Page 50 of Love Me Boldly

“I didn’t know,” I told Graham. “I didn’t know until Piper said anything, but as soon as she did, I knew exactly who she was talking about.That’swhy I took off the way I did and why I haven’t talked to you.”

“Your dad…he…”

“He’s a drunk and ran your fiancée or friend or whoever she was to you off the road and killed her. Now do you see why I said it didn’t matter if you were engaged or not?”

He swallowed and shoved his hands over his face. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe this is happening.”

“I’m sorry.” My chin shook, and tears burned my eyes, but I forced them down. “I’m sorry for everything he took from you.”

I turned and opened the door.

Behind me, his croaked and tortured voice asked, “Where are you going? You’re just leaving? After dropping that? We have to talk, Holly.”

He closed the space between us in three long strides, but I held up my hand, shaking my head. “We don’t.”

“I have questions. Give me a damn minute to think, would you?”

I took a painful moment and memorized all his hard lines and muscles and that floppy curly hair I liked so much and the depths of his eyes. “What else do we have to talk about? Think this through, Graham. Are you going to tell Piper who I am? Yourdad? He’s friends with Sophie’s dad, right? That’s what you said? You can’t be with me and be honest with everyone else you know, and you’ve already been through enough. And you might not have put it together who I am, but somebody you love would.”

His jaw dropped, like he hadn’t considered. He probably hadn’t since I hadn’t given him time. But I’d spent the week moving pieces, trying to make the puzzle fit, and every time I did, I came up with a giant hole in the middle.

We would never fit. Never work together.

It was time we both accepted it.

“Goodbye, Graham.”

The sound of the door shutting behind me paled in comparison to the pain of my breaking heart cracking in two.

Crappy luck had always been the card I drew in any game. I shouldn’t have dared to hope this would end any differently.

* * *

Roaring thunder joltedme from where I’d somehow been able to fall asleep on my couch. I threw off the blanket, and it took a moment to realize where I was. What had happened. How I’d gotten back home. Hard to see with tears blurring my vision on the twisting and winding mountain roads, but somehow I’d made it.

Another rumble of thunder rocked the trailer, and I whipped my head toward the door.

No. Not thunder.

I jumped from the couch, catching my foot in the blanket I’d thrown over me when I got back home after shattering Graham’s pretty illusion of what could have been between us. I stumbled at the thought, fell into the coffee table, and righted myself before I toppled over it as the furious pounding came again.

“Hold on!” I shouted at whoever was knocking on my door so loudly they could crack the glass.

The microwave clock showed it was one in the morning. Hopefully it was morning, and I hadn’t slept through an entire night and day. Thelastthing I needed was to miss a shift at the diner.

It had to be Tracey. Graham probably called her, and she was coming to check on me.

It wouldn’t be Graham. Tracey wouldn’t tell him where I lived, and I doubted even his aunt would give him that information.

The pounding started again, and then another sound quickly followed it. Sounded like squawking chickens or screeching raccoons. Something feral.

“I said,” I started to shout as I opened the door. “Stop —”

My voice froze in my throat. The squawking wasn’t chickens. Or raccoons.

It was a baby. Red-faced and screaming.

The woman holding it had pockmarked scars on her cheeks. Stringy, greasy hair that not only looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks but also hadn’t been cut since the last time I saw her. Her collarbone poked out from the worn and frayed collar of her sweater.

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