Whatever word he’d readied himself to say fell to the wayside, replaced by widened eyes and a gaping mouth. The same shock he wore on his expression, I felt in my chest, and we both stood there, staring at the other, no words spoken between us.
Even though he’d continued to be Matt’s best friend through the years, I hadn’t seen him much. In fact, it’d been at least three years since we’d been in the same room together—could’ve easily been four. Once upon a time, we used to see each other often, and our conversations were effortless. All that vanished after one senseless night in Vegas—the same night I not only had sex for the first time, but also got married, all without a single recollection of either instance. As if we’d never met before, the man standing in front of me was a stranger. Not only did he feel different, but he looked different as well.
Holden had forever been good looking. Tall and in shape with abs I could trace with my fingertips, longish dark hair that always seemed mussed no matter what style he wore it in, and the most unusual shade of green eyes I’d ever seen—upon close inspection, they appeared to be more of a mixture between slate and hazel, but from a distance, they were a rare, forest green. His skin tone fluctuated depending on the time of year—tan during the summer, and the color of coffee with a lot of milk in the winter, creamy almost.
Yet, the matured version of him caught me completely off guard. I guess I’d expected the same guy from years ago to answer the door, expected the guy I’d left to be the same one I found. But that’s not at all what I got. Still just as tall, he wasn’t quite as lanky as before, his chest had filled out, and his shoulders seemed broader. In front of me stood a man—a grown man—with short, dark-brown hair that curled close to the scalp on the sides, golden skin, and the same hard, chiseled jaw I used to dream about kissing.
“Holden…” It was nothing but a whisper.
He pinched his brows together and squinted at me before glancing over my shoulder and then off to the side, as if checking the street for something or someone. A slight twitch of insecurity immediately struck me, leaving me to wonder if maybe he’d been expecting someone. Another woman perhaps.
Although, that insecurity lasted all of five seconds. It disappeared when he looked me up and down, practically appraising me, and asked, “What are you doing here?” His voice came out deep, heavy with disgust, the repulsion dripping from each word. It erased the desire coursing through me, acting like a bucket of cold water being splashed in my face.
It reminded me of why I was here in the first place.
I didn’t come to reconcile with my husband—no matter what my unconscious thoughts tried to tell me during sleeping hours. They were nothing more than fantasies, lies told to me by the romantic voices driven by Disney fairy tales. The more realistic thoughts kept me in check, reminding me that had Holden truly spent the last five years in love with me, he wouldn’t have kept this marriage a secret.
Suddenly, my hands molded back into fists, and an ache in my jaw ignited. “Mind if I come in?”
He glanced over my shoulder once more before taking a step back and begrudgingly inviting me in. Immediately to the right was the living room with a couch, loveseat, and recliner. Not waiting for him to offer me a seat, I took the middle cushion on the long couch and waited for him to join me.
“It’s been, what…three, four years, Jelly? What brings you here now?”
I hated hearing my family nickname roll effortlessly off his tongue. It used to be a comfort, a reminder of how close we were, of how close I’d wanted to be with him, but that was no longer the case. Not after he caused the hole in my chest by his blatant avoidance of me following our trip to Vegas. And especially not now after finding out we’d gotten married and he never bothered to tell me. Not once. Instead, he’d let me carry on as if I were the single woman in my early twenties I’d believed I was.
“I think you know why I’m here, Holden.”
“No, I honestly don’t. I haven’t seen you in years, and I’m pretty sure you’ve never stepped foot inside this house. You rarely come home, and when you do, it’s for a major holiday. You stay for a day, maybe two, and then leave just as fast as you came. You’ve made it extremely obvious how much you hate this town and everyone in it. So no…I don’t have a clue why you’re here.”
I huffed out a breath of frustration, having debated this same argument more times than I could count with my own family. “I don’t hate this town. My lack of presence has nothing to do with my feelings for this city or the people who live in it.” Although, it did have something to do with a specific resident, particularly the one sitting across from me. “I went away to college and spent the time enjoying myself. Being young and having fun. Isn’t that what most college-age people do? And now that I’m finished with school, I plan on moving back.”
“Yeah, heard you graduated a few months ago. Where have you been? Because you didn’t come back here. So you can’t say college has kept you away, because that ended, and yet you’ve still been absent.”
I wanted to know what world he lived in where a twenty-three-year-old moves back home with her parents the second she graduates from college. It seemed everyone I knew lived in this world—except me. I’d spent my whole life living in someone else’s shadow, come second—or fifth—to one sibling or another. The last five years away, on my own, being my own person was probably the best five years of my life, yet these people expected me to just walk away from it as if what waited for me here was better. I was the life of the party in college—literally, everyone used me to help plan their soirées. Here, I was nothing more than the youngest Brewer.
“I’ve spent the last couple of months on vacation…which brings me to why I’m here. Why don’t you tell me what happened in Vegas all those years ago? I’d love to finally hear the story of how I so readily gave you my virginity.”
“You still don’t remember, do you?” he asked with a scoff and slight headshake.
The fact I couldn’t recall what was meant to be the most important night of my life did nothing but frustrate me. Over the years, that frustration had burned into ire. It wasn’t directed at anyone, just at life in general, but hearing him accost me for not remembering—as if it were a slap in his face, not mine—made me turn my anger on him.
“Did you expect it to come back to me in the form of a dream? I was drunk. Very drunk. The only reason I knew I’d had sex was because I woke up the next morning naked, bare as the day I was born, and sore in places no virgin should ever be sore.”
Holden’s lips tightened and the muscles in his jaw flexed. His gaze narrowed while his nostrils flared wickedly. I’d never seen him this…pissed off. Upset. I couldn’t tell what emotion he felt because every part of him was a contradiction. Finally, he stood up and turned his back to me, his hands settling on his hips while his shoulders drooped, almost in defeat.