Holden
Chapter Forty-Six
The look in Lizette's eyes—one I recognize—strikes fear in my heart. It’s a look I’ll never forget because it’s haunted me for over a decade.
The bottle of wine on the coffee table is half empty. That’s unusual for her.
“What’s going on?” I struggle to keep my voice steady.
She doesn’t look at me. “Nothing. I’m just tired.”
It’s not just that. I’m sure of it. “Come on. I’ve seen you exhausted before. This seems like more than that.”
A half-hearted sigh escapes her, and she bites down on her lower lip. She has dark circles under her eyes, and I find myself desperate to figure out what’s wrong with her.
“I told you not to come, that I was tired.”
Ouch. “You didn’t say not to come. You said I didn’t have to. But I wanted to.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine.” She doesn’t acknowledge my last words.
Her words aren’t even remotely reassuring.
“Did something happen between when Simon and I left and when you got to the party?”
She says nothing.
I glance down at her hands in her lap. She’s scratching one fingernail against another. My anxiety rises. She’s not fine.
“You didn’t come with all the cupcakes you were working on.” The words come out like I’d intended—gentle.
Still nothing, to the point that it’s almost uncomfortable.
She steals a glance at me, but her eyes dart back to her lap.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
She turns her whole head toward me, her eyes pleading. Though I’m not sure for what. To stop talking? To listen?
I can’t resist touching her, and I run a thumb down her cheek and along her jaw.
“Can I be honest with you?” She nods. “This is new for me, and it’s terrifying. I’m a thirty-one-year-old man, and I’m afraid of an emotional conversation. I’m frightened by the look in your eyes and the sadness surrounding you.”
She narrows her eyes in question. I exhale and cast my gaze downward.
“It’s reminiscent of when you ended things with me in college.” I force myself to meet her gaze. “Tell me that’s not what’s happening here.”
A single tear rolls down her cheek, but, to her credit, she doesn’t look away. A second, then a third tear trickles after the first.
It’s unbearable to see her in pain. All I want to do is give this woman and her son everything I have. To make every day one in which they feel more loved than the one before.
I take a chance and pull her onto my lap, encasing her in my arms. She comes willingly, but her tears flow faster in response.
I may have no real history with relationships, but I’m smart enough to know she needs a moment to cry. So, I hold her and stroke the back of her head in an effort to comfort her.
When her sniffling decreases, I kiss the top of her head.
“Baby, tell me what’s going on. What’s wrong?”
Just when I’m sure she’s not going to answer, she sighs.
“I saw Landon today. Before I came to the party.” Her words are barely audible.
Every muscle in my body tenses. I force myself not to say anything, needing a few seconds to settle myself. To allow my racing heart a chance to slow.
When I’m ready, I swallow past the lump in my throat.
“On purpose?” My words come out rough.
She pulls back and looks at me. “No. Of course not. He showed up here shortly after you guys left. When Simon came back in for his kites, I got distracted by the oven timer and forgot to lock the kitchen door, and he surprised me.”
“Did he touch you?” The words come out as a growl.
“No. I didn’t let him get close enough, and eventually, I was able to get him to leave, but—”
“But what?” I brush the hair out of her eyes, as much to calm the fury inside me as to comfort her.
“He said a lot of things, and even though I think they’re not true... Well, never mind that. But he threatened—”
“He what?” It’s taking all my restraint not to lose my mind.
“Let me finish. He threatened the business.”
I frown. “I don’t understand.”
Lizette closes her eyes for a second, then opens them and meets my gaze. “I guess I need to give you some background on him.”
She takes a few minutes and tells me more than I ever wanted to know about Landon Carter and how he has embedded himself in her life over the years.
But I need to know. To protect her. To love her like she deserves.
So, I force myself to stomach hearing it.
She tells me how it wasn’t just me he used to trap her into staying with him. When she thought there was no longer a threat to me, he got more creative. He threatened her mother’s job—the one that helped her mom dig out of her depression. Unfortunately, it was at a Carter-owned business.
He always had something to hold over her.
“It wasn’t until Sylvia died and I got Simon that I finally told my mom the truth. I apologized that I couldn’t do it anymore. I had to think about that little boy, and staying in Hollow Hills wasn’t what was best for him.”
She’s so damn strong, and I’m certain she doesn’t even realize it. Formidable and selfless.
