Educating Holden (Wishing Well, Texas Book 11) Read online

  “I’m here.” As I looked down at her, guilt settled in my chest.

  I knew that it had been difficult for her since my injury. She’d booked the first flight she could to California after the accident, and several after that for surgeries and during my recuperation, but I’d made her cancel each one and forbid her to come.

  She’d argued, but I’d put my foot down. I was pretty sure my dad had been the one to talk her down. He’d told her that if I was being that stubborn then I was going to be fine. The truth was, I was terrified that I’d never walk again. And if that were the case, I hadn’t wanted anyone around to witness me in that state.

  My family had always teased me that I was an island unto myself. I had two older brothers that had been there and done that but I had never gone to them for advice or opened up to them about what was going on in my head. I’d always wanted to work things out on my own and hated asking for help from anyone. The only person I’d ever talked to about my fears, or dreams with was Olivia. After I’d lost her, I’d done everything I could to get the hell out of town.

  Sometimes I’d wondered if my rush to leave had more to do with getting away from her than it had with how bored I was in the town. Everything changed for me once I’d found out that I could graduate early and start doing the rodeo circuit full time. I buckled down and got to work. I’d finished all the credits I’d needed to graduate high school in two years instead of four and had been on the road touring the world from the age of sixteen. Alone. Well, my manager Kurt had been with me. But at the time he was only twenty-two himself, so he was more of a brother than a father/parental figure.

  “Where’s your cane?” A wrinkle appeared between my mother’s brows and I noticed it was deeper than it had been the last time I’d seen her. I wondered if I was the cause of that.

  For the past six weeks, I’d been using a cane, and I should probably have it now. But I hadn’t wanted my injury to be the only thing that people talked about with me. Which was probably wishful thinking on my part.

  “I’m fine.” I’d never used those two words so much in my life. It was my patent answer these past couple of months.

  I could see she didn’t believe me.

  “Do your brothers and your dad know you’re in town? They’re all working tonight.” My mom pulled her phone out, I assumed to text them.

  “I’m gonna be here for a while.” I had no clue how long, but since I had nowhere to go I figured it would be a couple of days at least. “I’ll make sure I see them.”

  She nodded but continued to type on her phone. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were coming? I would’ve gotten your room ready.”

  Oh shit. In my haste to get the hell away from L.A. and my doctors and the fog of depression over my career being over, I hadn’t given any thought to where I would be staying. The last place I wanted to be was back at my childhood home.

  “Actually, Mrs. Reed,” Bentley spoke up. “Holden agreed to stay at my condo as a favor to me. It’s been sitting there empty since I moved in with Maisy.”

  I exchanged a glance with him, communicating how much I appreciated the assist. We’d always had the kind of relationship that didn’t matter how much time had passed, when we saw each other we picked right back up like nothing had changed.

  “Oh, okay.” My mom looked a little disappointed but then her face lit up. “Oh, and doesn’t Olivia live next door?”

  As soon as she said it, I remembered that Bentley had told me that was the reason he’d bought the condo in the duplex a few years ago. Olivia had moved out for the first time on her own and she’d had a little bit of a tough time adjusting since she’d always shared a room with Molly, even in college.

  “Yep, she does.” Bentley nodded.

  My mom smiled up at me. “That will be nice, sweetie. You two were so close when you were little.”

  The thought of being next door to her caused my pulse to race and my palms to sweat and chest to constrict. Nice wouldn’t be the word I’d use to describe it.

  Chapter 4

  Olivia

  “Sometimes the best gift that you can be given in life is the opportunity to choose yourself.”

  ~ Maggie Calhoun

  My hands were tingling. My face felt numb. And my heart was pounding like a drumline in my chest. People were talking around me, but they all sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher.

  I hadn’t been prepared to see Holden Reed in the flesh. It had been so long since I hadn’t just seen him in clips on my phone on YouTube or Instagram or on TV when ESPN covered events that he was competing at.

  Since he left town, I’d always hear that he’d been back to Wishing Well after the fact. Or if he was still around, I’d show up to a friend’s house or the only bar in town, The Tipsy Cow, and people would tell me that he’d just left. He’d stop by my parents’ house to say hello and my mom would text to let me know he was there. And without fail, by the time I got there, I’d have just missed him.

  I’d tried not to take our missed connections personally. The rational side of my brain worked very hard to convince the emotional side of my brain that it had been bad timing. But there was a niggling voice in my head that was absolutely certain that he had read my letter and that had driven him to actively avoid me. There was no way that all of the times I’d “just missed him” could possibly be a coincidence.

  But he was here now.

  “Is it me, or does he look hot now?” Molly asked beside me.

  My head spun toward her. We’d never been attracted to the same guy and it would really suck if now she was attracted to the man I’d been in love with since before I knew what love was.

  No, no, no! my inner voice screamed as I stared at her like Eleven from Stranger Things, willing her attraction to fade.

  “Oh look!” Molly clapped excitedly. “Food. Have fun with the nose picker.”

