His mind was spinning.His heart was wrecked.
He and Nicole hadn’t failed.
They’d been tricked.
Most likely by the people who were supposed to protect them.
He sat at his desk and opened his laptop.He had questions.And someone was going to answer them.
If Nicole was back, for good, then he had one shot to make this right.
One chance to rewrite the ending they'd been robbed of.
And he’d be damned if he let anyone take her away from him again.
The only person who might hold the truth was Paige.
He hadn’t thought about her in years, but now her name echoed in the back of his mind like a thread he needed to pull.She’d been there that night.She’d known them both, knew what they meant to each other.
He didn’t know where she was now.But he’d find her.
Because something had gone terribly wrong, and the past wasn’t done with him.Not yet.
If there was even a chance that Paige could help him piece together what really happened, what tore Nicole away from him, he had to take it.
Tripp was done living in the dark.Done swallowing someone else’s version of the truth.
He was going to dig up every lie, every hand that pulled the strings, and finally find out who tore his marriage to Nicole apart, and why.
And God help them, there had better be a very good reason.
Chapter4
Nicole had thought she’d buried it.
That night.
That chapel.
That boy.
The impossible hope of forever.
She thought it had all been laid to rest in a part of her heart she’d sealed off with steel and silence.But now, the grave had been disturbed.
Robbed actually.
By a man in a navy suit who still knew how to make her heart stutter and her knees weak, even as her brain screameddon’t you dare.
She stepped through the back door of her parents’ house just after sunset.The familiar creak of the hinges greeted her, followed by the scent of simmering onions and warm tortillas.Her mother was at the stove, humming an old love song in Spanish that made Nicole’s skin prickle.
Her father, Francisco, sat in his recliner in the den, eyes fixed on a game show, his worn fishing cap tilted low.A can of beer rested on the side table, unopened.
It was like walking into a time capsule.
Same smells.
Same sounds.
