Page 96 of You, Me, and Forever

I thought of the song she loved. Those words flooded my head at the moment. I knew I shouldn’t say anything, but she’d put herself out there and told me that she loved me. I owed her more than what I’d given her.

Me: Montana. I remember everything.

Honey Badger: I love you too, Myles.

She knew what my words meant.

That I was a coward, incapable of loving her the way she deserved.

That sick feeling in my stomach lingered as I handed Daniel the bag of food to take to his daughter.

And when I boarded the plane home, I stared out the window and hoped the feeling would pass.

I just needed to get back to my routine.

Back to my way of living.

Once I was home, I would stop thinking about Blushing, Alaska.

About her.

Chapter Twenty-FiveMontana

The next two weeks were ridiculously busy. I’d spent my days getting ready for our next wedding and choosing finishes for the renovation out at the ranch. We’d decided to name the boutique hotel the Blushing Inn. Violet and I liked that it had the name of our town, as well as our business. Connor thought it was a perfect fit as well.

I spoke to Myles’s assistant almost daily, and I refused to ask how his boss was doing, even if I was dying to know.

Even if every night since he’d left, I cried myself to sleep. I didn’t cry once when Phillip and I broke up. Hell, I didn’t even cry when I’d learned that he’d cheated on me with his now fiancée.

But the loss of Myles St. James from my life had been massive. Painful.

I’d started feeling it the day we’d returned from Banff. I knew I couldn’t say goodbye to him without falling apart, so I’d said I was sick. And maybe in the traditional sense I’d stretched the truth to protect my already broken heart. But I’d been physically ill, knowing the time had come.

Somewhere along the way, I’d fallen deeply in love with a man I couldn’t keep.

He’d sent my father over to my house with food, and I’d pretended that I didn’t want to get him sick. I took the food and insisted he head home.

I’d always been someone who liked to deal with my sadness on my own. Well, aside from Violet, who didn’t care if I told her not to come over.

She came anyway.

She’d spent that first night at my house, letting me cry it out. She didn’t remind me once that I’d done this to myself. She didn’t shame me for getting myself into this situation.

She’d just let me cry.

And the next day I’d insisted I was fine, and I threw myself into work.

But I’m anything but fine.

So, when I spoke to Connor, which was almost daily, I made a point to keep it all about business.

And that’s the way I wanted to keep it.

We worked well together, and I was grateful that I had a contact other than Myles.

“You’ve been working such long hours,” Violet said as she drove out toward the Blushing Inn so that we could check on the renovations, since it had been a few days since we’d been out there. Charlie said they’d had a bunch done for us to come see, and the hope was that we would be open for business in a few weeks.

“I could have done this on my own. You need to sleep, Monny. You look exhausted,” Violet said.

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