Ready For You (30 page)

I want you to be my wife, Amelia. I want you to be the mother of my children. Please, do me the honor and make me the luckiest man alive
, he’d said. With a wide-mouthed grin, he’d dropped to one knee.
 

I’d been frozen stiff from the shock until I’d finally burst into panicked tears before running out of the candlelit restaurant. With shaky hands, I’d gathered as many things as I could from our apartment, and I’d spent the night at a friend’s house. Even though she hadn’t understood my reasoning, the next day, she’d gone over and packed everything else for me while Aiden drilled her on my whereabouts. She hadn’t given in, and eventually, she’d made it out with everything I owned.
 

I’d left the next day, getting behind the wheel and driving to an unknown destination. When I’d realized where I was headed, I’d pulled into a shabby motel for the night, and I’d emailed Liv from my phone, not expecting her to respond. It had been eight years of radio silence. I had deserted my best friend without any explanation. I hadn’t deserved a response, but being the person she was, Liv had welcomed me into her home with open arms.

I’d left Aiden with no explanation. I couldn’t blame him for the length he went to find me.
 
I should have never ran, but running had always been what I did best and now I had to fix it.
 
It had been unfair and careless of me, and over those few hours after I watched Garrett walk out, I’d tried to make it up to him. There had been so much I’d never told him.

He’d known where I was from, but that was the extent of it. He hadn’t known anything about my family or the type of home I was raised in. Aiden hadn’t known the life I had before. For him, I was a completely different person.
 
I was Amelia.
 
Strong, independent and emotionally stable.
 
After I left home, I bottled so many things up, thinking that by doing so, I was making a better life for myself and the new people in it.
 
Aiden didn’t know about Garrett, the baby, or the consequences of my actions from that part of my past.
 

I’d falsely let Aiden believe that my heart was still mine to give, and for that, I would forever be sorry. When he’d left the next day, feeling destroyed and rejected, I’d told him he deserved better than a woman who wouldn’t be able to give him her whole heart.
 

He’d only given me a slight smile, shaking his head, as he’d said,
Oh, Amelia, I didn’t deserve you.

I’d spent the next few days desperately trying to reach Garrett, but my calls and texts had gone unanswered.
 

I feared my decision to stay and finally tell Aiden the truth, rather than running off to explain things to Garrett, had cost me everything.
 

After sloshing around at work for several days, Leah had finally thrown down the gauntlet and demanded information. She’d pulled me into an empty birthing suite, and I had finally told her everything. I’d cried until my eyes were bloodshot, and I couldn’t make a single syllable without hiccupping. She’d been everything I expected Leah to be—compassionate, caring, and blunt.

“You’ve got to stop waiting for him to come to you and go get him, Mia,” Leah said.
 

I blew my nose for the tenth time. So attractive.

“I can’t. What if he throws me out?”
 

“That’s a risk you have to take, but you won’t know until you go over there and do it. Fight for him, Mia.”
 

She’d persuaded and convinced me that I needed to stop waiting around. The longer I did so, the more damage I could be doing. I’d agreed wholeheartedly and walked out of the hospital, ready to fight for the man I loved and the life I thought we deserved.
 

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in my car at the curb of my street, not his, feeling like the biggest kind of coward. I killed the engine, slowly pulled my keys from the ignition, and stepped out of the car. The distance between the street and my house felt wider, and by the time I reached the house, I was gasping for air.
 

What was I doing? Was I giving up?
 

Was I that scared of what I’d done, what I’d hidden from him, that I was unwilling to even face him?
 

My fear had held me back, and now sitting in my house, a week after he’d left, it was still keeping me anchored within these walls, unable to move forward.
 
All those emotions I’d kept bottled inside for so long?
 
They were making a comeback in the most hellish of ways and I suddenly felt like the weakest person on the planet.
 

I knew what I wanted, but I couldn’t seem to get past my own insecurities to take it.
 

Once again, the only obstacle in the way of my own happiness was myself.
 

Chapter Twenty-Four

~Garrett~

My feet felt like lead weights as I dragged my unwilling body out of the car and toward the walkway leading to Mia’s front door. I’d walked those steps so many times now that it felt like I had worn my own personal path down the center. Every interaction, both good and bad, since I’d found her standing in the street at that farmers’ market had begun with me walking down this old concrete pathway, and now, it would end with one final trip.
 

I didn’t want to be here. With every step propelling me toward that bright red door, my heart jerked and sputtered, and I faltered just a bit more in my stride. My body was in turmoil, and even though I continued moving forward, my heart was screaming for me to turn around and run because we both knew I would never survive this visit. Finally stepping onto the weathered porch we’d never gotten around to repairing, I held up my shaking fist and knocked, and then I waited. Sam’s barking grew louder as he made a mad dash for the door.
 

God, I was even going to miss the dog.
 

In a matter of months, my life had become completely immersed in hers. It was to the point where I didn’t even know how to exist without her. Everything reminded me of her. I couldn’t eat without thinking of the meals we’d shared together. I couldn’t sleep because I’d remember the nights she’d spent safe in my arms. All the while, she had belonged to another man.
 

I heard her a split second before she opened the door. She was yelling at Sam to be quiet. She pulled the door open, and I saw her instantly freeze. My heart lurched at the sight of her standing before me. Even in my anger, I still wanted her, and even as she stood there in stunned silence, I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she was.
 

Without a bit of makeup on and wearing nothing but a pair of cutoff shorts and a faded tank top, she was perfection, my natural beauty.

No, not mine
, I reminded myself.
She belongs to someone else.
 

“Garrett,” she finally breathed out.

“We need to talk,” I said quickly. My eyes darted around her in search of
him
.
 

