to the kitchen, completely losing my appetite. Wasn’t I allowed to feel bad for myself sometimes? I realized this was completely different for me, but sometimes you just needed to stay home in your pajamas for months and feel bad for yourself. This was one of those times. He needed to give me a freaking break.
I scraped the plate into the trashcan while Adrian huffed a breath at the table. I went back in the room and stood next to him with raised eyebrows.
“Ainsley misses you.”
Oh. That hurt. I sat back down at the table. “I miss her, too,” I said softly, and I did. At first I couldn’t bear to see her, pregnant, already round with her baby. It didn’t bother me too much anymore, but unfortunately avoiding her had become somewhat of a habit. A habit I needed to fix.
“Her baby shower is next week. She really wants you to come.”
I knew exactly when her shower was. The invite had been on my refrigerator for the last three weeks. I could see Ainsley, I just didn’t know if I could sit through three hours of fun and games while they celebrated the baby. The baby boy. Adrian had been right and couldn’t wait to tell me. I’d gotten a call from him while they were still at the doctor’s office that day.
I felt guilty that I didn’t feel ready for that and Adrian must have seen it all over my face.
He leaned over and grabbed one of my hands on the table and squeezed. “We get it. We just miss you and we want you to know when you’re ready to come around, we’re ready, too. No hard feelings, no grudges. And if you want to come to Ainsley’s shower, we’d love for you to be there, but if you don’t feel ready, we understand. And we’re here whenever you are.”
I had the best, most amazing friends in the world. I got up from my seat and walked around the table and held my arms out. “Bring it in, Big A!”
He smiled and jumped up for a big hug, his body slack with relief.
“You haven’t hugged me in months. I was worried.”
I leaned out of our embrace. “I’m getting there. It’s just taking time.”
“Good.”
He grabbed his plate and took it to the kitchen. He rinsed and loaded the dishwasher and then he cleared his throat and turned to me. “I meant what I said. Not just about Ainsley and me. I know I didn’t approve of Holden, but I see how you miss him. I see how you’ve been different, sad, since he’s been gone. If you want to call him, I think you should.”
He dried his hands on the towel hanging from the stove.
“Thanks, honey,” I said, walking behind him to the front door. “Hug Ainsley for me and tell her I’ll call her about lunch this week,” I said as he opened the front door.
He threw a smile over his shoulder. “I will.”
I sat on the couch long after he left, thinking how I needed to be better to my friends and even my mom. She’d come by several times to check on me. It had been three months. It was time for me to move on with my life. Get back to holding all of the babies and reading for pleasure.
But I couldn’t help but feel a pang of sadness about getting on with my life without Holden. I wondered where he was and what he was doing. I wondered if he was sad, too, but despite everything, I hoped he wasn’t. I hoped he was happy.
“All right, dude, you need to get your stuff together. Your mom will be here shortly,” I told Will as I turned off the Nintendo and started cleaning the junk food off the coffee table.
He put away his iPad and stood right in front of me, staring.
I smiled down at him. “What’s up, buddy?”
He scrunched his nose in thought before saying, “You’ve seemed sad lately.”
I brushed past him to the kitchen to throw away the garbage from the living room. He followed. “I guess I have been, but I think I’m feeling a little better now.”
“That’s good. Have you been sad because you miss Holden?” He wrung his hands a little and continued, “It’s okay if you have. I kinda miss him, too.”
Aww. I bet that little admission killed him. I squatted down in front of him. “Yeah. I’ve been sad because I miss Holden, but I’m going to be okay. I promise.” I pulled him in for a hug, but before I could get my arms around him, he darted to the living room.
“I’m glad you said that because I have something for you.”
“What?” I asked, baffled as he headed to his black book bag by the front door.
He pulled out a big stack of white paper that was all clipped together at the top.
He handed it to me as the doorbell rang and I opened the door to his mom. “He’s finishing packing up. He’ll be out in just a minute.” I smiled at her and turned back to Will.
“What is this?” I held out the papers.
“Read it.” He beamed up at me as he walked past. He headed out the door and then turned around and came right back in. “Oh, he told me to tell you no regrets, only happiness.” And then was gone.
I was stunned. Speechless. I closed the door behind him, holding the stack of papers that all of a sudden felt entirely too heavy. I walked to the couch, sat down, and put the papers on the coffee table in front of me. They had to be from Holden. I studied the stack of white, the top paper blank, but I could see the black words on the second page trying to peek through.
What was it and why did it scare the hell out of me? I swallowed and told myself something I already knew—Holden would never hurt me intentionally.
