The Last Letter(111)

Thank you again,

~ Chaos

…

“You’re sure this is the right way?” I asked Maisie as we pulled onto the dirt road. “We’re really close to Solitude.”

Telluride. Beckett was still in Telluride. He hadn’t left. Hadn’t moved on like I’d so foolishly assumed.

“That’s what the lady says from the GPS pin he texted you,” Maisie answered, waving the phone with the Google Maps app open. “Do I really get to see Beckett?”

The hope in her voice was brutal.

“Yeah, for a few minutes.” I tried to keep my tone light but failed miserably. Maybe it was the exhaustion from two weeks of hospitalization with Maisie for the radiation. Maybe it was hearing that another kid Maisie had met in Denver passed last week. Maybe it was Beckett.

Or maybe my heart was simply broken by all of the above.

“I miss him,” she said softly.

“Me, too, love,” I answered without thinking.

“No, you don’t. If you missed him, you’d call him. You’d let us see him.” Her tone was anything but understanding as we wove our way through the woods.

“Maisie, it’s not that easy. Sometimes relationships just don’t work out, and you might not really understand that until you’re older.”

“Okay.”

Man, I was in for it when this sassafras became a teenager. Then I smiled, realizing she had a shot at becoming a teenager now.

Because of Beckett.

But the lies were woven in with the love, and that was the killer. The lies didn’t wipe out everything he’d done for me, for us. They didn’t wipe out the way it felt when he kissed me, the way my body fired on all cylinders when he was in a room. They didn’t wipe out the way he loved the kids, or the way they loved him.

But that love didn’t wipe out the lies, either, or my fear that he’d tell more.

And there was our impasse.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t see past what he’d done to understand why he’d done it. It was simply that I couldn’t afford to trust him.

“Oh my God,” I whispered as we came upon the house. I looked at the lake, just to be sure, then back at the house. I would have asked Maisie if she was sure, but Colt came running out of the house with Havoc on his heels, and that answered the question.

Beckett owned the twenty-five acres I’d sold off two years ago to that investment company.

The house itself was beautiful. Built in the log-cabin style, which matched the ones in Solitude. It was two stories with multiple A-frame rooflines and stone pillars. It was classic, rustic, and modern, all in one style. The definition of Beckett.

Colt threw open Maisie’s door. “There you are! I missed you!”

“Me, too!” she said, and the two locked in a hug.

“Hey, honey,” I said when they broke apart.

“Hi, Mom!” Colt threw me a grin over the back of the seat. “We made dinner, come on!”

“Oh, Maisie doesn’t feel too well.” I immediately panicked at the thought of spending any more than a few minutes with Beckett.

“We figured. So we have chicken, and rice, and saltines, if you need them, Maisie. Come on, you have to see the house!” Maisie jumped down, more agile than I’d seen her these last two weeks, and the two were off like a shot.

“Well, I guess that settles that,” I mumbled to myself. The urge struck to check my hair and makeup, and I shook it off. There was no need to impress Beckett. Funny, I’d used to think the same thing, because he’d loved me. Now it was because I wasn’t supposed to care what he thought.

I threw a glance in the mirror and fixed my hair with a couple of quick tugs…because I did care. Damn it.

“Don’t be a chicken,” I lectured myself as I got out of the Tahoe. I left him, not the other way around. So why did it hurt this much? Why was my heart galloping? Why did I crave the sight of him almost as much as I avoided it?

Ugh.

I was twenty-six years old with my first real broken heart. When Jeff left, the twins and my own stubbornness had eased the ache and distracted me. But Beckett? There was no distraction for Beckett. He was in my thoughts, my dreams, my voicemails that I refused to delete, and the letters I wouldn’t throw away. He was freaking everywhere.

My steps were slow as I made my way into the house. The inside was just as beautiful, with dark hardwood floors and high ceilings. It was exactly the house I would have designed for myself. But it wasn’t mine, and neither was he.

Wait. Where was the furniture? There were no pictures on the walls, no signs that he’d even really moved in. Was he leaving after all?

“Hey,” he said, coming around the corner.

Crap, he looked really good. Jeans and a long-sleeve baseball tee with Colt’s soccer team logo on it were bad enough, but his hair was a little longer and perfectly mussed, and he’d had the nerve to grow a really sexy layer of scruff.

“Hi.” Of all the words we needed to say to each other, that was all that came out.

“The kids are off exploring.” His eyes drifted toward the ceiling as the sound of running feet came through. “Look, Colt wanted to make you dinner. I told him it probably wasn’t a good idea, but he was adamant, and I figured you could just take it with you if you didn’t want to stay.”