“They miss you.” He means his family. He means himself.
“How’s Mutt?” he asks as if I don’t send Mutt to his door every morning for a walk with him. Like silent, shared custody.
“He misses you.” I mean me. I mean the girl who used to believe in Fate.
“He can come home anytime. I’ll wait forever for him.” He means me.
And he doesn’t mean to make me cry, but he does.
“Loch, I…”
I let him see them brimming in my eyes because I don’t know what to say. I’m still miles from shore with my emotions. Trying every day not to drown in them. It was so much, all at once. The lies and the truth. And he doesn’t know all of it either.
“Alena.” He steps so close to me, his words a whisper, his presence so powerful, I can’t breathe. “I’m giving you time. But it doesn’t mean for one goddamn second that I willevergive up on us.”
There’s a new tattoo on his neck.
A small green rose on the spot I’d always kiss.
It hitches my breath. “Don’t.”
“Don’twhat?” His brows bend, worried.
Those dark, thick, sexy brows I wanted to pluck days before our wedding. I still have my dress. He still has my ring. It’s dangling from his neck, on a gold chain.
“Don’t give up on us,” I whisper. Letting the tear, spilling down my cheek say so much more.
Like, I love him. I’ll never stop loving him. This just hurts so much.
He swallows. His knuckles, clutching his cup. His lips part, closing the distance between us. To kiss?
But he halts, waiting for me.
For us.
Instead, he shares, “I’ve loved Slurpees since I was a little boy. My mom had this friend who was like a daughter to her. This badass young friend with long russet hair, big brown eyes, and freckles on her nose. She had dirt under her fingernails when she gave me my first Slurpee. Cherry cola. Classiclike her. And I’ve loved them ever since because she was so goddamn beautiful.”
My mom.
Loch remembers my mom.
I blink back tears.
“So, you see, Alena.” He leans forward, brushing his lips over my hair. “Fate won’t give up on us either.”
Then he leaves, giving me space, the bell over the door chiminggoodbye.
CHAPTER FORTY
ALENA
“Woof!”
Mutt wakes me. I jump out of my skin because he barks every time one of those damn Harleys thunders around the bend, echoing up the mountain for miles.
But this one?
It’s rumbling right outside my cabin door at eight thirty in the morning.
