CHAPTER 4
FLETCHER
Eden is back in Wintervale. The woman I haven’t seen in 13 years, the same one I haven’t been able to stop thinking about in all the years we’ve been apart. The same one who had all those old feelings roaring back as if no time had passed with just one look.
She’s here. She’s home.
And she has a son.
An adorable little boy who looks so much like his mother. He has her smile and the moment he flashed it at me, I wanted to drop to my knees and hug him against my chest. It makes no fucking sense because jealousy and anger also filled me while a longing made me breathless.
All I could think about was that she was with someone. I didn’t see a ring on her finger. I looked almost the moment I realized who was standing in front of me and shopping in the same store we visited after school pretty much every day as if no time had passed.
I wasn’t delusional all these years. As much as the thought of her moving on, of her being with other people pissed me off, I knew it had to have happened. Eden is too beautiful, kind, and smart not to garner attention.
But I did ignore the probability of it. It was easier that way, without a doubt.
But she’s back now. In Wintervale.
And she has a son.
I’m not sure if the rage I’m feeling is from finally seeing her again, after so long, or if it has to do with her son’s father leaving them. How the fuck could he do that? To his own kid?
The moment I saw the kid, I couldn’t get out of the store fast enough. I sure as hell wasn’t expecting Eden to follow me out and explain how her son came into this world and why she’s back. She must have seen all of my emotions in my eyes.
To most of the town, I’m closed off and a little on the grumpy side. They know what went down with Eden and how in love we were when we were kids. My broody bullshit became accepted and understood after we broke up. Which was just fine by me.
The entire time I’m driving back to Limitless, ignoring everything I went to the store for in the first place, I’m in a daze. It’s hard to think and I’m feeling far too fucking much. Eden’s back.
Breathing is bordering on difficult. I can’t fucking believe that she’s back. Here. In Wintervale.
I’ve seen her again after 13 years…and met her son.
Her son.
A little boy who isn’t mine.
I always thought Eden would be the mother of my children. Even though it’s been a long time since the last time I saw her, I’ve never been able to picture another woman having my children. Honestly, I had resolved myself to not have kids or fall in love again.
No matter how many times I tried to stop it from happening, I wasn’t able to stop myself from comparing every woman I tried to date to Eden. It wasn’t fair to those women. I know it. I’m more than fucking aware of it.
But I couldn’t stop.
No one has measured up.
When I arrive back at the ranch, I almost drive right past the main house and head to my place. But I don’t. I’m not sure being alone would be a good idea right now.
The moment I stumble into the house, feeling drunk and disoriented even though I haven’t had anything to drink today, I slump down onto the couch. I stare into space and replay every second of the interaction I had with Eden.
It felt like I was being pulled toward her by a force far beyond my control. I was so close to her. The only thing that stopped me from reaching for her and touching her was not trusting myself to be a gentleman in public.
There’s no telling what would have happened if I had touched her. There’s a real possibility I would have taken her down to the floor in the middle of Wintervale’s Country Store and lost myself in everything that is Eden.
She still looks just as gorgeous as she did all those years ago. Yes, she’s older and she’s grown into herself, but time has only enhanced her beauty. Her hair is the same gorgeous caramel color and looks just as silky and lush as it did years ago.
My skin tingles with the memory of how the strands of her hair felt as they trailed over my body. I clench my hands, remembering how it felt to wrap her hair around my fist as I fucked her from behind.
For a moment, I swear I can hear the sounds of her little whimpers and breathy moans echo around the empty house I’m sitting in. It’s like they’re coming from speakers connected to the past.
Eden’s curves are more luscious than they used to be. It sure as fuck isn’t a bad thing. Her body grew her son and there’s something magical about that.
My chest burns with the knowledge that she went through all of that with another man at her side, the father of her little boy. It should have been me. It should have always been me.
But it wasn’t because I had to give her the room to become the person she was always meant to be. I could hear the strain in her voice every time we talked while she was away. She needed to focus on school, but her heart was tugging her home. I wasn’t going to be the person to hold her back and to dull her light.
