The Only Heart that Matters (Only In Goose Hollow #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Angus

S omething’s off.

It’s in the way she twists her granny’s silver band around her finger four times and then takes it off and switches it to her ring finger on her left hand. Four more twists, and then she moves it back to her right hand.

The birthday boy has opened his presents. He’s shoveled handfuls of cake into his face; I say face and not mouth because he’s two and messy, and as per usual is the cutest damn kid I’ve ever seen. The house is drowning in balloons and truck decorations, because trucks are Sawyer’s current obsession.

It’s been a hell of a party.

A joyous occasion.

So why is his mom faking it?

I’ve known Mia Powell since the day she was born. Our moms are best friends and I was two, just like the aforementioned birthday boy, when she was born. I’m pretty sure I’ve been watching her ever since.

Always from the sidelines, but nonetheless watching.

I’ve seen her happy.

This isn’t it.

The usual light in her bright blue eyes is non-existent. The rosy under glow that spreads across her fair complexion when she’s experiencing joy is nowhere to be found.

These things may go unnoticed by everyone else. Heck, she’s a single mom, after all, and likely exhausted. But the ring gives her away. Her fidgeting tells me she’s upset, or maybe nervous about something.

It feels all too familiar.

The last time I saw her like this was two and a half years ago. The day she announced at family dinner she was pregnant. That late spring night on my parents' deck is a memory that will stay with me forever.

The soft orange of the setting sun painted the sky, acting as her backdrop as she sat at my parents’ outdoor dinner table. She was wearing a white cotton summer dress with a chunky blue sweater draped over her shoulders. Breathtaking, as always, but the light in her eyes was missing, her porcelain skin a ghostly white. She hadn’t touched her food and couldn’t leave her shoulder-length raven hair alone. She pushed it behind her ears, then pulled it back in a low bun, then let it loose around her shoulders again. And that ring of hers moved from one hand to the other more times than I could count.

But when my sister, Daisy, cleared her throat to get everyone’s attention, Mia sat up straight with the posture of a soldier and grabbed my baby sister's hand so hard her knuckles turned white.

Daisy said that Mia had something to tell us, warning every person at the table with the venom in her eyes that if we didn’t take whatever news Mia was about to share the right way, there would be hell to pay.

I worried she might be sick as peaked as she looked and as serious as Daisy was behaving. But she wasn’t ill.

She was pregnant.

The moment she shared her news, something shifted in her. An iron-willed, protective nature settled over her as she explained she was only a few months along, but already the mama bear in her was strong.

She defiantly refused to tell us who the father was and insisted she would be fine having and raising the baby on her own. She made it clear she was a willing participant, claiming nobody had hurt her. The father simply wasn’t interested.

The news hit me harder than it should have. Some asshole had left her to raise their child alone. It lit a burning rage inside me to find out who he was.

My anger was all-consuming.

I couldn’t flee from my parents' property fast enough. The need to escape sent me spiraling. My desperation to know his identity, suffocating. But it was the sinking feeling that her news solidified something I already knew.

She would never be mine.

Coward that I was, I lied and said they needed me at the bar. I was gone before dessert was served.

I drove my truck down the highway faster than was safe and within twenty minutes of walking through the bar door, I had a blonde twenty-something bent over the leather chair in my apartment above the bar.

That night, I wasn’t ready to acknowledge the reason my best friend's sister, my mother’s goddaughter, and my little sister's best friend being pregnant elicited such a powerful reaction from me.

After my angry drive and fast fuck were over the monster inside me was still at large. He was on the warpath. For a solid week I drank, I worked out, and I fucked, trying to get her and the reason I was so upset out of my head and my heart.

It didn’t work.

The truth of the matter is, I’ve been out of my mind in love with Mia Powell for most of my life.

The problem is she’s off-limits.

Not to mention, she doesn’t see me that way.

After all these years, I’ve gotten good at keeping my feelings at bay, but that night they all rushed to the surface. A blind rage different from any I had experienced before, and trust me, I had felt rage many times before, took control.

Thinking back to that night makes me wonder if that’s what’s gotten under her skin. Is the asshole deadbeat who’d knocked her up here today? Is she nervous and looking as uncomfortable as she is because he’s right here in plain sight? Would he have the balls to show up?

I’ll never understand how a man could be such a prick he won’t acknowledge his own child.

It’s a small town. There’s no reason to keep him a secret if he isn’t someone we all know.

Scouring the room for someone out of place, I come up empty. Most of the men here, other than my brother, Callen, and his best friend, Owen, have been old enough for AARP magazine subscriptions for years now.

Nobody fits the bill.

Shifting my focus back to Mia, I note how different she looks today than she did making her announcement at my parents’ table. It’s not because her hair now hangs down the middle of her back and is littered with caramel highlights. It’s that the indignant defiance she used as a protective shell back then is no longer needed. Her insecurity, which she did her best to hide from those who knew her so well, is no longer present. She is a spectacular mother, and she has nothing to prove to anyone. It looks good on her.

She has this sexy indifference about her that fucking calls to me. It’s a call I can’t answer but is always buzzing in the atmosphere when she’s nearby. But right now, I want to know what has her so on edge. The need to take away her worries so intense it’s building pressure in my chest.

“Can we get all the Powells and McKinnons in the living room for a quick picture, please?” her mom, Joy, yells over the crowd.

Mia lifts Sawyer from his spot on the floor, where he had been playing with a pile of toys, and I follow her to the other room.

Grace, who owns the cafe that Mia works at, squishes us all together so we fit on her phone's camera screen and says, “Okay, everyone say family !”

Everyone shouts “Family!” through their smiles.

However, I can’t quite get the word out, but I do plaster a fake smile to my face because I am glad to be here celebrating my favorite two-year-old on his birthday, but I refuse to think of his mom as family.

We aren’t blood relatives, but I would do anything for her just like I would for my mom, brothers, and sister. But she isn’t like a sister to me.

She never will be.