Colt threw open Maisie’s door. “There you are! I missed you!”
“Me, too!” she said, and the two locked in a hug.
“Hey, honey,” I said when they broke apart.
“Hi, Mom!” Colt threw me a grin over the back of the seat. “We made dinner, come on!”
“Oh, Maisie doesn’t feel too well.” I immediately panicked at the thought of spending any more than a few minutes with Beckett.
“We figured. So we have chicken, and rice, and saltines, if you need them, Maisie. Come on, you have to see the house!” Maisie jumped down, more agile than I’d seen her these last two weeks, and the two were off like a shot.
“Well, I guess that settles that,” I mumbled to myself. The urge struck to check my hair and makeup, and I shook it off. There was no need to impress Beckett. Funny, I’d used to think the same thing, because he’d loved me. Now it was because I wasn’t supposed to care what he thought.
I threw a glance in the mirror and fixed my hair with a couple of quick tugs…because I did care. Damn it.
“Don’t be a chicken,” I lectured myself as I got out of the Tahoe. I left him, not the other way around. So why did it hurt this much? Why was my heart galloping? Why did I crave the sight of him almost as much as I avoided it?
Ugh.
I was twenty-six years old with my first real broken heart. When Jeff left, the twins and my own stubbornness had eased the ache and distracted me. But Beckett? There was no distraction for Beckett. He was in my thoughts, my dreams, my voicemails that I refused to delete, and the letters I wouldn’t throw away. He was freaking everywhere.
My steps were slow as I made my way into the house. The inside was just as beautiful, with dark hardwood floors and high ceilings. It was exactly the house I would have designed for myself. But it wasn’t mine, and neither was he.
Wait. Where was the furniture? There were no pictures on the walls, no signs that he’d even really moved in. Was he leaving after all?
“Hey,” he said, coming around the corner.
Crap, he looked really good. Jeans and a long-sleeve baseball tee with Colt’s soccer team logo on it were bad enough, but his hair was a little longer and perfectly mussed, and he’d had the nerve to grow a really sexy layer of scruff.
“Hi.” Of all the words we needed to say to each other, that was all that came out.
“The kids are off exploring.” His eyes drifted toward the ceiling as the sound of running feet came through. “Look, Colt wanted to make you dinner. I told him it probably wasn’t a good idea, but he was adamant, and I figured you could just take it with you if you didn’t want to stay.”
“You live on the back twenty-five of Solitude that I sold two years ago.”
“Yes.” He said it so easily.
“This is where you went?”
“After we broke up?” he clarified.
I nodded slowly. “When you checked out, and Colt told me your stuff was gone, I asked Hailey if you’d left any forwarding information.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know. That’s when I assumed you’d gone back to the army.” Like two of the other men I’d loved.
“I didn’t leave any forwarding information because I figured you’d call the station. It never occurred to me you’d think I’d actually leave you and the kids after I promised you I wouldn’t.” He sighed, rubbing his face. “Then again, I did lie about who I was, so...”
He was right. We both knew it.
“I didn’t like the way we’d ended things. I’d ended things,” I amended.
“Neither did I,” he answered softly.
“You didn’t call.”
“I tried that first week, but you didn’t answer. I figured you meant it when you told me you didn’t want to see me again.”
“I’m sorry. I never should have said that. I tend to…overreact when it comes to lies, and…”
“And build a fortress around the kids,” he finished my thoughts, reciting my own words from our letters. “I understood, and I deserved it. It’s not like you didn’t warn me in your first letter, right?”
God, the man knew me so well, and I hated the feeling that I didn’t know him.
“You don’t have any furniture.”
His eyebrows rose at my change of subject. “Just in the bedroom and the kitchen. Not that I mean to imply anything. I just needed a bed. For sleeping.