After the Climb (River Rain #1) - Kristen Ashley Page 0,7
he bit out.
“You were then, Duncan, but my life went on without you at your choice.”
“I had no reason not to believe him.”
Oh no.
I shook my head. “We’re not doing this.”
I tried to step around him.
He stepped in front of me.
I snapped my head back. “Let me out of this room, Duncan.”
“It destroyed me, walking away from you.”
I threw my arms wide. “And yet here you stand, healthy, living your dream.”
“Yeah, you’d know about my dream, Genny, wouldn’t you?”
Goddamn it.
But he wasn’t finished.
“And here you stand, tricked out, showing at my cabin in a Rolls.”
“This isn’t a cabin, Duncan, how many square feet are in this house?”
“Six thousand.”
Oh my God.
Was this the stupidest conversation in history?
“Seriously?” I asked.
“He wanted this, Genny.” He jabbed a finger at the chair with the box and flood of paper on the floor. “Those apologies mean dick. That is not his final message for us. What he really wanted was you standing in a room with me, knowing what would happen if we did.”
“Nothing’s going to happen, Duncan.”
“Nothing never happens between us, Genny.”
This was frighteningly true.
And thus, I was at my end.
I changed tactics.
“I cannot describe how little I care that Corey maneuvered this nearly thirty years down the line,” I shared. “He doesn’t get to explain away tearing the man I loved from me with the proverbial thousand apologies and the lame excuse of, ‘I didn’t have the guts to right my wrong.’ He’s not fifteen anymore where we covered his awkwardness for him, and he wasn’t fifteen back then when he drove us apart.”
“Gen—”
“I’m not done,” I clipped.
Duncan closed his mouth.
“And I’m not going to stand here and listen to you try to explain why you didn’t believe me.”
“It was Corey.”
I touched my hand to my chest. “And I was me.”
That again shut his mouth.
“We can’t go back, and not only because I don’t wish to go back, because we can’t. I have a life, a career, and three children—”
“All grown and no man.”
“After what you put me through, and what Tom put me through, do you think I want a man?”
There was a subtle but distinct rumble to his, “What’d that guy put you through?”
And again, there was my Bowie.
Protective, almost to a fault.
I shouldn’t have brought Tom into it.
I shook my head. “It’s none of your business.”
“Genny, for Christ’s sake—”
“It really turns on a dime like that for you?” I demanded.
“It never turned the other way,” he shot back.
Oh my God.
I felt those words through every cell in my body.
And so, I had to do it. I had to pull her up.
Bonnie.
Sweet and kind and funny.
But more importantly, strong and smart and able.
“Well, I’m very sorry, Duncan,” I said quietly. “Truly, I am. But it did for me. And there’s no turning back.”
We stood there, staring at each other.
And it was with no small measure of pain that I took him in, knowing the last time I saw him in person he was twenty-six and glorious.
And now he was fifty-four and no less glorious. Silver in his hair. Also his beard. Lines on his forehead, around his eyes. And maybe part of that heft he had was some weight in his middle, because Duncan was always active, but he loved his food.
And oh, how much I would have treasured being beside him along the way to see him become the man who stood before me.
But that was gone.
Corey took it away.
And Duncan let him.
Yes, most importantly, Duncan had let him.
And that was the Duncan I had now.
Because he was going to do it again.
He stepped out of my way.
But this time, he allowed me to walk out of his life.
And that was what I did.
Chapter Two
The Operation
Chloe
Sitting in her car, she watched her mom walk into the hotel.
And her mom could fool a lot of people.
But she couldn’t fool Chloe.
Therefore, once Mom disappeared inside with Rodney, Chloe put the bright red Evoque in drive and slid out of the parking spot.
Driving while hitting the buttons on the dash, she called Mary.
“Oh God, I knew it,” was Mary’s greeting.
“Instigating Operation Happiness,” Chloe replied.
“Your mother is going to fire me.”
“She is not.”
“If I interfered in your love life, would you continue to be my friend?”
“If you reunited me with a serious hot guy who stood for everything I stand for who I’d pined after for years, yes.”
Mary didn’t have an answer to that.
“There’s no time to waste,” Chloe told her. “And anyway, you’re hardly on the front lines with all of this.”