My head is in my hands when the back door opens and closes. I don’t even look up because I know it’s one of my brothers. Hopefully, it’s not Huxley. I love the guy, but he has the emotional maturity of a duckling, and I just can’t deal with his bullshit right now.
He’s been pushing me to get back out there and date again recently. Every time I let him talk me into it, it ends horribly. While he means well, my heart isn’t in it. How the hell could it be?
“What’s wrong?”
Noel’s question, full of concern and edged in panic, has me looking up at him. His eyes are wide, and his gaze is darting around the room as if some unknown and armed enemy is going to pop out of nowhere. I shake my head and try to swallow around the lump in my throat, the same one that’s been there since I walked away from Eden.
She poured her truth out to me, her dark eyes so earnest and filled with something I wasn’t ready to understand, and all I did was walk away. I wasn’t capable of doing more because I was already fighting my instincts because I was so close to her. The safest thing was for me to leave.
But you just left her there on the sidewalk. Alone. Just like that asshole left her.
Noel’s eyebrows furrow together when he stops looking around and studies my face. He sinks down into a chair and breathes out, “Oh fuck.”
I narrow my eyes at the man wondering what he already knows. I bark, “What?”
“You saw her,” he mumbles and rests his elbows on his knees and leans forward, “didn’t you?”
“You knew she was home?” Rage fills me and my legs twitch with the need to launch myself at my younger brother. If he knew she was back in Wintervale, why the fuck didn’t he tell me? Warn me?
Being blindsided by her presence was not on my fucking bucket list. But I was. I didn’t handle it well.
Noel holds his hands up in surrender. His tone is full of apologies and sincerity, “I’m sorry, Fletch. I hadn’t seen her or anything, but I heard a few whispers in town that she was back.” He watches me warily. “You did see her?”
I slump back against the couch and scrub my hand down my face. “Yeah,” I grunt, “I saw her.”
Silence stretches between us as I play seeing Eden over my mind. Again. As if I haven’t gone over it about a million times already. Fuck, I can still practically smell her. She always loved this shampoo and body wash shit that smelled like apples and cinnamon. She smelled just how I remember she always did.
She’s always smelled like home.
“Fuck, brother,” Noel groans, “I can’t take it anymore. Spill,” he demands in a way that harkens back to his military training.
I smirk at him because that shit doesn’t work on me. Older brothers are immune to the demands of their younger brothers. All in the name of self-preservation and decades of ingrained pecking order.
He’s practically bouncing in his seat, the anticipation riding him hard the longer I don’t answer. I blow out a hard breath. It feels like I went into the gym we put into the basement and have gone a few rounds with my brothers.
But I didn’t spar with my brothers. Just my past and all the memories a single woman can conjure up.
“She looks,” I stare down at the floor and shake my head slowly, “fucking good.” When I look up at Noel, his face is a mask of concern which I feel down to my damn toes. I whisper, “Gorgeous.”
“I know breaking up with her was hard. I’m sorry I wasn’t around a lot during that time since I enlisted right after I graduated. Mom and Dad would give me updates and I know you struggled with that shit,” he grimaces, his words filled with sincerity.
“It wasn’t your job to stick around here and take care of my ass,” I insist. “You don’t owe me an apology.”
“But you’ve always been there for me, Fletch, and when you needed someone at your back, someone who wasn’t Mom, Dad, or Hux, I up and left.”
I can see the regret in my brother’s eyes and that shit doesn’t work for me at all.
“You needed to go and live your life, Noel. Make your own choices and follow your own path,” I grunt.
“And what about your path?” There’s a challenge in his eyes, one I’m not sure I like or am ready to rise to.
Not yet at least.
Not when seeing Eden is so raw.
I shrug one shoulder and try to force my voice to remain neutral and casual. “Limitless was always my path.”