No regrets, only happiness. He remembered. I smiled and picked up the stack of papers, laying them in my lap.
I flipped the first page.
Dedication
To My One, Mae, my soulmate.
You’re nothing I ever expected and everything I’ve ever wanted. How could one person be so impossibly perfect? We did the hard part, we wrote our story. I did the easy part and put it to paper. It hurts as much as it heals, but it’s ours. Forever.
Truly, Madly, Deeply
My hand flew to my mouth and tears instantly descended onto my cheeks. Damn him. How could he do this to me? I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t read our story. It would hurt me too bad. I was just starting to feel human again, and not like a lovesick, heartbroken zombie, and he wanted me to relive everything all over again. I couldn’t do it.
I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do it. I threw the packet back on the table and went to my room. It was late, so I put on my sleep
shirt and laid in my bed, determined to forget the stack of papers on my coffee table.
But the longer I laid there, the more I remembered us and the more curious I was. Did he really write me a book? The romantic bastard. It pissed me off. It made me angry. It lit me up. I was over the moon for him. Would I ever stop loving him? Why did he have to be so dang perfect sometimes?
I flung the covers back and raced back to the living room where I scooped up the papers and brought them back to my warm bed. I turned on my bedside lamp and cuddled up under the covers. It was going to be a long night. I turned the page, my heart racing in my chest.
Prologue
She watched me. I knew she did, because I watched her. She watched from the apartment window above the street I walked on every day. She watched me sixty feet from the small library I checked for books periodically. I knew exactly how many feet because I’d counted. Twice.
The gorgeous redhead with kind, caramel eyes was everywhere, just watching. But what she didn’t know was that I watched her, too. And I dreamed of her. Not at night when I had my nightmares, but during day, in the broad daylight of the city streets while I was on my walks. While the therapist worked my legs to the point of unbelievable pain, I thought of her and what she must be like.
In a daze of a daydream, I’d think of coming home to her. She’d be making dinner with that messy knot on the top of her head. She’d greet me with a smile and a kiss, her perfect lips pressed to mine. She’d hug me and she’d smell so sweet, my teeth would ache. She’d love me despite everything.
That’s what I was doing when I finally ran into her. Daydreaming of us. I was walking in a stupor down the steps of my apartment and out the front door, immersed in a walking wide awake dream of what it would be like to love her. To be loved by her in return.
I stepped around the corner and my big body bumped into her. The beautiful woman of my dreams.
I stared at her for a second through my aviators, stunned to see her so up close. She was just as pretty as I imagined with her perfect cupid’s bow, her soft upturned nose. Her big, light brown eyes gazed up at me. Her mouth formed a perfect O and it almost made me smile. She was too beautiful. I stood there far too long gawking at her.
“Excuse me,” I ground out, half embarrassed, half aroused.
“Okay,” she breathed out, and that voice. It was the voice of a seductress.
I walked to my truck, determined not to look back at her. One up-close glance and I was already in deep.
Fuck, I wanted her, but she wasn’t for me. She was too good. Too sweet. I could already tell.
I couldn’t resist a glimpse in the rearview mirror as I drove off. There the gorgeous redhead stood with her food clasped to her chest like someone was going to take it from her. And I dreamed all the way to physical therapy about sharing that food with her on my couch and then us slipping away into my bedroom and sharing other things.
In the weeks to come, I’d find out that my dreams couldn’t touch the real thing. They couldn’t even begin to come close to the innate greatness that being loved by Mae Jacobs entailed. Nothing could.
Nothing in the world could have prepared me for how that gorgeous woman would lift me up and carry me through some of the darkest times in my life.
They say great love stories have happy endings, but I say they have epic beginnings and beautiful middles, too. Here’s ours.
I choked out a sob as I clutched the stupidest, most romantic, most beautiful book ever to my chest. And I’d only read the prologue.
Rivers of tears ran down my face as I held the papers to my heart. He’d seen me, too. He’d known from the start just like I had. Soulmates.
My chest burned with emotion. My hands shook around the papers. My eyes and head ached from the crying. It was too much being in Holden’s head and I told myself to stop, to take a break, but I couldn’t. I’d missed him so.
I got up, grabbed a box of tissues, and settled in.
And I cried through chapters of endless nightmares where Holden lost his leg and his best friend.
And I laughed as I chased him down the roads of downtown to give him a piece of my mind.
“What about this beautiful, selfless, caring young woman makes you think it’s okay to call her an uppity bitch? Maybe it’s how she takes care of the child in our building whose mother works overtime to support them. Or maybe it’s the way she donates books that she buys with her own money to the local libraries. Or perhaps it’s the fact that she gives her bitch of a mother money when she clearly doesn’t deserve it or appreciate it. Yeah, I gotta admit, I’m real fucking shocked Mae here is your daughter.”
