“Oh, I assure you, I can do all sorts of things,” I said with a cocky grin.
“You’re evil, Garrett Finnegan!” She laughed. “I was being serious.”
“So was I.”
She raised her eyebrow and gave me a look that said I was being ridiculous.
“Okay,” I said, throwing my hands up in surrender. “I can do all sorts of things with my hands.”
She laughed and smacked me on the head.
“Ouch! I was being serious! It’s not my fault you keep thinking dirty thoughts of me. I was talking about fixing things. My dad always asks for my help around the house, so I’ve gotten pretty good at being handy.”
“So, you’ll be able to buy me a big, old house and fix it up one day?” she asked with a big grin on her face.
“No, we’ll buy the house and fix it up—together.”
Her eyes softened, and she gave me a small kiss. “Deal.”
“Why are you so quiet over there?” she asked.
I pulled up to the curb. “Just remembering when you asked me to buy you a big, old house and fix it up for you, like you were a princess.”
“I am a princess,” she insisted. Her mouth twitched as she tried to keep a straight face.
We got out of the car.
“Is that why you wanted to paint your bathroom pink?” I joked.
“It was not pink. It was a dusty red!”
“Baby, it was pink.”
“It was not!” She laughed.
Our laughter halted when we reached the porch. The front door was unlocked, and the lights were on inside.
“Did you leave it unlocked?” I asked, knowing she never did.
Mia was many things, but reckless was not one of them.
“No, I didn’t. Maybe Liv came by and left it open? She has a key.”
Liv would never have been so careless, and she certainly wouldn’t have left the lights on. That was a criminal offense in her mind. I pushed over the plant that covered Mia’s hidden key and found it missing. I suddenly felt uneasy, and I had an overwhelming urge to throw Mia over my shoulder, turn, and run.
“Go get in the car, Mia,” I turned around and whispered.
“No, it’s my house. I’m going with you,” she insisted, folding her arms and giving me the Mia equivalent of the death stare.
I weighed my options for a half a second and seriously contemplating the throwing over the shoulder routine, but knew I’d be flayed alive for it. So instead, I pushed forward, pulling her behind me for protection. She could complain about equal rights all she wanted, but I was still sticking her behind me.
We entered slowly and quietly. Sam met us at the door, wagging his tail and panting with excitement.
Some guard dog you are.
I looked toward the kitchen and saw nothing. We rounded the corner to the living room and found our intruder. The man rose from the couch as we entered, and his eyes immediately focused on me, narrowing as if he were sizing me up. He looked nothing like a burglar with his expensive clothes and country-club looks, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I turned to tell Mia to run, but she was frozen in place at the sight of the man invading her living room.
“Aiden?” She said it so soft, it was almost a whisper.
“Amelia,” he breathed out in relief.
I pivoted back around to her in utter confusion. “Is this your boss?” I asked, remembering the name from the bouquet of flowers she’d received.
As I watched her face morph into pure horror, I realized the truth. This was not her boss.
“Mia, who is this guy?” I asked, trying to keep myself from leaping across the room to tear him apart.
He was staring at her with a look of pure adoration and affection. There was emotional history there. My fists tightened at my sides, and I instantly saw red. I didn’t want anyone looking at her that way.
“Who am I?” he asked, his eyes brimming with anger. “I’m her fiancé. Who the hell are you?”
I felt physical pain from his words, and my hand flew up to my chest as my heart convulsed. I turned to her for some sort of sign that this was a joke, but all I saw were tears. Her silence told me everything I needed to know.
“Who am I? I’m no one,” I answered before walking out the door.
Chapter Twenty-Three
~Garrett~
Fiancé.
The word had rattled around in my brain like a runaway ping-pong ball since the night I ran out of Mia’s house almost a week ago. It was like a broken record on an endless loop, repeating over and over in my head, until I thought I might go mad from the constant repetition.
That singular word would be my first thought when I woke up with sweat dripping down my back from once again reliving the terror of losing her in my sleep. That horrible word would silently torment me as I buried myself in work, desperately trying to forget the past three months of my life. Drifting off to sleep, it would be the last thought I had along with the image of her tear-stained face following me when I’d walked out her front door.
She’d tried to call me. Hell, she’d tried to contact me by using every modern means of communication there was, but I hadn’t responded to a single one.
She hadn’t run after me that night, begging me to come back inside and swearing it wasn’t true.
No, she’d let me go and stayed with him—the fiancé.
She’d lied to me. For three months, she’d done nothing but lie to me.
Yet, my traitorous heart ached for her, and my body begged to be near her again.
I’d stormed out of her house that night and sped down the street, anger surging through every molecule in my body, and I’d just driven with no particular destination in mind. I’d driven until I found myself in the empty parking lot of the cemetery where we’d buried my father just a few weeks earlier.
I’d pulled myself out of my car and absently walked the short distance to my family’s plot where my father’s grave was now, still freshly packed with dirt and marked with a temporary nameplate. My brother-in-law, Ethan, rested nearby.
I didn’t know why I had gone there. I had just wanted to be close to my father. I’d knelt down on the soft, dewy grass next to where his body was buried, and I’d listened to the crickets chirp and frogs croak while I’d silently screamed inside.
Now, a week later, I was sitting at work, and I still felt exactly the same. My phone vibrated on the top of my desk, shaking me out of my thoughts. I leaned back in my office chair and picked it up to see another text message from Mia.