Ready for You (Ready #3)(72)

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.