Holden, though. No. I can’t let my heart hope for anything between us. I’m not the girl who gets treated like shit by the asshole just to run back into his arms to have it done all over again. I hate those girls.
Grow a pair.
Skimming Tyler’s words, I start reading when I glimpse a section about a fight between him and Holden. My heart lurches.
A fight about me.
It was after Holden came back from boarding school. Huh. I flip back through quickly, thinking I missed a section. There’s a gap in the timeline. I shake my head and then read hurriedly. Holden doesn’t take long showers.
Oh, God. My eyes take in every word slowly. Rereading and then reading again. Tyler had suspicions about me and Holden, and followed his brother to the dead tree that day we met there. The day we kissed for the first and last time.
He saw everything. He didn’t just suspect. He knew. And he never said a word to me.
But he did to Holden.
I flip a couple of pages, and my chest constricts. The next time Holden met me at the tree and told me there was nothing between us, Tyler knew about that, too. And he knew the reason why.
Hearing the bathroom door squeak open, I lay the journal next to me on the chair. My eyes snap to Holden. I must be in shock, and maybe he is, too. Or maybe it’s the expression on my face. I don’t know. But . . .
He loved me.
In Tyler’s own words, according to his own account, Holden Marks was in love with me.
And he gave me up for his brother.
He loved me.
“Sam?” Holden’s voice is low, edgy. “What’s wrong?”
I only know one way to answer him. I’m on my feet and racing before my brain can catch up with my body. Then I’m slamming into him with full force. My arms go around his neck, pulling his face toward mine, my lips crashing into his.
Holden
Shock freezes me in place. My brain empties. And then I grasp Sam’s neck and her back, pulling her body closer to mine before I realize what I’m doing.
Her tongue darts into my mouth, and every nerve in my body combusts. My hand is in her wet hair, my fingers entwining, gripping, angling her head back as I meet her hungry kiss with the raw and unstoppable need setting my body on fire.
Then with a biting clarity, rational thought splinters through my head. I want to beat the shit out of it. With an ache in my chest and groin, I pull back and break the kiss. Pushing through a shaky breath, I ask, “What are you doing?”
Fuck. Yes, those words did just leave my mouth. But I can’t let her do this. She’s been through too much in too short a time. Her emotions and mind are all messed up.
Her arms are still locked around my neck, and her chest is rising and falling with her heavy breaths. “Just answer me one thing,” she says, and I swallow, terrified of what she wants to know. I force a nod, my movement stiff.
“There’re things you can’t tell me. I get that. But I think I deserve to know just one.” She blinks hard, and I watch as fear covers her eyes. “Did you ever love me?”
The world shifts under my feet. And I don’t know if it’s because I’m relieved or angry she asked that. Relieved because she didn’t ask the one thing I can’t tell her, or angry because I’ve wanted to tell her so badly for so long, but if I admit the truth—it means I don’t deserve her.
My mouth parts, and before I can grasp a full, coherent thought, I hear myself say, “I never stopped loving you.”
She licks her lips, and my heart beats like a freight train. “Make love to me, Holden.”
And it’s my fucking undoing.
I bend at the knees and grasp the backs of her thighs, lifting her into my arms. Unlike the show, or at the tree when I was a screwed up teenager who didn’t have a clue, I don’t stop. I walk her across the room and press her against the wall, so hard, I can feel every one of her curves against my body.
But hell if another thought doesn’t stick my brain. Lowering her feet to the ground, I step away. Sam releases a soft groan, and it tears at my insides. I have to do this first, though. I look into her eyes. “Do you trust me?”
She nods. “Yes.”
Untangling her arms from around my neck, I place them by her sides and then walk to her pack. Finding the bag of prescriptions, I read the labels. Then I pinch one of the antipsychotic pills between my fingers. I inhale a massive breath as I stalk back to her.
Standing before her, I hold up the pill. Her eyes widen. “Open your mouth.”
If she’s truly in her right mind, if she’s given us any thought at all, if she’s ready to release my brother’s ghost . . . This is it. If she’s not, all she has to do is tell me no.
I’ll fucking jump out the window if she does. Because there’s no way I’m coming down from what she just said. But I do love her. And this . . . between us—it has to be right.