Chapter Eighteen

At breakfast, Holden charmed the hell out of her parents. He was kind, funny and polite and everything a parent would want in a man dating their only daughter. He'd transitioned from serious to casual in no time flat, and Mia only hoped she could remain as true to her word as he could do. It wasn't even all for show. He was holding her free hand beneath the table, squeezing it gently every now and again.

Once everyone had finished, Holden collected all the plates on the table, scraped the remaining food into the garbage and washed all the dishes, despite everyone's protests. Mia wrapped her arms around his stomach as he washed the final egg covered skillet. "I was thinking after you're done being the perfect houseguest, you and I could go for a walk. Show you around the neighborhood."

"Adam, what are you doing here?" she heard her father's voice ask from somewhere near the front door.

Holden's body stiffened at her father's words, as did Mia's.

She only heard Adam speak, but his tone was too quiet to make out the words. But she could guess what they were when she turned at the sound of footsteps and saw Adam and her father walk into the kitchen.

Adam's eyes fell on Holden, who was wiping his hands on a dish towel, and gave him a curt nod. "Holden, good to see you again."

She could see Holden had to force himself to nod back, his hands gripping the counter behind him as if would crumble beneath his tight grasp. "Likewise. I only wish it was under better circumstances. You have my condolences. I'm sure your father was a great man."

"You two know each other?" Her father asked in disbelief; the same disbelief Mia felt when she'd found out about their connection.

"He used one of my photos for a book cover two years back."

"Damn small world we live in," her father said as he gave Adam a small smack on the back. "Well, I'll leave you to it."

Her father left the room, and Adam's eyes remained on Holden. "I was hoping to speak to Mia for a minute."

Holden looked over at her only for a moment before returning his gaze to Adam. "If it's apologizing, that's fine. But my sympathy for your situation only runs so deep, so if you lay a hand on her, I promise you I can and will break it."

He didn't spare her a second look when he walked past Adam, but spared him plenty of looks before walking out of the room.

"I assume he knows," Adam said before he leaned against the other side of the counter.

"Not the details, but he knows I was in love with you."

Adam's head dropped, and hands clasped together against the countertop. "Past tense."

Mia saw him catch that and hoped like hell it would sink in. "The guy I loved is past tense. Who you are now is a stranger and not a very likable one."

He'd told her only a few hours earlier that he would rather she dump salt on an empty wound than to open up a fresh one, and as much as it pained her to do so, and as shitty as the timing was, he asked for it.

"You see hate when you look at me, Mia, and you're right," he whispered as he kept a distance between them. "It's been there for half your life, but it isn't hate for you. The only thing I've ever felt for you is love, and it's the only thing I'll ever feel for you. The person I hate is myself. Whenever I'm around you, I wish I could not want you. I wish I could see something other than this future I can never have. To look at you and only feel the sort of love I felt for you when you were a child, but you're right. I can't have that back and I hate myself for it.

"And that hate becomes so strong and unbearable that I push you away because it's the only thing I can do to force it into the background and push myself forward. Pushing you away is the only way I know to survive through this. I promise you, though, when I'm an old man, I will beg for your forgiveness because I know how much this hurts you and I know that keeping you at arm's length will be the biggest regret of my life. But it's a regret I have to keep making, because every time I see you, I love you more than I thought possible and it kills me because I know I'm not the man who can give you the life you deserve. Your parents can't accept me, I can't give you a child without being a senior citizen before they hit the fourth grade, and I can't build a life with you just so you can watch me turn into an old man while you still have all this time ahead of you."

Adam walked around the counter, toward her, then stopped when he was only a foot away. His hand raised to touch her, but fell to his side before he reached her skin. "You said a lot of things before and had every right to say them, but the only part you were right about was that I still can't choose you. Please don't think that decision means that I'm not in love with you, because nothing is further from the truth."

Mia had no clue she was crying until Adam finally allowed his hand to touch her cheek and his thumb wiped away the tears.

"My mini Mia munchkin head." He whispered the words with the smallest of smiles on his face, but with so much sadness that caused only more tears to fall against her face. "Go home, build a life with Holden or whoever, and try to forget I ever existed."