And I swooned when he told my mother off in the café under our apartments. Oh, yes. Holden’s story was a good one and I couldn’t stop.
“Do you believe in fate?” she whispered against my neck, not letting go.
Her breath ghosting over my skin set every hair straight on my body. I leaned my head back so I could see her face.
Her eyes, my God. They were a direct line to my heart. They made it simultaneously hurt and beat faster. What was happening to me?
Did I believe in fate? A month ago, I would have called fate complete bullshit, but staring down at this woman, I knew the truth. What else could I call it? The feeling only she gave me? This sudden willingness to live when all I’d wanted was to die? The excitement I felt every time I saw her when I’d been so miserable the months before?
She could only be here for one reason and that reason had to be me.
“Maybe,” I breathed down at her.
I clutched my hand to my chest, willing my heart to stay there. It felt like it wanted to jump right out of my chest. The man undid me with his words.
“True love. Mad love. Deep love. The kind of love that makes you do insane things. The kind of love that makes you as angry as it does happy. The kind of love that hurts you as much as it heals you. The forever kind.”
Her eyes closed. She was exhausted, but she finished before dozing off. “Truly. Madly. Deeply. That’s what I want.”
I wiped the tears from my face. He’d remembered. And he’d reminded me in the process. I wanted it. The hurting love. The healing love. It was Holden and me. All of it. Every bit of it, and he wasn’t going to let me forget.
I was remembering and it felt good. I kept going and kept reading and I grew hot at our night on the beach with Holden’s hand in my pants. And I smiled at his dimple. And I laughed at my bad knock knock jokes, even though Holden hadn’t. I sobbed as I watched Holden hold the babies all over again. It was the sweetest, saddest damn thing I’d ever read.
My stomach hurt as I relived every awful moment in that club the night Holden held me down. But it didn’t hurt for me. It hurt for him. And the days after while he was drugged and out of his mind with sadness and misery after that night made me want a do-over. I wished I’d broken down his door and demanded to take care of him.
I laughed out loud at Will and Holden’s antics and had a big aha moment when I realized how he’d found my list. I laughed even more at him trying to give me the list.
I didn’t think about it, I just wrote the first thing that came to mind before handing it back to her quickly, before I changed my mind, before I lost my nerve.
She read the lock for far too long. It was only three words, but she stared at them for what felt like hours even though I knew it was only minutes. I wasn’t cold on that bridge anymore. I felt hot and flushed and embarrassed and scared. So fucking scared.
“Mae loves Holden, too.”
I smiled through my tears at the moment he’d finally admitted he loved me.
I bit my lip and clenched my thighs together at what happened later that night when he’d taken me home after the love locks on the bridge. And I’d never been so thankful in my life that a book wasn’t fade to black.
“Please, sir, we can’t help her if you don’t put her down.”
“I can’t!” I shouted, terrified of losing her. “I can’t
.” It was so hot, the sun was burning me. I could taste the sand in my mouth.
A warm hand landed on my shoulder and I flinched away before looking up.
“Let her go, boss. Let her go,” a familiar voice said from above me, drawing my attention. I blinked again, trying to focus. He was there. His green Kevlar helmet on his head, the straps tight under his chin. Davies. How was he here? But I knew he could save her.
“You have to let her go. I’ll take care of her.” He smiled warmly down at me, holding his hands out for her, and I had missed that smile. His bad jokes. Him calling me boss.
My Mae would be okay with him. I kissed the top of her head and smelled her one last time before handing her over gently. Giving her to the one person I knew without a shadow of a doubt would save her. She had no place in the desert with me. He had to get her out of there.
Oh, my sweet Holden. My stomach was in knots when I learned he pulled me from that car, essentially saving my life, but living in his own worst nightmare. I’d hiccupped great, big sobs finding out that he was so far in his head that he imagined Davies had come to save me.
I lived our story over again into the wee hours of the morning. I cried until my throat hurt. I smiled until my cheeks ached. But as we grew closer to the end, I panicked. I didn’t want to read our ending. I didn’t want to experience the dinner from hell again. I didn’t want to lose Holden and my baby all over again. But I did it anyway, because I couldn’t not. It was our story. Just like Holden said, it was epic. It hurt. But it was ours. And even though it wasn’t ideal, I still loved it. It was heartbreaking. It was ordinary. It was soul-healing. It was awful. It was breathtakingly beautiful.