  With that parting remark, her heels clicked on the hardwood floor as she walked away toward the buffet that was being laid out, looking none the wiser to my reaction to her partially true statement. He was hot now. But the “now” implied that there’d been a time when he wasn’t. To me, he’d always been. Although, even I could admit that he’d leveled up in his hotness.

  Holden had always had an athletic build, but he’d never been particularly muscular. Some had even referred to him as gangly due to his height and slender build. Now he was all filled out. He’d grown into his six-foot height and broad shoulders. His chest was muscular and his arms were chiseled to near perfection.

  Just go say hi.

  Just move your feet, one in front of the other, walk up to him and say hi.

  My inner voice was screaming at me as I watched him speaking to my brother and his mom. He was smiling, but I could see that his smile was forced.

  He was in pain. A lot of pain. I could tell by the color, or lack of color, in his skin tone, the tension in his jaw and the way he held himself.

  I’d been watching his last and, from what I knew, final ride, and when I’d seen the wreck, I’d thrown up. The way his body had flailed around, he hadn’t even looked like a person. He’d looked like a rag doll. He was unconscious when they carried him out of the arena, and I stayed up all night waiting to hear if he was okay.

  When I did hear, the news wasn’t great. He was alive, thank God, but there were rumors that he’d never walk again. My heart had broken for him, and all I’d wanted to do was get on a plane and fly to him. But since his own mother had told me that she had been forbidden to go see him, I figured I wouldn’t be welcome.

  But that hadn’t stopped me from looking at plane tickets every night. It had made me physically ill thinking of him going through his recovery alone. Then, I’d heard from Bentley, that he’d been dating a Brazilian model named Luciana for a couple of years. That news caused me to feel physically ill for an entirely different reason.

  If I were being honest with myself, my new adventures in dating might have had something to do with finding out about
Holden’s relationship. I’d never heard about him having a girlfriend before, which had, probably naïvely, stoked the flames of my hopeless romantic fire.

  In all the years he’d ignored me, I’d never stopped loving Holden. That was partly because I’d held out hope that we would somehow, someway end up together. But after my brother dropped the girlfriend bomb, I’d done what any sane person would and did a deep Google dive to find out who she was. Page one of the image results extinguished any and all lingering embers in the hopeless romantic fire that had burned in me.

  Luciana was next level sexy and beautiful, and not just in her bikini shots. She was almost more stunning with zero makeup, wearing sweats, and her hair pulled up because then nothing distracted from her large, almond shaped green eyes, her full lips, and perfect sweetheart face.

  And once I checked out her Instagram and saw how much volunteer work she did with animal charities and homeless shelters, and that she’d started a non-profit to support single moms getting higher education, any delusions that Holden Reed would ever come back and declare his love for me evaporated.

  I’d been doing my best to forget about him and move on. But seeing him live and in the flesh was all it had taken for all of my feelings to come flooding back to me. It didn’t help that he looked finer than any man had a right to.

  He’d always kept his face clean-shaven, but now he was rocking a sexy beard. It wasn’t like a mountain man beard; it was just enough. I’d always been a fan of facial hair. There was something so…manly about it. And seeing Holden rocking an overgrown five o’clock shadow had my ovaries aching.

  “I’m so glad you’re still here.” I felt a hand on my arm and turned to find Maisy Turner beside me. “Molly said you were leaving to go on a date.”

  “I am,” I blurted out, embarrassed that she’d caught me drooling over Holden Reed. “I mean, I will be, in a few minutes.”

  Tyler. My date. I’d completely forgotten that I was supposed to be leaving to go to dinner with him. Panic gripped my throat and I suddenly found it difficult to breathe. Any minute now, Tyler was going to text me that he was here. Holden Reed was back in Wishing Well after all this time, in the same room as me, and I was leaving?

  Maybe I should cancel.

  No. I couldn’t do that. I’d spent my entire life pining over Holden, and it had gotten me nowhere but single and crying at a film about love.

  As kids, we’d basically been inseparable. I’d believed that we’d had a very special relationship. He was my best friend. It might sound weird since he was a boy, who was two years older than me, and Bentley’s best friend, but I’d always felt like I was even more special to him than my brother had been.

  At least I had until we were in middle school. Then everything changed.

  I’d never forget when it happened. The summer before my sixth-grade year and his eighth grade, we hadn’t seen each other. We’d both been busy. He’d been traveling the country on the rodeo circuit and I’d spent the summer getting my period and going from an A cup to a C cup.

  I remember being sure that when he saw me again, he’d finally see me as more than just a friend. I’d been in love with him since I knew what romantic love was, but I’d never said anything. That summer, I’d finally found the courage to tell him. Well, found might be the wrong word. That summer I’d grown boobs, which had gotten me a lot of new attention, which had given me the courage to tell him.

  But as soon as I saw him, on the first day of school, everything was different between us. It was like a switch had been flipped and he wanted nothing to do with me. He wasn’t even mean to me. If he had been, at least that would have meant that he was speaking to me and I could have addressed it. What he did was so much worse. He ignored me completely. He wouldn’t even look at me, much less talk to me. He acted as if I didn’t exist.

  Bentley must’ve noticed the shift, because I was no longer included in Street Fighter marathons, I was persona non grata for pizza and movie nights, and my access to the tree fort was revoked.

