LITMIR.BIZ

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his few hazy weeks in Vegas the last thing he had wanted to do was return her calls and have her figure out that he was even deeper into the pit than he’d been before he’d left. His drinking had been worse. He’d been taking those pills. And gambling... All the things that had distracted him from what was real.

      Then in Tennessee cell phones had been confiscated and handed back only for emergencies and once-a-week contact with family or a loved one. Since he’d had no family then, or even a loved one, there’d never been any reason to ask for his cell phone back for that one allotted hour.

      “I wasn’t exactly in a position to reach out to anybody. It was rude, and I’m sorry, but that’s who I was then.”

      “And not now?” she asked him before she left his office.

      “It’s complicated, Sloane.”

      And he couldn’t make promises, or even lead her in the direction of thinking that he might be getting better because he didn’t know if he was. Time would tell, he supposed. Time and new surroundings. But how could he tell her that? How could he tell her that she was part of the past he was running from?

      * * *

      “Life is complicated, Carter,” she said. “For everybody in some way.”

      He sounded so—not bitter, more like apathetic. As if he’d given up or given himself over to his battle.

      “So you’ve given up?”

      “It’s called hitting rock bottom.” He took a couple steps toward her, then stopped, as if a barrier had been lobbed into his path. “And my choice is to not drag anybody else down with me.”

      “You owe me an explanation, Carter.”

      “For what? For losing one kidney and a spleen to shrapnel? Damaging my other kidney? For PTSD after too much gunfire, too much death, too many people to save that I couldn’t? Is that what you want to hear? Because if it is I’ve said it all before and look where it’s gotten me.”

      She wanted to see some emotion—some of the old Carter trying to fight back. But what she saw in his face was—nothing. His eyes were blank. His expression resigned.

      This wasn’t the Carter she’d used to know. Used to love. Not at all. This was a different man. One she didn’t understand. Couldn’t explain. One who seemed to be calculating every facial expression and every word. She’d been through so much with him, but this—it broke off another piece of her heart.

      “You still drinking?” she asked him, not sure why she was even bothering.

      He shook his head. “Gave up the pills, too. Momentary interruptions in my process are only that—momentary. Then it all comes back. So, what are you really doing here? Come to save me from myself?”

      “I’m on vacation, like I told you.”

      But she wondered if subconsciously she’d chosen Forgeburn not so much expecting to find him here but to be closer to a part of his life when his life had been good. He and Matt had made so many plans about biking, hiking and climbing over the years, and it was something Carter had talked about so often. Getting back to his roots, he’d say, even though he wasn’t from the area. Maybe the sentiment had appealed to him, or maybe it had simply been the need to step out of his problems for a while.

      Whatever it was, could she have actually come here expecting to find answers? Or even expecting to find Carter himself?

      “You’d talked about the area so often—maybe I thought I could find some kind of closure here. You took that from me, you know.”

      “I know I did,” he said.

      His voice was soft now. The animosity was gone, replaced by a sadness he couldn’t conceal. At least not from the woman who’d loved him for so long.

      “It was never my intention to hurt people—most of all you. But that’s how it turned out, and in the end who cares? Who really gives a good damn?”

      “I do—did,” she said, fighting back tears.

      She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry. That no matter what Carter said or did she wouldn’t let him reduce her to that again. But here she was, fighting it because her heart was breaking yet one more time. For her—and for Carter.

      “I cared.”

      “You should have never waited for me, Sloane. You could have had better. We both knew that.”

      For an instant his expression changed. Did she see regret? Or a sadness deeper than anything she’d ever seen from him before? It was there and gone so quickly she didn’t know, but in that instant she’d seen Carter. The real Carter. He was still there, which did give her hope. Not for their relationship. That was over, and she had to reconcile herself to that. But she did hold out some hope for Carter—something she hadn’t done in a long, long time.

      “Maybe that’s what you thought,” she said, “but it’s not what I thought.”

      Standing on tiptoes, she brushed a light kiss to his cheek, then backed away.

      “What I knew was that I still loved you, but you didn’t still love me. That’s a difficult adjustment to make after so many years. I wish I could have done better at it. But I suppose that’s a moot point, isn’t it? Since you made the final decision about us without me.”

      * * *

      Sloane didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Sitting in her rental car in the parking lot, she was too unsteady to go anywhere yet. Maybe the kiss had been a mistake—maybe it had been the last thing he wanted from her—but it had told her something she wasn’t prepared to know. She still loved him. Maybe not in the breathless way she’d loved him at first, but in a more deep-down sense. It was something more profound—something she didn’t understand and wasn’t ready to think about.

      Carter was a handsome man and, while she’d rarely let a man turn her head, she’d always reacted to him. He’d taken off some weight since she’d last seen him, and it looked good. Was he working out again? Because for the first time since he’d been injured he looked toned.

      But he’d always been a head-turner, hadn’t he? Sometimes he’d shown up for work in tight leather pants, which had given all the ladies quite a show before he gave himself over to his day and changed into scrubs.

      She’d loved that side of him because he’d known what he was doing—had had fun with it. He’d loved having people looking at him, speculating about who he really was—a bad boy or simply a narcissist. In truth, he had been neither. Carter Holmes had simply been a man who’d enjoyed life. He’d liked to play around with it to see what turned up. And he’d taught her to enjoy it along with him. To be spontaneous. To let go occasionally and live in the moment.

      That hadn’t been her when they’d first met. After her mother died she’d been raised by a loving but very serious father who’d overwhelmed her with his serious world. Yet Carter had made her life so—good. So much fun to anticipate.

      Those days were so far in the past, though, she almost wondered if they’d happened at all. Nothing seemed real anymore. It hadn’t for such a long time. Even now—being here and discovering Carter was here as well—was an altered reality, and the pieces of it hadn’t come together in her mind yet.

      “I didn’t want to stir the pot,” Matt said to her an hour later, when she went to his surgery and challenged him about not telling her that Carter was in Forgeburn.

      “So you just let me bump into him accidentally?” She shook her head, angry because of so many things.

      “There was no guarantee you would bump into him.”

      “Yeah, right. This is Forgeburn

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