The pet name he had for her as a child would never again be uttered from his mouth. This wasn't just distance, this was her Adam coming back to her to say goodbye.

The last words spoken between them.

The last time she'd see his face up close.

And the last time he would ever kiss her, where her salty tears mingled with the taste of coffee on his lips as they shook against her own.

The moment Adam stepped away from her, Mia's hand reached for the counter behind her so she could lower herself with some amount of dignity rather than fall into a crumbled mess. Every breath she took caught in her throat before it could reach her lungs, and she was certain that at any moment she'd lose consciousness.

She felt the touch of a hand and thought for one blissful moment it was Adam. But when Mia finally gained the courage to open her eyes, her mother was pulling her against her body, cradling her like a wounded young. On the other side of the room stood Adam with his back turned to her, a foot from the doorway where her father stood, blocking his path to the exit.

Though her father's eyes were on Adam until he wiggled his way through the doorway, his words were spoken to her once the front door to the house clicked shut. "Is he why you moved away?"

Mia opened her mouth to speak, but only a small squeak came out.

Her mother's hands pet her hair and she answered for her. "Yes, he's the reason she left."

His eyes darted to his wife, and Mia watched as his face reddened. "You knew, and you didn't tell me?"

"I knew our daughter loved him and when he got back, something happened and he turned her down. Then she told us about the job and I put two and two together. There was no point in telling you about it because you just would have turned a molehill into a mountain of problems."

Her father turned, and when he did, she saw Holden standing there with his hands shoved in his pockets. There would be no building a life with Holden because, as much as she cared for him, Adam still had too many pieces of her heart for her to give it to another.

"So what are you, one of those rent-a-boyfriends or something?"

"No, I'm an actual boyfriend." one of Holden's hands escaped from his pocket and rubbed at his beard before he corrected himself. "Or at least I was."

"And you knew about this too? Because I've got to say, if you're her boyfriend you don't look all that surprised."

"I knew someone did a number on her and figured out who it was. Told her to make a choice." Holden's eyes found hers. "But I guess love isn't really a choice."

Her father frowned and shook his head, then looked around the room as if to find some answer to all this written in the air or on the door of a cabinet. "What in the hell am I supposed to do with all this, huh?" He asked to no one in particular. "Do I beat him to a pulp? Do I send my daughter home until I can look her in the eye again?"

This was why he'd kept his love for her hidden in the shadows, like a tragic secret he couldn't allow to come to light. This was why he wouldn't allow himself to succumb to what he felt for her, why that secret had turned him into the same darkness he'd forced her into.

"Keith," her mother said as she continued cradling her body. "I want you to look at your daughter. This is what not being able to be with the man she loves is doing to her. And Adam shutting everyone out for the last five years, holding himself up in his shitty apartment, drinking himself into oblivion; that's what it's been doing to him. Is this really what you want for the people you love?"

Her father gave them both one long look, then rubbed at his face, ran his fingers through his silver hair, and let out a huff. "Holden, do you want a ride to the airport?"

Holden's eyes landed on hers as she wiped the tears away. "I think that would be for the best. No hard feelings, right, sweetheart?"

She didn't deserve a man like him. "No hard feelings."

Holden gave her a sad smile, then walked into the distance, out of her sight.

"This isn't love," her father declared as if were trying to convince himself it was true. "This is some guy taking advantage of a child and adolescent infatuation."

Her mother shook her head. "First of all, 'some guy'? Are you fucking kidding me? Second, our daughter is not a child. She's a grown ass adult. And third, infatuation is a fleeting desire and Mia has felt this way for at least the last ten years. And you know what? There's a forth, and that's if you can't bring yourself to care about your own daughter's feelings, feel free to take your sweet ass time coming home after you've dropped Holden off."

Mia hadn't heard her parents fight in years, and even then, it was a rare occurrence. But she'd never heard her mother talk like this before and, by the lack of response from her father before he finally left the room, she guessed it was a new one for him as well.