I never stopped wanting them.
And I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do about it.
Chapter 2
Theo
Imake it to the truck before I fall apart.
That’s something. That’s actually impressive, if you think about it. Cara Donovan standing in the window. Honey-citrus scent drifting through the snow, those dark eyes locked on mine for the first time in ten years. And I managed to nod like a normal human being and walk back to my truck without doing anything embarrassing.
My hands are shaking so hard I can barely get the key in the ignition.
I sit there in Eileen’s driveway. Engine running. Heat blasting. Trying to remember how to breathe.
The casserole dish is still on the porch railing. I should go back and put it somewhere more sensible. Eileen’s going to come out tomorrow and find it frozen solid. But there’s absolutely no way I’m walking back up there.
She was RIGHT THERE.
Ten years. Ten years of wondering what I’d do if I ever saw her again, what I’d say, how I’d act. I had vague fantasies about being cool and unbothered. Maybe delivering some devastating one-liner that would make her realize what she gave up.
Instead I nodded at her like she was a casual acquaintance and fled the scene.
Real impressive, Holt. Ten years of waiting and that’s what you came up with.
I force myself to put the truck in reverse. Tires crunching through snow as I back out of the driveway.
I don’t let myself look at the window again.
I can feel her watching. Or maybe I’m imagining it. Either way, I keep my eyes forward like a man who has his life together.
I do not have my life together.
The drive home takes twelve minutes. I spend the first five white-knuckling the steering wheel and the next seven having a very calm, very rational internal meltdown.
She’s back. She’s actually back.
After ten years of silence, ten years of wondering, ten years of planting flowers in her grandmother’s garden like some kind of lovesick idiot, she’s HERE. In Honeyridge. Staying at Eileen’s house like no time has passed at all.
And she looked?—
God, she looked good. Different. Older, obviously, but in ways that made my chest tight. Softer somehow, despite the tension in her shoulders.
Still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
Which is inconvenient as hell given the circumstances.
Also, I could smell her. Through the window. Through the snow. Through ten years of distance.
Honey and citrus, richer and more complex than I remember, and my whole body lit up like a Christmas tree the second it hit me. Every instinct I have started screamingomega, pack, MINE.
Which is insane.
She’s not mine. She stopped being mine a decade ago when she stopped answering my calls.
But my alpha instincts didn’t get that memo.
The farmhouse appears through the snow. I sit in the driveway for another minute, trying to get my face under control.
