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“We’ll see.”
I sighed and cleaned up the dinner.
“I’m sure Amelia is sad to miss you,” Dad said when I returned from the kitchen. “Maybe you can come back tomorrow. Never hurts to see your ugly mug around these parts.”
“I can’t tomorrow.” I cleared my throat. “I’m going out.”
“With friends?”
“On a date. With a guy.”
Dad’s smile froze and his gaze darted back to the screen. “Anyone I know?”
“No. Someone I met at the shop.”
My father nodded and said nothing else, and suddenly I knew how Amelia felt—lost and scattered. I wished I had Mom to talk to about a first date with someone who wasn’t Holden. My guts twisted with nerves, but mostly with an ugly feeling. As if I were betraying us.
But there is no us.
After I’d left him in Paris, Holden had seemingly pulled his life together. Late last year, he’d published a book, Gods of Midnight, that was now topping bestseller lists and garnering major acclaim from every corner of the literary world. According to an article in Vanity Fair, he was about to embark on a thirty-city book tour.
Book tours and interviews, but not one fucking word to me.
I’d promised Holden I’d wait for him no matter how long it took, but the years were getting longer. With every passing day, it seemed clearer that he’d moved on. Maybe met someone else. Or lots of someone elses, while my heart was firmly locked on his.
I’d rented my own apartment to have some privacy, but every night I came home to an empty space. Ate alone. Slept alone. Irony of ironies, I now had privacy coming out of my eyeballs.
That’s called loneliness.
So when Brad Martin, with his easy smile and nice eyes, asked to grab some dinner at the Mexican restaurant down the road from the shop, I said yes. I had to do something that wasn’t reading Holden’s book cover to cover every night until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I’d sent his journals back to him—they were never mine to keep—and dove into the words he shared with the world. Because that’s where he was.
That’s all I had left of him.
I blinked out of my thoughts and patted my dad on the shoulder. “What about you, Dad? Ever think about getting back out there?”
“Oh no, no,” Dad said gravely, shaking his head. “Your mom…she was the one for me, River. She was something special.”
“Yes, she was,” I said gruffly.
Dad’s eyes on the TV turned glazed and distant. “A woman like her doesn’t come around but once in a lifetime. We were living in Alabama when we met, you know.”
I knew. He’d told me this story a hundred times.
“She would’ve moved with me no matter where I was drafted, but she loved the ocean. When I got injured, we came here. Easiest decision I ever made in my life. I was hurting real bad. Not just my knee, but from missing my shot at the NFL. Seeing her face light up when I told her we were moving to Santa Cruz…” His eyes filled. “That was worth everything.”
His voice cracked and his body bent with sobs. I put my arm around him as best as I could, lending him my strength. But his tears tried to draw out mine; I teetered on the edge of that black pit of grief but couldn’t let myself fall in. Too much was riding on me keeping my shit together.
The roar of an engine sounded from the driveway, followed by a rattle.
“Someone’s got a hole in his exhaust system,” I said.
“That’s Amelia’s prince charming,” Dad said, pulling himself together, wiping his nose on a napkin. “Go kick his ass, would you?”
I smiled. “I gotta get going, actually. I’ll see Amelia before I
go.” I stopped at the door. “You’ll be okay?”
“You don’t worry about me.”