“No,” Noel’s voice is firm, “you might have accepted it as your destiny, your burden, but it didn’t have to be your path.”
“Yes,” my jaw clenches and I barely get the word past my teeth, “it did. You know how long Limitless has been in the family. It’s always been passed down to the first-born son to run. That’s how it is.”
Noel grunts and there is a big heaping pile of disagreement in the sound. But I’m not going to budge on this. I’m very fucking aware I could have made a different decision, but part of me didn’t want to. I really thought, at least at first, Eden would spread her wings and eventually find her way back home.
And, I guess, she did. It just took 13 fucking years; a whole lot longer than I thought it would take.
“Look,” I sigh, “I thought about running after Eden a lot, especially those first few years. I missed her.” I rub my chest where it always seems to ache whenever I think about the girl I lost. Except now it feels a little different.
Maybe it’s because I got a glimpse of the woman she grew into today. The memory is so damn fresh in my mind. I feel like my nerves are exposed and far too fucking raw.
“Why didn’t you?” Noel’s voice is small, like he’s almost afraid to ask.
“Limitless.”
“Fuck,” he groans and drops his chin to his chest. “I should have never joined up. I should have seen that you were willing to give up your own dreams, and your fucking soul mate, just to be what our parents expected you to be.”
“That’s not the only reason,” my voice is sharp.
Noel’s head snaps up and he stares at me for a long moment. “No, I guess it’s not.” He narrows his eyes, the accusation clear to see and hear in his next words, “You were also trying to take the burden off the rest of us kids.”
Well. Fuck.
“It doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done,” I mumble, not confirming his assertion outright, but doing it with my pointed avoidance loud and fucking clear.
“But she’s back,” there’s so much damn hope in my brother’s voice that it makes the backs of my eyes burn.
“Yeah, she’s back,” I swallow hard, “and she has a son.”
Silence.
Not just quiet, but that kind of silence that is charged and so damn ominous and unavoidable that you want to scream into it just to make it stop.
“I’m sorry,” every word from Noel’s mouth is biting, “what?”
“She has a son,” I whisper. “He’s three. The moment I saw him, it felt like the world was crumbling around me. I already noticed she didn’t have a ring on her finger, and I thought-,” I cut myself off and shake my head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. After Macklin,” I shoot Noel a look, “the little boy, asked who I was, and I told him my name he asked Eden if my name was like the hero in all the bedtime stories she tells him.”
“Woah,” Noel breathes out and all I can do is nod. I swear the man is sitting on the edge of his damn seat and soaking up the drama, “Then what happened?”
“I turned the fuck around and ran out of the store like my ass was on fire.” My eyebrows pull together and I frown. “I wasn’t expecting Eden to follow me, but she did. She told me Macklin was a result of a one-night stand and how her and the sperm donor,” I sneer the words, anger riding me hard, “tried to be together for a while.”
“I take it that it didn’t work out,” Noel surmises.
“After however long, he just up and left them. Disappeared in the middle of the night with only some papers dissolving his parental responsibilities left behind.”
Thinking about it, again, makes me see fucking red. How could anyone abandon their son? How could anyone abandon fucking Eden when she was right there? When she was willing to try?
I would have given my right fucking arm for another chance with her. He had her in the palm of his hand and he fucking threw her, and Macklin, away. He better stay fucking gone.
“That’s fucked up,” Noel grumbles. When I look at him, it’s clear he’s pissed on Eden and Macklin’s behalf, just like I am. There’s also something else in his eyes, like he can see something I can’t. At least, something I’m not willing to see. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing.”
I stand up abruptly before stalking out of the house and heading over to mine. I don’t want to be called out on my bullshit which is exactly what Noel would have done.
The truth is that I want to go over to the neighbor’s ranch, sweep Eden off her feet, and become the family we were always meant to be. I just don’t know if I’ll be able to handle it when Eden realizes that Wintervale is too small for her and her dreams. Because if she were to leave again after letting her and her son into my heart it would destroy me.