Chapter 34
I wasn’t sure what was stranger, staying in a place that I once believed might be my home one day, or Elliott’s freaking attitude.
From the second he arrived at the airport, he’d been acting odd. Not odd in a funny way, but in a distant and barely speaking way.
Attempting to coax him into talking to me when we took off resulted in him feigning exhaustion and pretending to sleep throughout the journey.
I’d seen that man sleep before; he wasn’t fooling anyone.
“Livi, sweetheart, it’s been too long,” Daniels’ mom, Ginny, greeted me when I stepped foot into their home. “Let me get a look at you. How do you keep getting prettier?”
An unwelcome burn settled across my diaphragm.
“It’s good to see you, Ms. Williamson,” I beamed at her, because it truly was. I always adored Ginny and her husband Clive. During my relationship with their son, the two of them were like the parents I always wanted.
Despite going along with their son’s lies and welcoming Maya into their life as their soon-to-be daughter-in-law, I couldn’t bring myself to hate them.
They were good people.
Hardly their fault their son turned into a total shitbag.
“What did I tell you about calling me that?” She gently tapped my arm. “You know that when you’re in this house, you are to call me Ginny.”
Being back in Montana, in the house Daniel’s grandparents built by hand, and seeing the family I considered basically my own a year ago, I thought I’d feel something.
Anything.
But standing in the foyer, I tried to grasp for any emotion, anything apart from the big fat nothingness.
During the three years Daniel and I were together, I truly thought this place would be my home one day.
After all, he promised it.
He promised he’d marry me one day, that he’d help me get full control of my company and then the two of us would leave New York for good. Daniel would take over the ranch, like he promised his father, and then we’d spend the rest of our lives here.
A perfect happily ever after.
Not that I ever voiced it out loud, but the idea of moving my life out of the city into the middle of nowhere was my idea of hell.
But I went along with it, because that’s what people in love did. They compromised, they sacrificed parts of themselves, and put the other’s happiness before their own, right?
Wrong.
Making someone else happy should never come at the expense of your own happiness.
Something that had taken me too long to learn.
Truthfully, if it hadn’t been for a certain man in my life who continued to show me exactly that, I doubted I’d have ever realized.
The very same man who placed his palm on the small of my back.
“And who is this tall drink of water?” Ginny wiggled her eyebrows. “My, aren’t you a handsome son of a gun.”
A light pink stained Elliott’s cheeks.
“Ms. Williamson,” I ignored her playful tsked, “this fine specimen is my boyfriend.”
His whole face burned brighter. Freaking hell, he was somehow the perfect blend of adorable and fuckable when he blushed. A downright lethal combination.
“Elliott Dade,” he offered his hand. “Thank you so much for allowing me to stay in your home for the week.”
Ginny took his hand. “Please, it’s not a bother in the slightest. It’s a pleasure having you here, and an absolute delight having our Livi back with us.”
Behind his smile, Elliott’s jaw muscles tensed.
“We missed you around these parts.” Ginny motioned for us to follow her into the kitchen. “How long’s it been since you last visited?”
I cleared my throat. “Year and a half, maybe more?”
“Too long, that’s how long it’s been,” Ginny said firmly. “Just because things between you and my Danny didn’t work, doesn’t mean you can’t visit once in a while.”
As if it were that simple.
Besides the multitude of reasons that visiting my ex’s parents wasn’t a good idea, the main and most important reason being that this wasn’t my life anymore, I was happy about that.
Fuck, I was truly happy.
Ginny stopped at the kitchen door and turned back to us. Quietly, she said, “I know my Danny hurt you, Livi, and I am sorry for that. I really am. But think of it this way, at least with him marrying Maya, you still get to remain a part of our lives.”
I bit the soft inner of my cheek.
“Now, the whole family is in the kitchen waiting for you, including the groomsmen and a few of Danny’s friends.” She clapped her hands together. “How exciting, having you here with us, it’ll be exactly like old times.”
Well, not exactly like old times.
Far from it, actually.
The hand on my back fisted the material of my dress.
Daring a glimpse upward, Elliott’s tight-lipped smile remained plastered on his face. However, behind his glasses, a violent storm brewed.
“Your sister is running late, though she instructed me to ask you to run the schedule by everyone again before she arrives. You know what my Danny and his friends are like when it comes to remembering things.”
I stared at the wooden kitchen door.
Maybe it wasn’t too late to run. I mean, I didn’t owe these people squat.
Like I said, this wasn’t my life anymore. And by hell, I didn’t want it to be either.
