I exchanged a glance with him, communicating how much I appreciated the assist. We’d always had the kind of relationship that didn’t matter how much time had passed, when we saw each other we picked right back up like nothing had changed.
“Oh, okay.” My mom looked a little disappointed but then her face lit up. “Oh, and doesn’t Olivia live next door?”
As soon as she said it, I remembered that Bentley had told me that was the reason he’d bought the condo in the duplex a few years ago. Olivia had moved out for the first time on her own and she’d had a little bit of a tough time adjusting since she’d always shared a room with Molly, even in college.
“Yep, she does.” Bentley nodded.
My mom smiled up at me. “That will be nice, sweetie. You two were so close when you were little.”
The thought of being next door to her caused my pulse to race and my palms to sweat and chest to constrict. Nice wouldn’t be the word I’d use to describe it.
Chapter 4
Olivia
“Sometimes the best gift that you can be given in life is the opportunity to choose yourself.”
~ Maggie Calhoun
My hands were tingling. My face felt numb. And my heart was pounding like a drumline in my chest. People were talking around me, but they all sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher.
I hadn’t been prepared to see Holden Reed in the flesh. It had been so long since I hadn’t just seen him in clips on my phone on YouTube or Instagram or on TV when ESPN covered events that he was competing at.
Since he left town, I’d always hear that he’d been back to Wishing Well after the fact. Or if he was still around, I’d show up to a friend’s house or the only bar in town, The Tipsy Cow, and people would tell me that he’d just left. He’d stop by my parents’ house to say hello and my mom would text to let me know he was there. And without fail, by the time I got there, I’d have just missed him.
I’d tried not to take our missed connections personally. The rational side of my brain worked very hard to convince the emotional side of my brain that it had been bad timing. But there was a niggling voice in my head that was absolutely certain that he had read my letter and that had driven him to actively avoid me. There was no way that all of the times I’d “just missed him” could possibly be a coincidence.
But he was here now.
“Is it me, or does he look hot now?” Molly asked beside me.
My head spun toward her. We’d never been attracted to the same guy and it would really suck if now she was attracted to the man I’d been in love with since before I knew what love was.
No, no, no! my inner voice screamed as I stared at her like Eleven from Stranger Things, willing her attraction to fade.
“Oh look!” Molly clapped excitedly. “Food. Have fun with the nose picker.”
With that parting remark, her heels clicked on the hardwood floor as she walked away toward the buffet that was being laid out, looking none the wiser to my reaction to her partially true statement. He was hot now. But the “now” implied that there’d been a time when he wasn’t. To me, he’d always been. Although, even I could admit that he’d leveled up in his hotness.
Holden had always had an athletic build, but he’d never been particularly muscular. Some had even referred to him as gangly due to his height and slender build. Now he was all filled out. He’d grown into his six-foot height and broad shoulders. His chest was muscular and his arms were chiseled to near perfection.
Just go say hi.
Just move your feet, one in front of the other, walk up to him and say hi.
My inner voice was screaming at me as I watched him speaking to my brother and his mom. He was smiling, but I could see that his smile was forced.
He was in pain. A lot of pain. I could tell by the color, or lack of color, in his skin tone, the tension in his jaw and the way he held himself.
I’d been watching his last and, from what I knew, final ride, and when I’d seen the wreck, I’d thrown up. The way his body had flailed around, 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.