  I’d tried to ask Holden, several times, why he was treating me like that, but he always acted like he had no idea what I was talking about. He’d played dumb and feigned total and complete ignorance.

  To this day, I still didn’t know what the heck happened. For seven years of my childhood, he’d been my best friend, my playmate, my soul mate. And then, one day, he wanted nothing to do with me.

  “Liv?”

  Maisy’s voice cut through my inner thoughts. I blinked. “What?”

  “Are you okay?”

  No. Not at all.

  “Yeah, sorry, I was just thinking about my date,” I lied.

  “Oh, okay, well I was saying that I’m glad I caught you before you left because I have something to ask you.”

  Maisy was one of the Turner Triplets, and Molly and I had always been close to them since we were both sets of multiples. Out of the triplets, I’d always been closest to Maisy. I’d considered her as more than a friend and was thrilled that now she was actually going to be my sister thanks to Bentley locking it down.

  “What?”

  She took my hand and looked right into my eyes. “Olivia Calhoun, would you do me the honor of being my maid of honor?”

  The last time we’d talked about wedding plans, my brother had told me that he and Maisy were considering not even having bridesmaids or groomsmen because there were just too many people that would need to be included.

  “What about Melody, or Madison, or Delilah?” I named her sisters.

  “Exactly.” Maisy nodded. “How can I pick?”

  “Good point.” It had never been a question for me who my maid of honor would be. Sharing a womb with someone normally automatically earned them that privilege. But in Maisy’s situation, I could see that would be an issue. Not only did she have her wombmates, she also had her little sister. Still, it felt odd to be offered the role that really felt like it should go to one of them. “Are you sure? Have you talked to your sisters?”

  “Yes.” Maisy nodded decisively. “And I’ve talked to Molly. Everyone is aware.”

  I still felt a little odd agreeing to hold that position, but this wasn’t about me. It was about Maisy. I smiled widely. “Of course I will! On one condition: if it causes any drama, you know that I will happily step down.”

  The last thing I’d ever want would be to cause my friend any undue stress.

  “Deal.” She threw her arms around me. “I can’t wait to be your sister.”

  I hugged her back as my phone vibrated alerting me to a text message. I looked down and saw that Tyler was outside. I glanced back toward Holden, he wasn’t looking my direction and seemed all together oblivious that I was even there.

  As much as I wanted to go talk to him, if only to make sure that he was okay, I knew that there was no point. I needed to get over Holden and finally let go of the fantasy that I’d built up in my mind.

  He wasn’t in town to see me. He’d barely looked at me. I needed to take back control of my life, starting with not wasting another minute of it agonizing about him.

  After saying a quick goodbye to Maisy, I held my head up and walked out of the auditorium. As I passed by Holden, I managed not to look over at him, even though every cell in my body was screaming for me to. My brain even tried to convince me that I could feel him staring at me. But it had also tried to convince me that he actually loved me and one day he’d finally give into it and tell me. Basically, my brain was a big, fat liar. So, I kept my chin up, eyes straight ahead, and didn’t even glance in his direction.

  As I stepped out into the fresh, crisp night air I could feel emotions welling in my eyes again. Seeing Holden, after all this time of being worried about him and right on the heels of watching a film that talked about true love, had caused my emotions to go haywire. I was sad, happy, worried, relieved, surprised, and upset all at once.

  I tilted my head and looked up, trying to focus on the blanket of stars sprinkled against the velvety backdrop of
the dark night sky. I’d just blinked back my tears when I saw one of those stars shooting across the black expanse.

  Any other night I would have wished on it, praying that Holden and I would end up together, but not tonight. Tonight, I wished that I would be happy and find the love of my life. Whoever that might be.

  Chapter 5

  Holden

  “Life always offers ya a second chance, it’s called tomorrow.”

  ~ Maggie Calhoun

  I sat in my truck outside of Bentley’s condo, contemplating whether or not I was about to make a huge mistake. I was leaning toward yes, yes I was making a big mistake. The smartest thing to do would be to thank my friend for the offer and then drive to my parents’ house. Or the Come On Inn, the only motel in town, and get a room. That would be the smart thing to do.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t do that. Not after what I’d seen and heard tonight.

  An image that was now seared into my brain popped back up in my head.

  Tonight, I’d witnessed Olivia get into the car of a guy I didn’t recognize.

  I’d noticed her walking out of the event, and without thinking about it, I’d excused myself and followed her outside. I wasn’t even sure what I’d planned on saying to her. “Hi. Sorry I haven’t spoken to you in almost twenty years. Oh, and by the way, I’m moving next door to you…” or something less lame.

  But my lack of any sort of charm or game didn’t matter since I didn’t get the chance. I came out just in time to see her climbing into the passenger seat of a white Range Rover, one that I didn’t recognize as belonging to anyone in town.

  When I’d gone back inside, I’d mentioned it to Bentley, and he’d explained that Olivia had been dating. A lot. He also said that she was meeting these guys online. He said that he’d been worried about her and that it would actually make him feel a lot better if I were next door, just so I could keep an eye on things, and would be close if she needed anything.