She nodded in agreement. “Yes, there’s so much I need to explain.”
 

I ignored her comment. There wasn’t much I really wanted her to explain. I didn’t want details.
 

I stepped into the foyer, and my eyes continued their erratic dance around the house, searching for any clue of the bastard’s presence. I didn’t think I could handle seeing them together.
 

“He’s not here,” Mia said softly.

“What?”

“Aiden. He left the morning after you left.”

My fists tightened at my sides, and I felt the blood heat in my veins. Visions of the two of them entangled in Mia’s sheets flashed through my head. “The morning after, huh? Did you have a nice reunion with your future husband, Mia?”
 

“Stop. Please stop, Garrett,” she begged, tears staining her cheek.

I stalked forward, taking several steps, until I could feel her ragged breath on my neck. “Why? Does it bother you that I finally found out?” I bit out.
 

“We were never engaged.”

Taken aback, I tilted her chin upward, meeting her watery gaze. “He seemed to think you were.”
 

“He was angry,” she said. “There’s so much I didn’t tell you, so much I’ve kept hidden from both of you.”
 

Taking my hand, she led me to the living room. Sitting next to me on the couch, she spent the next hour telling me about the life she’d had after she left me—the real life without any gaps.
 

She’d met someone. When I had been drinking myself to oblivion just to be able to stand human contact, she had been happy and living with someone.

It fucking hurt, but at the same time, I felt a smidgen of relief, knowing she hadn’t been living in the same hell I had for the past eight years. I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone.
 

“He really was a wonderful man, Garrett,” she said.
 

“So, if he was so wonderful, why didn’t you stay in Atlanta?” I asked with a twinge of bitterness in my voice.
 

I’d said, it was a smidgen of relief, a very small smidgen. The rest of what I was feeling was just raw hostility.

“When I met Aiden, I was all alone in a new city. He was nice and charming and uncomplicated. He was focused on himself, which afforded me the only type of relationship I was able to give. He didn’t want kids or a ring. He just wanted someone to share dinners with and take to work functions.”

And share his bed.
That part wasn’t lost on me, and seeds of jealousy took root in my mind, sprouting with vengeance as I once again pictured the two of them together. I hadn’t believed that Mia was celibate in the eight years we were apart, but now, I had a face to go with my worst nightmare. It was like someone describing Freddy Krueger compared to actually seeing him firsthand.
 

“But then, he wanted more?” I assumed.

“Yes.” She nodded. “I should have seen it coming, but I did my best to ignore it. When I met him for dinner one night, I walked into a completely deserted restaurant covered in flowers and candles, and I panicked. He gave this beautiful speech about how much he loved me and how he wanted me to be the mother of his children, and all I could do was stare at the exit, trying to figure out how quickly I could make a run for it.”
 

“Why?” I pressed, needing to know.

She took a deep breath and turned her eyes up toward mine. “At the time, I told myself it was because I was hiding so much from him. He didn’t know anything about me. And most importantly,” she said quietly, her eyes squeezing shut as her voice faltered, “he didn’t know I couldn’t have those children he wanted so desperately.”
 

The air in my lungs suddenly halted at her confession. “What do you mean?”

Tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes, and she took a choked breath. “I should have told you earlier. I shouldn’t have kept it from you for so long,” she babbled through her tears.

“Mia, please, help me understand,” I said gently.

“The night I miscarried…when I went into the ER, they did the procedure to…remove the baby.” She paused, her tears turning into strangled sobs.
 

I pulled her hand into mine, stroking it with the pad of my thumb.
 

“It happened all so quickly, and I found out later that there was quite a bit of scarring…so much so that I can’t carry another baby—ever.”
 

Pain lanced through my heart, worse than I’d ever known. It was worse than when I had turned and seen the look of pure horror on Mia’s face when she found Aiden standing in her living room. It was worse than when her mother had handed me the note that I thought would end my life forever.
 

The woman I loved couldn’t have children. My heart was breaking for her. Ever since I’d known Mia, she’d loved children. It was how I’d known we would be okay having a child so young—because I had Mia to guide me. Giving, kind, and selfless, she would have made the best mother.
 

“This is what you’ve been hiding from me?” I asked, sweeping away a tear from her cheek.

“Yes, I was so afraid to tell you. I was afraid if I told you about Aiden, you would ask why I left, and I didn’t have the courage to tell you.”

I couldn’t handle the separation between us any longer. I’d come here to put as much distance between us as possible, but now, watching her grieve and crumble before me, the mere inches between us felt like miles. Wrapping my hands around her waist, I effortlessly pulled her onto my lap, cradling her in my arms, as I savored the feel of her warm body against mine.
 

“Why? Did you think I wouldn’t love you? That I would blame you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know…I’m broken,” she cried.

I smoothed the hair away from her face and bent down to kiss the tears away from her soft cheek.

“Baby, I would never, ever blame you for that. You’re not broken, and I could never love you less. It’s not possible. If anything, it only makes me love you more.”

Her frantic eyes stilled and met mine. They were red and puffy from the constant stream of tears, but she was still beautiful.
 

As much as I wanted to kiss her and take her for my own without looking back, I had to know that she was all mine beyond a shadow of a doubt.
 

“I don’t want to ask, but I have to. If that is the only reason you walked away from Aiden, don’t you think he deserves to know?”

“He knows. I told him the night he showed up here.”
 

My heart picked up, and I squeezed her tighter, fearing her answer. “And?”

“And he went back to Atlanta—for good.”

My eyes darted up to hers, searching her face for something, anything. “Why?”

“I said I thought, at the time, that was the reason I left. But I realized I ran from that proposal because he wasn’t you.”