“Is there somewhere we can freshen up first?” Elliott asked.
Ginny’s brow creased before she nodded. “Of course, how silly of me. You have been travelling since the crack of dawn.” Moving away, she guided us up the main staircase and down a long hallway to the bottom bedroom.
“The two of you are in the room to the left. Wash up and join us after, sound good?”
Once safely inside, I leaned against the door, pressing the back of my head into the wood.
A throbbing headache already started to take shape. I doubted it would be my last for the week.
Elliott dumped our bags at the bottom of the super-king-sized bed.
The room was the perfect blend of comfort and lavish.
Plush, thick carpet, wooden furniture, a large walk-in wardrobe, an ensuite with a standalone bath, and floor-to-ceiling windows allowing whoever was sleeping to wake up to a beautiful view overlooking the ranch.
“It’s strange being back here,” I confessed. “It’s the first time since the break-up.”
Elliott’s attention flickered briefly to me, yet he said nothing.
“I thought if I ever came back here, I’d be sad? Or maybe angry?”
Silence.
“Or something other than what I feel right now.”
Again, silence responded.
“This is the part where you ask me how I feel, Elliott.”
His nostrils flared as he pushed his glasses up to pinch the bridge of his nose.
“Ask me.”
Please.
I wanted to tell him I felt nothing being back here and the reason I didn’t feel anything was because of him.
Because I was hopelessly falling in love with him.
Because when I looked at Elliott, I saw a home, a life, a man who’d take my heart and cherish it until the end of time.
So, please ask me.
Instead, he said, “You can take the bed, I’ll sleep on the floor.”
I blinked slowly. “Surely, we are beyond that point. We’ve been sleeping in the same bed for weeks, not to mention we’ve been fucking like supercharged bunnies.”
He muttered something under his breath in French.
“Okay, whatever the hell is going on, you need to tell me right now. Because this whole broody, silent, angry thing is getting old real fast.”
“There’s nothing going on.”
“Bullshit.”
His lips flattened together, attention stuck on the floor beneath his feet.
“I let you be all grumpy during the flight, but no more, you hear?” I cleared the distance between us and took his face between my palms. “Look at me.”
He looked anywhere but directly at me.
The oh-so familiar ache of rejection sank deep in my stomach.
“Elliott Dade, you will look at me right now.”
Reluctantly, two hazel hues lifted and poured directly into mine.
Air wedged itself tightly in my throat.
Although his face remained heartbreakingly impassive, his eyes told a different story. Behind glass lenses, his eyes were covered in a glossy film, and under the sheen was hurt. The kind of hurt that left a mark.
The glued-back-together lines in my heart threatened to rip open.
Something was wrong—very wrong.
My mind ran rampant, trying to piece together what could have happened, what might have caused that sort of pain, but I drew a blank.
Was it me?
The day in the bookstore, he seemed happy. A distant shadow compared to the man before me.
Before I got the chance to ask, to beg him to tell me the truth, someone bellowed from the foyer. “OLIVIA!?” Maya’s screech echoed right through the bedroom door. “?Baja aquí!”
“You better go,” Elliott said quietly.
“Not until you talk to me. Something’s happened, right? There’s something you’re not telling me.”
He peeled my hands from his face. “I’m fine, Olivia. Now go, please.” Elliott walked to the en-suite without another word and closed the door behind him.
Olivia.
I sank my teeth into the soft inner of my cheek until I tasted copper.
Not Livi. Not Peaches.
He may as well have plunged a dull knife between my ribs. I mean, I think it’d been less painful than hearing him call me that.
Mierda, I didn’t know what hurt more. Seeing him shut me out physically, or the sinking feeling that he was shutting me out emotionally, too.
Name three things worse than ladies’ night.
Sitting between my mother and my sister, while Maya’s bridesmaids sank back their sixth round of shots, I couldn’t think of a single worst thing.
Tonight started the five-day marathon of activities before the wedding. All the men were spending time together and the women were doing the same: an old-fashioned lads and ladies’ night.
Except the guys got to stay at the ranch, while we lucky ladies spent the night at a bar.
There were a million and one better ways I’d rather spend my night.
Being with Elliott was the top pick.
By the time Maya and I ran through the schedule with everyone and got ready, there was no time left to speak to him.
Not that I could’ve talked to him if I tried.
He left the bedroom the second I came back to get ready and took himself for a run around the ranch.
If I didn’t know whatever was going on with him involved me, I definitely knew now.