Letting Go (Vista Falls #3) Read Free

wasn’t reason enough to stay?” She shook her head. “You sure know how to make a girl feel special, Colt.”
    He stepped closer, knowing that was a bad idea. His body reacted immediately, thinking it was getting in on the action. “You were special,” he said, wiping a trace of mascara from below her eye. “You know that. I’d never felt about anyone the way I did about you.” Before or since. “But I always associated this town with my old man, and that meant I’d never be able to find happiness here.”
    “Then why come back?”
    Her question was legitimate but not an easy one for him to answer. “I guess I got tired of running away. It made me feel like a coward, and that’s what he always accused me of being. I couldn’t let him be right.”
    “I don’t know why you always believed that shit he told you,” she said, sounding disgusted. “Everyone knew he was a whack job.”
    He chuckled at her apt description of his father, but it didn’t make his old taunts hurt any less. “When you’re a kid, you believe what your parents tell you. You don’t know any better. So when he told me I was a worthless piece of shit, I believed him. I figured, why would my own father lie to me, right?”
    She stepped closer, her bare breasts brushing his white dress shirt. “He didn’t know you. He may have lived in the same house, eaten at the same table, but he didn’t know what was in here”—she touched his chest, where his heart beat—“or what was in here.” She tapped her index finger against his temple.
    He could barely breathe when she touched him… even when the touch was intended to be an innocent, gentle reminder that he was more than the names that plagued him.
    “You were brilliant, Colt.” She smiled. “I’m not surprised you got all those scholarship offers. What school wouldn’t want you?”
    “Yeah, but according to my old man, I screwed that up too, dropping out after my first year to start Backwoods Outdoors with Wes.”
    She threw her head back laughing, and he curled his hand into a fist to resist the urge to grab her and kiss the smooth, sweetly scented column of her neck.
    “Your dad called you a failure?” Her lips twitched, and her eyes sparkled with amusement. “That’s rich. You’ve built one of the most successful companies in your sector. What’s he done with his life? Aside from bullying everyone who crosses his path?”
    His father was living in a nice assisted living facility outside of town, which Colt foot the bill for since the man had never held a job long enough to draw a decent pension.
    “Put some clothes on,” he whispered, closing his eyes before they could dip lower. “Please. I can’t have this conversation with you… like that.” His eyes were still closed, but he heard rustling and the sound of a zipper.
    “The Colt I remember would have taken me any way he could get me. What happened to that guy?”
    He opened his eyes in time to see her pulling pins from her hair and shaking the long, wavy blond strands until they spilled around her shoulders.
    “That guy grew up.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t expect you to believe me. Lord knows you haven’t seen any evidence of it yet. But you will.” Last time he’d been alone with her in this cabin, he had taken advantage of her feelings for him, and he’d spent every day since hating himself for that.
    “I can’t take another chance on you.” Her eyes were downcast as she bit her lip. “The first time you left, I was heartbroken. But I was just a kid then. I told myself that first loves aren’t meant to last forever. But when you came back the last time and we…” She shook her head. “I’m not going to lie, that’s been harder to get over.”
    He curled his hands around her bare shoulders, knowing immediately that touching her was a mistake. “Look at me.” She did as he asked, but he could tell it cost her. “I’m not over it either. I thought about you every day after I