AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Gemma shrugged and continued sipping her iced tea.
“What?” I asked, giving her a pointed look.
Her green eyes met mine. “Holly doesn’t want to go, Jack. She wants you to give her a reason to stay.”
“Wasn’t that the whole reason we got engaged?”
Gemma rolled her eyes to the ceiling as though pleading with the gods to save her from my stupidity. She stopped just short of muttering men under her breath. “You have to see it from her point of view, dude.”
“That’s hard to do when it changes every other day…”
Gemma glared at me.
I straightened in my seat. “Sorry. Go on.”
“Holly’s been through this once before. She got engaged, married, and that didn’t exactly work out so well. She wound up divorced and heartbroken. She’s a strong, independent, and headstrong woman but that’s only because she had to be. She had to learn to put on her game face and charge forward, no matter what was coming for her, because she was on her own. That’s not what she wants, though. She wants someone to take care of her and be there for her at the end of the day. She wants someone who is looking forward to building the future she’s had in her heart all these years. The one that got stolen.”
Gemma’s words sent my heart into a frantic pace. Emotions swept over me like a riptide and tugged me in all different directions. “I want to be that guy, Gemma. I’ve told her that over and over again but she doesn’t believe me.”
“Her ex-husband cheated on her, Jack. That’s not something she can just gloss over and forget. Sure, it was years ago, but that doesn’t mean those memories don’t come flying right back to the surface when she gets scared. And right now, with all the change and unrest you two have been through over the past few months, I’m sure there were plenty of times she’s been scared to death!”
It was hard for me to imagine Holly being afraid. Even when I was standing beside her. She hid it well. But Gemma was right. Things had constantly been changing since we got home from Germany. First, the house buying process had been intense and then all the work and energy she’d poured into rebuilding her accounting business.
“Fuck,” I whispered as I processed every memory.
Even things that I’d complained about—finding the perfect coffee table or dishes—wasn’t really about what was happening. To Holly, those things weren’t just things. They were security. Stability. The future. And what had I done? Told her it didn’t matter what kind of coffee table we had and that she shouldn’t spend so much time pouring over Pottery Barn catalogs. That no matter how much time we spent shopping, short of a team of highly trained professionals, we were never going to have a magazine-worthy living room—the dog hair alone…
I winced. “I royally fucked this up.”
Gemma slid from Aaron’s lap and came around the table. She patted me on the shoulder. “Yep. You both fucked it up. But it’s not too late to fix it.”
I sighed. “I don’t even know where to start. I’ve tried apologizing.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out. A little space is probably a good thing. Maybe in a few days you give her a call and ask her to dinner. Take it back to basics. Take her out on a date. Put some effort into it. Make her swoon over you.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Gemma.”
Aaron stared at his bride-to-be with pure adoration. “You’re amazing, baby. Do I make you swoon?”
She leaned over and kissed him. “All the time, lover.” She turned and darted from the room. “Now that I know you’re not going to kill each other, I gotta get ready for work. I’ll see you two later.”
12
Holly
“What about this one?”
I turned and saw Rachel holding up a neon orange lamp at the other end of the aisle. My nose wrinkled and I shook my head. “No way.”
“Well, you said it was modern,” she said as if that excused the hideous light fixture.
“Like in this era, Rach.”
She scoffed and rounded the end of the aisle to peruse the next one over. After sleeping in way too late, we’d gone to lunch at one of our favorite old haunts and then went shopping at South Coast Plaza. I’d decided I needed a new lamp for my desk at work. There was already one there, but I wanted something personal to give the office my own flavor. I wasn’t running my own business anymore, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t have some say over the decor. At least in my own little slice of heaven.
I picked up a fluted, hand blown piece and turned it so that the shards of colorful glass inside caught the light. They sparkled against the shelf and I smiled to myself. It would look amazing in the office and the ever-changing colors on the desk would remind me of the kaleidoscope I’d had as a girl.
