I remove her hand. “Not for long. Should have gotten those divorce papers drawn up when you left, Reese. It’s time we both let go and moved on. I forgot about you years ago. You need to do the same. We’ve been done a long time.”
“It’s that girl, isn’t it? The puker.” She snorts and shakes her head. Her blonde hair falls around her shoulders in waves with the movement. I used to love wrapping my hands in her hair but not anymore. The thought of being with anyone else after Conleigh makes my chest hurt. Reese’s blue eyes stare at me still holding on, still believing she can get me ba
ck.
“There’s been plenty of women since you’ve been gone. Conleigh doesn’t have a thing to do with how I feel about you, which by the way, is nothing at all. You don’t mean shit to me, Reese. Time you get it through your dense head. Now, if you’ll get the fuck off my property, I got shit to do.” I don’t give her a second glance. I leave her standing in the cold and start back inside when she grabs my hand. “Don’t embarrass yourself, Reese.”
“Holden, kiss me and tell me you don’t feel anything for me,” she pleads, tugging on my fingers, bringing them to her mouth. She sucks my ring finger between her teeth and nibbles it. I’d be a liar if I said it didn’t feel good and that for a brief moment I didn’t remember how good we once were together.
The first time I saw her I thought wow. Her family was unloading a moving truck. She stood in her yard, her blonde waves blowing in the breeze as she smiled at me and waved. She was like an angel standing there. Only thing missing was a halo around her head. The next time I saw her she was sitting on the bleachers and looking lost. She was new to our school and had moved two houses down from me. Anyway, I had finally gotten up the courage to approach her. She made me so damn nervous. My stomach was in knots. She had remembered me living near her and told me she couldn’t remember the name of our street. I walked her home that day and every day after.
Jerking my finger away as her teeth rake over my skin, I tell her, “I don’t need to kiss you to remind myself. I already know. I told you there is no chance in hell I would ever go there with you again. Not in this life or any other.”
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“No one ever does, do they? Not you. Not Wren or my parents.” I shake my head. I don’t want to think about them either. I’m the son who never did anything right. I’m the son that threw his future away because I didn’t follow the plan they mapped out for me. I married Reese against their wishes and they cut me out of their lives as though I never existed. They knew she would ruin me, but they should have been there for me.
“You’ll see, Holden. I’ll prove it to you. We’re meant to be together.” With that she lets go of my hand and goes back the way she came from.
I hope it is the last time I watch her walk away and that its finally for fucking good.
Chapter 22
Conleigh
For the past week, I have felt like I am in a dream, a nightmare really. I gave in to my attraction for Holden. Every second I was with him felt like the I was seeing butterflies for the first time. All the magic…it was there…for a moment it was real. Then it was ripped away from me. That’s the thing about magic…it never lasts.
I wish I would have said screw it and let Ezra see me with his best friend but as much as he deserved it, I still couldn’t bring myself to hurt him in that way. I was afraid. But that is the funny thing about fear…it’s never rational. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s right and what is real anymore. I’ve allowed fear to rule me. I’ve given Ezra what he wanted, we aren’t back together but we aren’t exactly not together either.
Last night when he finished what he was working on, he came to bed. I was laying there reading and he kissed my forehead as he had so many times and for a few fleeting moments it felt right, and we kissed. It wasn’t all consuming or all together passionate. It was…familiar.
He caressed my cheeks and I let my guard down for one minute and he found his way in. His tongue slid between my lips and I allowed him to explore what we once shared. Those feelings we spent two years building came rushing back. It wasn’t fair of me, but I was still keyed up from my encounter with Holden in the kitchen. Then I saw him last night with her. His wife. I was going to see if he was in his shop. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but I got the idea quickly when his finger was in her mouth. I didn’t hang out on the stairs any longer and went back inside before either of them noticed me. I used Ezra and let him touch me, all the while knowing it was wrong, but he knows my body and he fingered me and kissed me until I got off. Then he jacked off next to me without any help from me.
I told him I would give him a chance, but deep down I’m not trying. I figure he will fuck up again sooner or later. Go fuck Judy again, though he says he fired her. I guess that makes me a coward.
It’s the next morning and I feel like a shitty person.
Holden tugs on my hair as he goes to the fridge. Electricity shoots through my body. Ezra is in the shower. I hear the refrigerator door opening then closing, and I don’t dare turn around. I keep my attention locked on the bacon frying in the pan.
I can’t crack. I can’t break. I have a plan to let Ezra fuck up again, so I can get out of my promise to him and I have to stick to it. But Holden isn’t making it easy on me.
I can feel his breath on my neck as chills fan across my chest and a shiver escapes me, giving my reaction away.
“I’ll see you in a few,” he whispers, his breath hot, sticky even, as it clings to the shell of my ear. We’re supposed to go look at a car I have been eyeing.
I feel frozen in place, unable to speak let alone breathe. His hand cups my jaw, his finger pressing between my lips before traveling down my arm, over the curve of my hip and to my butt. I gasp as he cups my cheek, firm, full of possession.
Ezra will be out of the shower any second now. He could walk in right now. What would he see? Holden standing close to my back? Would he know he has me on the brink of insanity, trapped between desire and stupidity?
“Don’t kiss him goodbye. Don’t be long. Wear the red shirt, I love you in red.” His words are still reaching my brain when I realize he has already exited the room.
“Hey, you’re burning the bacon.” Ezra.
Snapping from Holden’s spell, I look down as black smoke begins wisp up to my nose. Curling my lips, I remove the skillet from the burner before it chars. “Sorry.”
I turn around and see Ezra with a towel secured around his trim but fit waist. It hits me—guilt…realization that seeing him does nothing to me. Not even a morsel of the response Holden just awakened in me moments ago. I’m in deep shit. Why did I tell Ezra I would give him a chance when I know we are so over? Because I had a moment of jealousy and wanted to get Holden back for being with his wife. God, I am so fucked in the head.
Holden is only fucking with me. I can’t let my feelings for him cloud what I need to do. I shake my head and return my attention to preparing Ezra’s bacon sandwich.