He must have carried me to bed.
The thought sends a strange flutter through my chest. I glance around the room, taking it in properly in the light of day. The big dresser against the wall matches the bed with its simple elegance. There’s a stack of fresh towels on top, but nothing more. No pictures, no books. Nothing personal.
A chair in the corner holds a stack of neatly folded clothes. The faint, unmistakable scent of him clings to the pillows. Pine and soap and… something all him.
I lean back against the headboard and close my eyes for a moment, imagining what it would have been like if he’d stayed with me last night.
What would it have been like to wake up wrapped in those thick, strong arms? Pressed up against his chest, held safe and protected from the raging storm outside.
The image slips into my mind, the way countless fantasies of Holt have taken up residency in my imagination over the years, only this one is different because it’s based in reality. It’s so much more than the fantasy of a young girl who has built up the perfect man in her mind.
This feels right.
Very, very right.
The realization settles into me and has me reaching for the nightstand where I left my journal the night before, flipping to a fresh page.
Writing in my journal is more than a habit for me; it’s more like an obsession—a way to deal with the things in my head that feel too big to process.
I did it. I left school.
The decision to leave school only a few months away from graduating with my finance degree was pretty major, to say the least.
It wasn’t that Icouldn’tdo it anymore; I just… couldn’t.
I felt like I was suffocating at school, and it wasn’t just the classes. It was everything. I didn’t fit there. It wasn’t my future. Every morning when I woke up, I felt a little more like I was dying inside. It was like I was trying to force myself into a sweater that was too small. I’d been trying so hard to be a version of myself that just didn’t fit.
I hadn’t even told my mom yet. I couldn’t figure out how to tell her that, after all she’d sacrificed as a single mom, I just couldn’t do it. Part of me was hoping that after a visit to Iron Peak and my dad, I might have some kind of great insight on how to break it to her that I chose something else.
Something more.
I jot down Holt’s name without even thinking about it. Not that I should be surprised. Besides the whole quitting school thing, waking up in the bed of the man who’d been the object of my fantasies mywhole life was up there with things in my head that werewaytoo big to process.
And really, I’ve been writing about him for years. Not like this, of course. It’s never been real. Never tangible.
He’s always been a quiet measuring stick that I’ve used to size up every man I’ve met. And every single one of them fell short in ways I could never quite explain.
Because they weren’t him.
They weren’t the man who, even as a child, made me feel special. Made me feel seen and heard. And safe.
I pause, my pen hovering over the page as the memory surfaces, just as vivid as if it hadn’t been over a decade ago.
I’m twelve again, sitting on the steps outside of my parents’ place before they divorced, knees pulled up to my chest, head down, trying to hide because one of Dad’s other friends had laughed at me. I know now he hadn’t meant anything by it when he asked why I didn’t have a boyfriend.
He’d just been playing. But I’d been so sensitive back then, the last of my friends to hit puberty, I was already self-conscious, and I took his teasing to heart. Worse, I let it get to me and cried in front of them all.
Holt noticed and stepped in. He didn’tmake a big show of it or turn it into a big deal; he simply stepped between us, turned to his buddy, and said, “Enough.”
That was it. Just one word. That was all it had taken.
The guy backed off immediately, muttering an apology, and even though I was already upset, I could tell he hadn’t meant anything by it, but the damage had been done.
I ran outside in tears, where Holt found me a few minutes later.
“You okay?”
I nodded, even though my throat was tight.