“The thing that makes me ill is that when my mom found out I was staying with him to protect her, it not only broke her heart, but she told me that I had never needed to do it. She said she would have been okay regardless. So, I packed up our life there, took what money I had saved, and moved to Elladine.”
“And that’s where you lived the entire time before you moved here, right?”
“Yeah, I rented a building and started a bakery. It was good for a few years until Landon finally figured out where we had moved to when we left Hollow Hills.”
“What did he do then?”
A sarcastic laugh escapes her.
“He bought the building where I had my business and used it as an excuse to come into the bakery whenever he wanted. To show up at my door and try to inject himself back into my life.”
“So, you left again,” I say, understanding.
“I did. I came here, and I thought he couldn’t hurt us anymore, even if he found us. I thought because I own this building, he couldn’t cause any issues for us.”
“He can’t hurt you. I won’t let him.” My voice is solid, sure.
“Holden, you don’t understand. There’s something wrong with him.”
She tells me about him showing up at her dad’s funeral, grabbing her arm. I’m frustrated she didn’t tell me when it happened, but glad she did now.
“He won’t stop. He’ll do everything he can to make you miserable or make you doubt me like he tried to make me doubt you.”
I frown. I’m battling to stay calm. The idea of him touching her and harming her enrages me.
“How did he try to do that? Make you doubt?”
She looks away and won’t meet my eyes, even when I ask her to.
“Lizette? Please tell me.”
“He… he told me that when we were in college, you weren’t as inexperienced as I thought.
That you slept with a lot of girls who came through the frat parties before I knew you and while we were…
uh, while we were together. He said that you were always the guy I saw at the end, and I had been blind before. ”
I search her face, but I can’t tell what she’s thinking.
“Did you believe him?”
“I didn’t want to. I… I don’t. At least I don’t think I do. But I questioned it for a few minutes afterward, and that’s not fair to either of us.”
“Is that all he said about us?”
She shakes her head, and sorrow fills her eyes.
“He implied that you’re with others now, and I just think you’re only with me. He said I’ll never be able to hold on to you.”
The tears are back, and I gently wipe them away with the pads of my fingers.
“I swear to God that I’m not. And I won’t. Not ever.”
I’ll tell her every day for the rest of my life if that’s what she needs.
“But I should’ve just believed you. You deserve to be with someone who doesn’t doubt your relationship and who isn’t saddled with this deluded man who is obsessed with making my life miserable.”
“Hey, no.” I place a finger under her chin and gently lift it until she’s looking in my eyes. “I don’t want anyone else. I never have and I never will.”
The overwhelming gloominess pouring off her ignites a sense of insecurity in me. I can’t let her sink into these unsettling thoughts.
“I love you, Lizette. I didn’t do those things back then, and I’m not doing them now. I won’t ever. I love you.”
“You’d be better off—”
I cup her face in both hands and move closer to her, my eyes boring into hers.
“If you’re about to finish that sentence with anything that implies I’d be better off without you, you’re wasting your breath. There’s no question in my mind that you and Simon make my life infinitely better. I want a future with you both. I want us to be a family.”
Her eyes widen as if she didn’t know this already. And perhaps she didn’t. Maybe I need to do a better job making sure she understands how I feel.
“Do you really mean that?” For the first time since I got here tonight, I see something brighter in her eyes—hope.
“Of course, I mean that. I mean it with every fiber of my being. This isn’t one of Georgie's books with a third-act break-up. We’re not doing that again. I should never have allowed him to take you from me all those years ago, and I’m not letting him do it now.”
Relief washes over her face, and I hate that the prick made her doubt us.
“He’s nothing. And you’re everything. He doesn’t have any power over you any longer. Okay?”
She nods.
As if the weight of the world has fallen off her shoulders, she melts into me and lays her head in the crook of my neck, her arms curled around me.
“I love you,” I whisper the words near her temple.
“I love you, too.” Her voice shakes. “I was scared, maybe still am a little, that what he said was true, and you won’t stay.
That I won’t be enough for you to stick around.
But I’m going to give this my all. You’ve already shown me that you want to stay, and no one has ever done that for me. Not like this.”
“I promise you, I'm not going anywhere.”
We embrace, silent as we hold each other. No words are needed right now.
Just when I think she might have fallen asleep, she whispers, “Holden?”
“Mmhmm?”
“That’s not all he said.”