Page 41 of Fierce Love
“Ihaven’t seen you look at a woman like this since the last time I was in a room with you and Hollyn Davis,” Cal says as he takes his place beside me, leaning against the kitchen counter, watching Maren, Kinsley, and Hollyn tending to the black lab and her puppies on the other side of the room. Mom and her litter are tucked into a secure corner in a baby pool with the three women fawning over the tiny pups.
“Fucking pathetic, right? After all this time to be right back where I started.” I cross my arms, but I don’t stop soaking her in. Sometimes, I can’t quite believe she’s back, that I could have another shot at getting the future I once wanted more than anything.
“Makes my stone-cold heart question whether I’ve done the right thing staying in Bellerive. Maybe my version of whateverthatis exists out in the world somewhere. Someplace I’ve never been, will never be.”
“Want to hear the kicker? I told her I could forgive her for anything if she’d just give us another shot. And I’m pretty sure she turned me down.” The thought causes my voice to get raspy at the end. To have her this close, to know she’ll be this close for months, and to have the answer to my question be anois almost intolerable. “You ever considered becoming a TV producer?”
“No,” Cal says with a chuckle. “I don’t work for other people, in case you haven’t noticed. That’s why I like it out here. I decide who I interact with and when. Got people hired for all the rest.” He gives me a side-eye. “You must regret telling Stewart to go fuck himself.”
“I can’t regret that,” I say and release a deep sigh. “He would have been an asshole to her, and no matter what does or doesn’t happen between us again, I could never knowingly hurt her or see her hurt.” The black dog is panting her way through more contractions. “But I don’t know how to be around her and not want more.”
“Still the same bullshit holding her back?”
“Sort of. But I think it might be more that she doesn’t believe we can get past our old hurts.”
“Our? What’d you do toher?”
I scratch the back of my neck and try to formulate a coherent thought. “I don’t know,” I say, feeling my way through my response. “But it definitely feels like something bigger happened. I can’t explain it. She thinks I’ll be mad, but she didn’t cheat.”
“I’d have been shocked if she had,” Cal says, going to the fridge. “Beer?”
“No, I gotta drive them home.”
“I’m sure Maren would.”
I just stare at him, and he laughs.
“Forgot who I was talking to,” he says, popping the top off the bottle and taking a swig. “She thinks you’ll be mad at her…” His expression gets pensive, and he shakes his head. “I got nothing.”
“She never wanted me to get involved in her family drama. Was almost desperate to keep me away from any of it. Part of me wonders…” But I don’t even want to think it, let alone say it.
“If she was in legal hot water when she left?” Cal frowns. “Wouldn’t you have heard?”
“Maybe not? I went pretty far down the private investigator route looking for her. In hindsight, my eighteen-year-old ass must have hired the world’s worst PI. She was still in New York. She got a fucking degree.” I drag a hand through my hair and wish I’d said yes to the beer.
“A lot of fun things about being eighteen. How dumb we were and how smart we thought we were wasn’t one of them.”
“I didn’t look into anythingonthe island. If she made a bad choice, one she thought I wouldn’t like, that might make things hard for me, legally…”
“She’d have wanted to protect you from the fallout,” Cal fills in. “The same way you’d do for her. Again with the being eighteen and thinking we know it all.”
“If whatever happened would have put her in jail, I’d have moved heaven and earth to take the fall for her.”
“And Celia Tucker would have moved heaven and earth to keep you out of jail. Look what she did for Gage.”
“Yeah, well…” I sigh. “Not sure Gage would say that Mom was helpful in that situation. I love her, but her help comes with strings, always.”
“You did wonder whether Celia ran Hollyn off the island back then,” Cal reminds me. “Did you ever work up the nerve to ask?”
“Mom said she didn’t.Promised meshe didn’t.” I run my hands through my hair. I’d needed liquid courage to ask my mother back then. One too many gold rushes, and I wasgrilling her, determined to get to the truth, even if it meant my relationship with my mother was fractured forever. “And why would Hollyn think I’d be mad at her if my mom was to blame for her leaving? That wouldn’t make any sense.”
“The easiest way is to press Hollyn to tell you.”
“No,” I counter, “the easiest way is to let it go. As long as whatever took place back then isn’t going to happen again, none of that matters. She wasn’t unfaithful, and that’s really the only thing I couldn’t have stomached, would have struggled to get over.”
Cal raises his eyebrows and takes another long sip of his beer. “We’ll see how long that certainty lasts. Curiosity, man. Even if you can get past the hurt, you’ll always wonder why.”
“As long as I’ve got her again,” I say, “I don’t need to understand why.” And despite what Hollyn said earlier, I’m almost sure that’s true.
