Page 3 of The Heart Remembers

Plus, the way she was looking at me then, all saucer eyes of deep denim . . . and come to think of it, it wasn’t much different than the gaze she was giving me five minutes ago. Her sweet rosy lips, which she bit in the corner, just beckoned to be kissed, and not sweet or soft like that first time, but hard and rough like our second encounter. That was a separate night—a different memory—and one that marked me forever.

Katie Carter wanted a damn hero in her life, and I wanted to be one for her. For some reason, I wanted to make her proud. This girl I hardly knew, who kissed me like I was the only man in the world for her, had scarred my heart with a second kiss. I wanted to make her remember me. I’d be coming home someday, and if she meant what she’d said, she’d be waiting for me. We’d pick up where we left off with that kiss, adding in touching, discovering, and eventually me fucking her.

Whoa!

That’s where I need to stop short because I will not be fucking Katie Carter. I will not be touching, discovering, or kissing her again. No, not Katie. Not her. Not ever.

First, because she’s a Carter, which makes her extraordinary in my book and I’m not worthy of her.

Second, because she’s a Carter, making her off-limits, and just . . . I’m not good enough for her.

Despite her filling my dreams on cold desert nights and hot afternoon runs, she is not going to want a man damaged in body, heart, and spirit, who happens to have a newborn son.

Jesus, her face when I told her. She looked so disappointed in the fact I have a child without a wife. I’d never trade AJ, but I’m reluctant to admit that my one-night stand turned into a friend-with-benefits arrangement and thus resulted in a pregnancy that my friend did not want. I begged her to keep the pregnancy and give us a chance. I told her I’d marry her, but she rejected me. She rejected her child as well, and it’s something I’m trying to come to terms with.

Women always walk away from the Walkers.

My mother left my father.

Tricia left Trent.

Alicia left me.

As I stand inside the bathroom, the door now closed, I tip my head back to the barrier placed between Katie Carter and me. It’s all in the past. It’s the history in us, between us, but it’s only that—behind us. My future is uncertain, once again, which is why Tricia insisted I come here. I hated to be a party crasher on Tom’s family reunion plus his big birthday, but Tricia swore he wouldn’t mind.

“You know Tom. The more, the merrier.”

Sixty years old. Shit. I wasn’t certain I’d make it to thirty-five, and I was already thirty-four. I should be having a midlife crisis around now, and I definitely was, although I didn’t feel accomplished enough to have a crisis over anything. I had plenty of issues, though. Severed leg. Single father. Shit job.

I’d fucked around when I first came back to the states with my wounded warrior status. I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted after twelve years in the military. I had a smattering of IT jobs as that’s part of the training I received fighting a hidden enemy. Then I was sent to rehab in Tennessee. A horse farm of all places to help me get in touch with myself, my ghosts, and my losses.

It’d been a good place for me but not a permanent position.

I went rogue again, met Alicia, and the past eighteen months is my most recent history and not a pretty one. The only benefit is AJ, which reminds me, I need to go save him from one doting Tricia Ramirez getting her baby fix from him on the lower level.

+ + +

“All set up there? Accommodations meet your standards?” Tricia still has dark brown hair and these amazing moss-green and bark-brown eyes. It fits her personality. She’s stable and tough like a tree, withstanding whatever weather comes her way. She’s the mother I never had as mine left me when I was still an infant. Oh, how history repeats itself. She was with my older brother, Trent, then, and raised me along with him as my father decided the only thing he wanted to raise was a bottle to his lips. Eventually, he’d drown under what poured out. Alcohol killed him.

“You know, my standards are pretty low,” I mutter. I haven’t had a lot of faith in myself over the years. First, when I graduated high school, and then when I lost my team. I live in decent places, but nothing like this house. I’ve had okay jobs but nothing truly fulfilling.

“Present accommodations seem pretty hot.” Leon, Tricia’s husband, wiggles his brows at his wife. He’s a large man with hair cropped short to his head like mine. His cappuccino skin tone is mostly covered in tattoos, and he’s still a tough-looking son of a bitch, but I know he has a soft heart.

As a couple, they’re in charge of this week, and placed me on that upper floor for an unknown reason. Torture. Leon is the only one in the world who knows I kissed a girl who took my breath away, haunted all my dreams, and saved me on occasion when I thought of her in tough times. But he has no idea it was Katie. Leon said he understood that experience. He loves Tricia with everything he has. He had humble beginnings and worked hard to renovate a house they call home. It was my second home during high school. Now, I don’t really have a home but a small rental apartment in Florida, which I hate and isn’t large enough for a baby who will someday be a boy. He needs a house with a yard and space to roam as I did.

I still want space to roam.

“Yeah, this is pretty tight,” I tease, meaning the place as it’s off the charts nice and probably expensive. The view alone has to be worth a million dollars. All that lake and glittering sunshine pebbling off small waves just warms my insides. It reminds me of summer days at the public beach in town and summer nights in fields making out with girls.

Some dickhead better never have taken advantage of Katie like I did.

The thought surprises me and so does the possessiveness. She isn’t mine to obsess over.

“What’s the plan for the week?” I ask, taking a seat at the large kitchen island when Tricia refuses to hand AJ back to me. She and Leon have five children of their own, all of whom are here as they range in age from late teens to early twenties. I can’t keep up with their ages, but their names are Isabelle, Israel, Liza, Maggie, and Junior. He’s Leon’s clone.

“The usual. Barbecues. A baseball game. Time at the tavern. A boat day. The party at the barn.” It didn’t sound like any other week to me for the Carters. They liked to spend time with one another with a weekly Thursday night venture to Town Tavern, no longer the only bar in town, plus they had constant excuses for backyard celebrations and boating on the regular as Tom has a pontoon with his house being on the inner lake.

I laugh as Tricia jiggles AJ on her hip. “How are you doing?” She speaks to my son, but she’s addressing me.