Finding Him (Covet #2) - Rachel Van Dyken Page 0,2

my brother and me, her smile healthy, bright.

Tears stung my eyes. “The cabin?”

“You can do whatever you want.” Bridge sighed and held the picture out for me to take it. “But they just got snow, and I know it would make Mom happy for one of her boys to be back there, celebrating, not mourning her death, but celebrating her life.”

I cracked then.

With anger.

With sadness.

I took the picture and shoved him away. I didn’t want his embrace, and I didn’t want his love.

I just wanted to be alone.

The cabin . . .

Was the perfect place to start.

Chapter Two

KEATON

“Who is Keaton Westbrook?” I said it out loud about a dozen times as I gripped the steering wheel of the rental car and made my way down the dark road to the cabin I’d rented.

Was I just the daughter of some influential celebrity couple?

Was I just a college graduate trying to publish my very first book?

Was I a failure?

Was I still sad?

Depressed?

Was I even okay?

These are all the questions that pounded me on my way to my mini vacation to find myself, to see who I was without him.

Because I had defined my life up until that point as my parents’ daughter. I was loved all over the US for my adorable celeb parents, and then I was nearly worshipped for my relationship with one of my fans.

A guy I’d met in the cancer wing at the hospital where I volunteered.

A guy who had changed my life forever.

A guy who became so much more than just a guy.

I went from barely living, not even appreciating my own oatmeal in the morning, to looking at every single moment as a gift. I went from selfie-taking influencer to appreciating small things, even when it rained.

God, he’d loved the rain.

You’d think it would depress him.

Not Noah.

He said rain meant that something new was coming, that fresh starts happened after a rain shower, and that we could consciously start anew.

So it made sense that it was raining as I drove to the cabin I’d rented for the month, didn’t it?

It was a sign he was still with me.

Even though he never got his fresh start, his death brought me mine, along with my first publishing deal about our complicated relationship.

About our love.

Only I was so blinded by the pain of losing him, the pain I had thought I could pour into the pages, that I was stuck and on a deadline I couldn’t force myself to meet.

Maybe because that meant we were finished, maybe because every time I thought of writing “The End,” I couldn’t breathe.

I was a year out of college.

I volunteered.

Sponsored ads for products on my Instagram and YouTube channels.

Had my own beauty line at Sephora.

And in between those projects, I had my laptop, and I still couldn’t write the first chapter.

Because it made it true.

It made his death real.

I tried not to cry as I hit the accelerator and thought about his soft golden hair, the way it would stick up on all ends when I ran my fingers through it. Men in Hollywood would kill for that hair. Noah was too beautiful for words. Even when he started losing his hair, his eyebrows, even when he lost the ability to speak.

He was enough.

He would always be enough.

More than I would ever deserve.

I rubbed the tears on my cheek away as my GPS told me to take another right. I pulled into a long driveway and sighed in relief. Too much time in the car did that to me, it made me reflect.

It made me do exactly what I was supposed to be doing, except I should be writing those things down on paper, or at least typing them into the computer.

“You can do this.” He’d winked and squeezed my hand. “C’mon, K, tell me our story . . .”

More tears filled my eyes until I could barely see the modern cabin in front of me. It was made up of huge floor-to-ceiling windows, had a wraparound deck, and was three stories. I knew the back would have an infinity pool that overlooked the lake and a dock I could sit at the end of.

It also had five bedrooms and three bathrooms.

This was where Noah had wanted to go for our honeymoon, a fact he mentioned when we were daydreaming about our future while waiting for more test results. I thought he was going to propose, thought it was a cute way to test the waters.

But he never did.

When I asked him why