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Holden kicked the door shut and drew me into his strong arms, murmuring against the top of my head. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay, Alicia. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” I sobbed, clinging to him tighter as my chest ached with nostalgic agony for a time so long ago, when the porch had last looked remotely like that, but combined with it was also the pain of not knowing where he’d gone or how to fix us when I didn’t even know how he felt. “I just missed you.”

“Fuck.” He buried his face in my hair, then lifted me clean off my feet and carried me through the heavily decorated foyer to the living room. Once we reached the couch, he sat down and arranged me on his lap, drawing his head back to look into my eyes. “Okay, look. You’re already upset and I don’t really understand why, but I’m going to pile on for a minute.”

“Okay?” I said quietly. “Pile on, how?”

“By admitting that I was an idiot, Alicia.”

“What?” I asked through the tears, frowning as I stared into his eyes and saw something different there. A light I hadn’t seen before that made him look younger, lighter, and happier than I’d thought possible. But then, unfortunately, I spotted him biting his lip from the corner of my eye and a jolt of lust shot through me too.

Wow. How am I so messed up when he was only gone for one night? What the hell is happening to me?

He smiled, his grip tightening on my hips and those eyes steadfast on mine. “Well, for starters, I was an idiot for not taking you with me. I know it was only a day, but I missed you too, baby.”

“You did?”

“Oh, yeah.” He exhaled a long, slow breath as he kept staring at me like he’d found something he’d spent his entire life searching for. My heart rate kicked up into a higher gear, racing when I realized this was what Tasha had been talking about.

Holden really did look at me like he⁠—

“I love you,” he said. “I love you, Alicia. I didn’t tell you before because I guess I just didn’t feel like I deserved you. I didn’t feel like I deserved to love you.”

My lips parted and my heart tripped over itself. The tears finally slowed as I wondered if all this was a dream. It sure felt like one coming true, but when I brought my palm to his chest, I could feel the steady, confident thump of his heart and I knew this wasn’t only happening in my head.

“You love me?” I whispered. “Are you sure?”

He barked out a dry, emotional laugh and nodded. “Yeah, I’m pretty fucking sure. I know I’ve probably done a good job at making you feel like it’s not true, but it is. I wasn’t pushing you away because of you, baby. I was pushing you away because of me, and I’m sorry. That’s the biggest reason I was an idiot.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, keeping that hand on his chest when I pressed the other to his cheek. “You really were.”

He leaned into my touch, chuckling as he snaked an arm around my hips to bring me even closer. “Look, I’m not used to laying my heart out wide like this, but the bottom line is that I was wrong. I was wrong about you, I was wrong about me, and I think I might even have been wrong about my father.”

My eyes widened. “That’s where you went?”

“Yeah.” He rolled both lips into his mouth and inhaled a deep breath through his nostrils. “It was time to put it behind me. I wanted to be ready to move forward and I couldn’t do that if it still felt like the past had my balls in vise, so I went to see him.”

“And?”

“And I realized he’s just a man,” he said, his head shaking. “Court Thayer isn’t some monster or an omnipresent creature who has supernatural power over my actions or my future. He’s a man who made some big mistakes and he’s paying for them. I don’t have to follow in those footsteps. There’s no random glitch in my DNA or a curse on who I will become just because I look like him.”

“No, there isn’t.” I lowered my forehead to his. “That’s a lot to have been carrying for so long. It must be such a relief to be able to let it go.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice rougher now. “But the point is that I never would’ve gotten here without you. You’re my home, Alicia. Wherever you are, that’s where I want to be.”

“I thought you didn’t want marriage, children, or any of that stuff.”

He brought a palm to my cheek, stroking his thumb across it as he chuckled. “That’s only because I thought that if I never needed anyone, no one could ever hurt me again, but then you came along and ruined that plan within the first five minutes.”

“The first five minutes, huh? That seems unlikely. It was hate at first sight for you because I wasn’t wearing a helmet.”

He reached for my hand. “Hate? No. That definitely wasn’t hate. That was my first taste of the protective beast you awakened deep down inside.”

I smiled, swiping at the tears streaming down my cheeks with the back of my free hand. I dragged in a deep breath and finally asked the questions that had been plaguing my every thought for weeks. “Would you still have felt this way if not for the contract? Is there any world in which you would’ve been with me if Alex hadn’t forced you?”

“He didn’t force me, baby,” Holden murmured, gently stroking his thumb across my knuckles. “Sure, he pitched the idea. Just like he pitched it to you, but neither of us had to sign those papers. There was no gun to our heads.”

“But?”