he hadn’t even looked like a person. He’d looked like a rag doll. He was unconscious when they carried him out of the arena, and I stayed up all night waiting to hear if he was okay.
When I did hear, the news wasn’t great. He was alive, thank God, but there were rumors that he’d never walk again. My heart had broken for him, and all I’d wanted to do was get on a plane and fly to him. But since his own mother had told me that she had been forbidden to go see him, I figured I wouldn’t be welcome.
But that hadn’t stopped me from looking at plane tickets every night. It had made me physically ill thinking of him going through his recovery alone. Then, I’d heard from Bentley, that he’d been dating a Brazilian model named Luciana for a couple of years. That news caused me to feel physically ill for an entirely different reason.
If I were being honest with myself, my new adventures in dating might have had something to do with finding out about Holden’s relationship. I’d never heard about him having a girlfriend before, which had, probably naïvely, stoked the flames of my hopeless romantic fire.
In all the years he’d ignored me, I’d never stopped loving Holden. That was partly because I’d held out hope that we would somehow, someway end up together. But after my brother dropped the girlfriend bomb, I’d done what any sane person would and did a deep Google dive to find out who she was. Page one of the image results extinguished any and all lingering embers in the hopeless romantic fire that had burned in me.
Luciana was next level sexy and beautiful, and not just in her bikini shots. She was almost more stunning with zero makeup, wearing sweats, and her hair pulled up because then nothing distracted from her large, almond shaped green eyes, her full lips, and perfect sweetheart face.
And once I checked out her Instagram and saw how much volunteer work she did with animal charities and homeless shelters, and that she’d started a non-profit to support single moms getting higher education, any delusions that Holden Reed would ever come back and declare his love for me evaporated.
I’d been doing my best to forget about him and move on. But seeing him live and in the flesh was all it had taken for all of my feelings to come flooding back to me. It didn’t help that he looked finer than any man had a right to.
He’d always kept his face clean-shaven, but now he was rocking a sexy beard. It wasn’t like a mountain man beard; it was just enough. I’d always been a fan of facial hair. There was something so…manly about it. And seeing Holden rocking an overgrown five o’clock shadow had my ovaries aching.
“I’m so glad you’re still here.” I felt a hand on my arm and turned to find Maisy Turner beside me. “Molly said you were leaving to go on a date.”
“I am,” I blurted out, embarrassed that she’d caught me drooling over Holden Reed. “I mean, I will be, in a few minutes.”
Tyler. My date. I’d completely forgotten that I was supposed to be leaving to go to dinner with him. Panic gripped my throat and I suddenly found it difficult to breathe. Any minute now, Tyler was going to text me that he was here. Holden Reed was back in Wishing Well after all this time, in the same room as me, and I was leaving?
Maybe I should cancel.
No. I couldn’t do that. I’d spent my entire life pining over Holden, and it had gotten me nowhere but single and crying at a film about love.
As kids, we’d basically been inseparable. I’d believed that we’d had a very special relationship. He was my best friend. It might sound weird since he was a boy, who was two years older than me, and Bentley’s best friend, but I’d always felt like I was even more special to him than my brother had been.
At least I had until we were in middle school. Then everything changed.
I’d never forget when it happened. The summer before my sixth-grade year and his eighth grade, we hadn’t seen each other. We’d both been busy. He’d been traveling the country on the rodeo circuit and I’d spent the summer getting my period and going from an A cup to a C cup.
I remember being sure that when he saw me again, he’d finally