Dirty, Reckless Love (Boys of Jackson Harbor 3)

“Lonely,” she whispers. “We were just lonely.”

I grip the bottle so tightly that the plastic crackles under my fingers. I make myself exhale slowly, releasing some of my aggravation. “I wasn’t just lonely. With you, I was anything but lonely. I’m sorry it wasn’t the same for you.”

She looks at the floor. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be, and please don’t tell Colton about our . . . our mistake.”

“But don’t you get it? This shouldn’t be hard at all. When you marry someone, there shouldn’t be anything hard about your decision.”

“Maybe for some people.” She shrugs. “But that’s not the hand I was dealt. I have to try to make this work. For the baby, for me, and for Colton.”

“I love you.” The words are whispered but feel like they’re being ripped from my chest.

She gives me a sad smile. “I consider myself luckier than you can imagine to have felt that love.” She swallows hard. “But right now, I have to put more important things first.”

“What’s more important than love?”

“Life,” she says. Turning, she walks away.

“Ellie!”

She shakes her head but doesn’t look back. Doesn’t say another word.

I watch her push through the glass door and onto the sidewalk. She walks away from me. Away from us. Away from everything I believed we could be.

I hurl my water at the mirrored wall, and the bottle cracks, water spilling all over the floor and streaking down the glass.

Ellie

When I get home, Colton’s truck is in the driveway. That old spark of joy I used to feel at his proximity flickers and is immediately snuffed out by the ache I feel every time I think about Levi’s face.

“I love you.”

As if it should be that simple. As if love is something we feel for one person at a time, and not a complex collection of emotion we experience in infinite different ways for countless people at once.

When I walk in the front door, Colton’s waiting for me with a big grin on his face, and a rich, savory aroma drifts out from the kitchen.

“It smells amazing,” I say. “What is that?”

He flashes a glance over his shoulder toward the kitchen before looking back at me. “It’s a roast. You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

“Not since breakfast.” And that was just a dry piece of toast. I don’t remember the last time Colton cooked for me. Maybe he did so early on when he was still trying to win me over. He’s not a bad cook. He just tends to prefer to use his time for other things.

“Close your eyes,” he says.

“Why?”

He takes my face in his hands and presses a kiss to my mouth. “Because I have a surprise. Because you’re my fiancée, and I love you.”

I close my eyes and let him lead me down the hall toward our bedroom, but when we turn, it’s not to the right into the bedroom. It’s to the left into the small room that’s been acting as my closet.

“Okay, you can look now.”

When I open my eyes, I almost don’t recognize the space. My clothes have all been cleared out, and the rack I had in the middle of the room is gone. The walls are covered in stick-on decals of elephants, and giraffes, and a smiling yellow sun.

A crib sits in the corner, already made up with bedding that matches the decals on the walls. The dresser matches the crib and has a changing pad on top, and the room’s tiny closet that was once filled with my shoes is open and now has a dozen little outfits hanging in it.

“Oh, Colton.” I press my hand to my chest. Until this moment, I don’t know if I believed he really wanted to do this. I don’t know if I believed he wouldn’t run away at the first opportunity. Marriage scared him. Two months ago, he didn’t even want to plan a wedding with me, and now here he is, decorating our baby’s nursery while I’m at work.

“You like it?” He looks so nervous, and I know my answer means everything to him.