Page 118 of Full Mountie

“He told me we’d talk last night. And then we didn’t. Maybe he couldn’t?”

I nod, my insides twisting. “Easier said than done when he had every right to expect me to shut him down again.”

She growls under her breath. “This is not a mature way to break up with people.”

That makes me smile. “He’s not breaking up with us. We won’t let that happen.”

“Promise?”

With every fibre of my being. “Yes.”

“I should tell you something else. He said…how you feel about me—and I guess he sees that as different from how you feel about him—that’s how he felt about you back then.”

That makes my head spin. “No. We had feelings for each other, but it wasn’t like that.”

“Like what?”

There’s no way I can tell Beth how I felt about her from that first moment I laid eyes on her. It makes me sound like a stalker. But holding back is what got us into this mess in the first place.

“You are my North Star,” I whisper. “Everywhere I am, no matter what I’m doing, I gravitate toward you. You hold still in the swirling chaos so I can find my way to you. You are bright and constant in my sky.”

“Maybe Hugh—”

I kiss her to stave off the questions and doubt. I can’t handle the guesswork any more. We’ll figure this out. We’ll get him back. But I kiss her because she’s my Beth, too.

Our Beth.

Fucking Hugh.

But he’s running scared because I hurt him a long time ago, when he was a brash young man, and maybe we need to start there to fix this.

I can’t do that right now.

But I can kiss her. I can make her dinner and hold her tight, make love to her and show her how much it means to me that she embraces not only me, but my crazy love for another lover, too.

She falls asleep after dinner. We’re talking on the bed, about bears and hiking, and I’m lazily stroking the bare skin of her back under her shirt.

And then all of a sudden, I realize she’s not awake, and she’s so sweetly konked out I don’t even try to rouse her for sex.

We have all the time in the world for sex later, and a good night’s sleep has been in short supply.

I grab a paperback from the living room, then tuck her under the blankets. I turn out all the lights but the small one beside me, and start reading.

Four hours later, I’m almost done the book. My eyes have gone gritty, but the story is compelling, and it’s not that late still. I glance at my phone.

How did it get to be almost one in the morning?

I set my book aside and close my eyes, but despite the tired lids, I’m wide awake. My pulse is jacked up from an emotional couple of days and a thrilling spy book.

And on my shoulder, I can feel Hugh’s mark. He left it and ran.

I try counting backwards, and thinking about the drill for cleaning a pistol, a machine gun. Packing lists for an overnight hiking trip I could take Beth on.

Hugh would be all over that.

My eyelids flutter open.

Fucking hell.

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