Page 7 of Red, White, and You

How long has it been since I cried? Years? Decades?

Since we said goodbye?

How long can I stand here? How quickly can I get into the car? If Clarence could read minds, I’d shout at him to hurry up!Get in! Start the car! Go, go, go!

“Stop acting like you didn’t hear me, Breezy.”

The familiar nickname causes a lump of emotion to lodge itself in my throat. I close my eyes on a long blink and fight against the way Brady’s voice still makes me want to run intohis arms. To find in him the love and safety I have yet to find anywhere else. Not that I’ve looked very hard. How could I when I’d already found the one meant for me?

Nodding my head in acceptance—or defeat—I brace myself for what I might see when I finally acknowledge him, then turn in a slow circle to meet his gaze.

I almost weep at the sight of him.

Could he possibly be more beautiful than I remember?

He inhales so deeply his chest visibly expands then deflates with the movement.

Age has only accentuated his good looks, the bastard. The dusting of gray at his temples makes him look distinguished. The crow’s feet that border each eye give the impression he laughs often. His smile lines do the same, while emphasizing his full, rosy lips. The deep tan of his skin makes his cerulean eyes resemble the clearest blue sky reflected off the surface of a lake. His arms are bronzed, corded steel, and his t-shirt is taut against his biceps. With his hands tucked into his front pockets, he looks every bit the relaxed, peaceful man I remember.

Only now he’s far more beautiful and impossibly sexier.

As I shamelessly ogle him, his eyes devour me in return, drinking me in as if I’m the oasis he’s searched for after years in the scorching desert.

“Brady,” I finally whisper. “What are you doing here?” As if I don’t already know. As if he’s not here for the same reason as I am,becauseI am.

He hooks a thumb over his shoulder toward the cabin behind him. “Seventeen. Our lucky number.”

We were seventeen when we met.

Which confirms what I’d already assumed but had been too afraid to believe for fear that I was wrong. “You sent me the invite to come here.”

He nods.

We haven’t spoken in almost two decades. Our divorce nearly destroyed us both, and suddenly I have no idea how I survived without him all these years.

Being near him again feels like the first time I’ve actuallybreathedin decades.

The rest of the adult campers continue to move around us as if the air doesn’t feel different now that my ex and I are in the same place at the same time. Like the air isn’t charged and sparking with the electricity our bodies create when they are within range of one another. Everyone is going about their business as if the two of us being here together didn’t just completely knock the world off its axis.

“Why?” I ask.

His lips pull into a sexy smirk and my body reacts accordingly, heat pooling low in my belly. Then he tilts his head, those brilliant blue eyes softening. “When’s the last time you relaxed, Brie?”

Shame heats my cheeks, but I begin to smile and he beats me to it, flashing me that grin that knockedmeoff my axis all those years ago.

“That’s what I thought.” He nods toward the cabin again. “Stay with me. Give me a week.”

His request, simple as it is, splits me in half.

It’s a harmless request; what’s one week?

But I’ve never loved anyone like I loved this man, not before and certainly not after. It took me years to get over him, years to learn how to function without him. I’ve been able tosurvive without him, though now I’m not entirely sure how I’ve managed.

While a week togethersoundsinnocent enough, it’s anything but. Because once this week is over…

My heart squeezes painfully and I shake my head. “I can’t.”

“You’re already here, Breezy.” His repeated use of that nickname sinks into my bones and warms my blood. Brady splays his hands. “Getting here was the hardest part.”

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