Still The One - Carrie Elks Page 0,93
pretend she didn’t exist.
“The sooner you two start talking the better,” Gray muttered. “If you did that the first time maybe you wouldn’t be here now.”
“They’d be married with kids,” Logan said. “For sure.”
Tanner shook his head. “You’re not making me feel any better.”
“You want that?” Gray asked. “You want to commit to her?”
“Yes.” His response was immediate. “I want her so damn much it hurts.”
The oven timer began to beep. Gray walked over, turning it off, then pulled the door open, the deep aroma of chilli filling the kitchen. “Looks like it’s ready.” He pulled the dish out with a towel and put it on the counter.
“You gotta talk to her,” Gray said, lifting the lid. “Tell her how you feel. I know it’s scary as hell, but what other option is there? You two don’t talk for another ten years?”
The thought of it was like a punch to Tanner’s gut. He couldn’t do that. Not again. “That’s not happening,” he said gruffly. “I won’t let it.” This time he was ready to fight.
“Good.” Gray carried some bowls to the breakfast bar, followed by the garlic bread, chilli, and a salad, putting it all in the middle of the table. “Help yourself, guys.”
Gray was right on all counts. So was Logan for that matter. He needed to talk, to be vulnerable, to actually fight for the girl who lit up his world. His sunshine girl with the golden hair. For too long he let the memory of pain guide him, but that had to stop.
She was it for him. She always had been. He was so sick of fighting his feelings for the one perfect thing in his life.
And if she rejected him? Then he’d keep trying until they were old and grey if he had to.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“I know you hate me.”
Van looked at her mom from across the table. Kim seemed smaller than ever with her shoulders hunched up and her hands cupping the coffee Van had poured for her.
“I don’t hate you.” Van sighed. “I just hate the way you behave when you drink. And the fact that you lied to me for years about who my father was.” She looked down at her hands. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I made a promise.” Her mom was still staring down at her cup. “It was the only way he wouldn’t press charges.”
“What charges?” Van sighed. “You’re going to need to start from the beginning.”
“Are you sure you want to know?”
Van nodded. It wasn’t about wanting. She needed to know. This was her life. The truth was important.
“I had an affair with Johnny while I was working for him.” Kim pressed her lips together. “I guess that bit’s obvious. Not that I thought it was an affair. He told me he was leaving Nora, it was just a matter of time. He promised me he’d tell her all about us. And I was twenty years old. Naïve, alone. I believed him. He was older, wiser, and richer.” She gave a little laugh. “He told me he loved me. If you’d ever been a foster kid, you’d know how much I needed to hear those words. To have somebody whisper them to me and hold me tight. For the first time in years I felt safe. Enough that when I realized I was pregnant, that I went right to him and told him.”
Her mom never talked about her childhood. And the anguish on her face seemed raw. It hit Van right in the chest.
Her mom had been desperate to hear those three little words. And Van feared them.
Especially from the one man she felt everything for.
“What did he say?” Van asked her.
“Told me I needed to wait a bit more. Things kept cropping up. A big business deal Nora needed to approve, a party they were throwing for her parents… every time I thought we’d gotten over one hurdle, another one appeared. It took me months to realize there was never going to be a good time.”
Van said nothing. Just stared at the woman who’d birthed her twenty-eight years ago.
“Then one day at church, I heard Nora telling everybody she was pregnant. That they were pregnant. At that moment I knew he wasn’t ever going to leave her. That I’d always be the one waiting around for him. And I got angry, so angry…” She cleared her throat. “I told him we were over.”
“But you kept working for him?”
“Yeah. And he spread some story about a guy who kept coming