Page 70 of Love Me Boldly

The townhome was safer and cleaner and larger and newer and everything a parent wanted to provide for their kids, but when I looked back on the days he and I spent learning how to do this life thing together, my heart ached at the memories we’d created there.

“Come on.” I dropped my purse onto my kitchen island, scowled at the breakfast mess I’d left on the counter, and guided Jonah upstairs to his bathroom.

I started the water, grabbed him a fresh towel out of his bathroom closet, and set it on the counter. “Shout if you need help.”

I grabbed his dirty clothes and towels and dumped them on the floor of the laundry room at the top of the stairs right outside all three bedrooms.

Laundry. Between the two of us, it was somehow never-ending. Along with sweeping and vacuuming and cleaning the kitchen. Had I known the majority of my days would be spent thinking about meals and cleaning after meals and planning for the next meal and writing grocery lists for more meals outside what I already thought of for the restaurant, I wasn’t always sure I would have agreed to keep him.

But then he smiled or caught a baseball. He learned to skate and scored his first goal or read a book all on his own, and every painful amount of energy that went into thinking about food vanished.

I kept the bathroom door open for Jonah while he bathed and busied myself in my bedroom. I put away clothes, started a load of laundry, and cleaned up my own bathroom counter, and when I couldn’t find anything else to do to keep busy while he bathed, I plopped down on my bed and dropped my head into my hands.

Graham Marchese. Time had only made him more attractive. His hair was shorter but still had that curl to it, and his eyes bore the same intensity they used to when he focused on me. He still had the body of a college athlete, not surprising given that he was a coach, but man…

I shook my head and blew out a breath. What a day. What a wild freaking day.

If I were a different woman, with smaller problems and fewer complications, I would have taken that hug from him. Who was I kidding?

I would have taken everything he had to give me.

But I wasn’t. I wasn’t that woman. Which meant for the second time in my life, I had to figure out a way to forget Graham and move on.

“Mom! I’m done!”

I shoved off the bed, blew out another breath, and got back to my life.

One where Graham didn’t fit. He never had and never would.

Just my luck.

TWENTY-TWO

GRAHAM

The walls of my hotel were closing in on me. I’d already racked up thousands of steps in the small space. It was time to check out, time to go back home. The camp was over, and I had six more weeks before my own year started.

Yet I couldn’t stop thinking about Holly. Or Jonah. How cute he was and how silly and also how smart. I couldn’t stop thinking of the way Holly tensed and stepped back when I asked for a hug. I had a hundred reasons to stay away from her and take her warning that we wouldn’t work to heart, go back to Denver, and restart my own life, but every time I reached for my suitcase, my hand froze.

Walking away from Holly again, or rather, letting Holly walk away from me again, felt like the biggest mistake. Everyone in her life left her.

What would it take for me to convince her I would stay?

“This.” I decided. “This right here. Staying. Right here.”

Screw the life I had in Denver and the summer break that would involve hanging out on some friends’ boats and jet skis. I had six weeks before I needed to start thinking about the school year.

My lips twitched as I fought a grin, and I looked out the window at NCWU’s campus and the mountains beyond.

“I have six weeks.”

I grabbed my wallet and phone, tucked both into my pocket, and grabbed my suitcase. If I only had six weeks to get Holly to open up to me, try one last time to see what could happen between us despite her warnings, I couldn’t be in Boone.

I needed to be in Deer Creek.

By the time I got to my truck and tossed my luggage into the back seat of the crew cab, my plan was forming.

There were still things that had to be said. We were far from over.

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