Page 31 of Heart Like Yours
“Paige,” he starts and my breath catches in my throat when I turn to him and find him standing closer than expected. “Thank you.”
“For what?” My voice is barely above a whisper.
“Being here.”
He reaches out slowly, ghosting his fingers over my cheek. I’m frozen in place, leaning into his touch as his spicy cologne overrides almost all rational thought.
Almost.
“We can’t do this,” I mumble, my protest sounding weak even to my own ears. “You’re my?—”
“Equal. As of today, we are equals.” He tucks a single finger under my chin, tilting my head up to hold his stare. “Although I’ve always seen you that way.”
I blink, scrambling to find another reason as to why he and I shouldn’t cross this line, and fail.
“The only thing standing between us is you.” Garrett bends down, placing a lingering kiss on my forehead before pressing his own forehead against mine. “If you tell me to stop, I will and things will be strictly professional. Until then, I’m not going to hide that I want more for us.”
With a heavy sigh, he breaks away and I immediately miss his warmth. He pulls out his own room key and unlocks his door and pauses once it’s open.
“The ball’s in your court, Sweetheart. As long as you’re holding it, I’ll be waiting to catch it.”
PAIGE
Whatever part of my brain thought that a four-hour car ride with Garrett would be easy was clearly delusional.
I spent the entire first hour talking about anything I could think of, including the freaking weather. Luckily, Garrett seems to be better at keeping his head on straight than I am. Now, we’re about twenty minutes from town and he continues to keep the conversation going. So far, I’ve heard about his time in college and how he met Leo, but it’s his last statement that makes me interrupt him.
“I didn’t know how much I missed city life until I was moving into my apartment fifteen minutes from the financial district.”
I twist in my seat to face him. “Wait, you’re not from New York?”
He shakes his head. “No, I was actually born and raised in Denver, Colorado. I only left to go to college.”
“That’s how you met Dominik?” I question, remembering that his best friend actually started out his hockey career in Denver. Something I only recall because the news of his old team going up for sale made him want to go out for celebratory drinks. Apparently, his old team had been falling apart over his lastcouple years playing for them and he was hopeful that someone would turn it around.
“Yeah, I’ve known Dominik since we were in elementary school. I think it was about second grade when we became neighbors. After our first playdate, we were basically inseparable.”
I grin, knowing the feeling of being that close to someone. “That’s like me and Lilly. There was no separating us. I probably wouldn’t have made it through high school or college without her.”
“I know that feeling all too well.” Garrett smiles, but there’s a sadness in it that’s not normally there. “Dominik’s family took me in shortly after we met. My parents…well, let’s just say they should have never had a kid. But the Mikelson family quite literally changed my life.”
Unable to resist, I reach across the center console and place my hand on his arm.
“I’m glad you had them,” I choke out before pulling away and facing forward in my seat. Blinking rapidly, I bite the inside of my cheek and take a slow, deep breath in.
Having a crappy family is something I know all too well. However, crying in the car over things neither of us can change won’t do me any good.
The faded blue sign with the gold painted letters welcoming us to Jericho Springs, Vermont, approaches, but I’m lost in my own thoughts. Nerves and dread settle in my stomach like a bowling ball and for the first time since deciding to come up here, I feel like I made the wrong choice.
Not only did my whole world shatter after my mom passed away when I was in middle school, but my dad took it even worse. All I could do was watch him change into a man so opposite from the father who raised me.
For the first few months after losing her, all my family from her side took turns visiting and helping out with me. Those visits became more and more spread out until eventually, they stopped altogether. I don’t blame them. After all, they had lives of their own to return to. Everyone always left with the “call me if you need anything, anything at all” reminders, but the one time I did, my dad was livid.
He had gone out to the local pub, telling me to figure dinner out for myself. It was something he did most nights, and I wasn’t even sure if he knew I was home or not whenever he stumbled back home. That specific night, I had already finished my homework, eaten a peanut butter sandwich for dinner, and had gone to bed when a loud, terrifying crash woke me up. Not thinking twice about why a twelve-year-old girl shouldn’t go outside at night by herself, I ran out the front door and found that my dad had crashed into the mailbox. He was passed out behind the wheel, none the wiser to his accident.
When I couldn’t get him to wake up, I panicked and called my aunt, who lived an hour away. After calming me down and telling me she was on the way, she told me to call the police so they could make sure he was all right. He woke up before anyone else got there and when I told him who was coming, he lost his shit. My dad was able to woo the police and convince my aunt that he swerved to not hit some animal in the road and that I was just a dramatic child.
After that, he and I mostly just ignored each other. He was a drunk asshole ninety-nine percent of the time, so I just made myself scarce, choosing to hang out with Lilly and her family. The only time we interacted was when I needed money for clothes or food, both of which almost always resulted in him telling me I could do without or with less of those things.