Vivienne Cartwright can have anything she wants in life except for the man she loves.
She chases it only to find herself crashing down after the ultimate high.
Oliver Yates doesn't seem to be the man she's loved all these years and his secrets are...
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The next morning, I arrived in church with Dad and Stellan.
I hated funerals but I had no choice but to be there.
Wanting to attract the least amount of attention from people who knew me and would be surprised at my appearance, I wore a simple black dress, my hair tied and tucked under a black silk scarf and my face sufficiently concealed by a large pair of dark sunglasses.
I only cared about one person knowing I was there.
Oliver stood by the coffin up front, his rigid back turned to us. Stellan and my father approached him first and they exchanged a short, hushed conversation. Then they stepped aside, as if choreographed, and revealed me standing there behind them.
Despite the cover up, it took no more than a second for Oliver to recognize me.
He sucked in a breath, his eyes narrowing as if in disbelief.
My knees went weak, having him this close and seeing the pain so crystal clear in his eyes.
What a complicated man—capable of so much brute force and bitterness but so raw and vulnerable at the same time.
"I'm so sorry for your loss, Oliver," I said softly, taking a step forward despite the thundering of my heart and my difficulty with words I'd once whispered to him in my mind.
There was so much that needed to be said but now wasn't the right time so all that I allowed myself was to reach out and touch his hand.
He visibly shuddered at the contact before his fingers instantly wrapped around mine in an almost painful squeeze.
"Thank you," he managed to say, his jaw clenching with emotion. "Thank you for being here."
I offered him a faint smile. "I won't be far if you need me at all."
My brother cleared his throat, reminding us both that we were the center of everyone's attention at the moment. Whether he did that to reel me back in or just ward off the gossip, it didn't matter because he was right. This moment wasn't about us.
Oliver just nodded before reluctantly releasing my hand. I instantly missed its warmth and the rough brush of his calloused skin that felt so familiar to me. That brief touch left me heady with feeling and appropriate or not, I remembered all the ways he'd touched me like the flashbacks of a passing life. I remembered when he would wrangle my hair into a lopsided ponytail at my request when I couldn't have been more than ten; when he bandaged my knee after I tripped over an old tree root on one of our walks in Central Park; when he tucked a lock of hair behind my ear after walking me up to my door on prom night; when his thumb outlined my lips before his mouth followed it with a kiss that first night at Las Vegas; when his hands shaped my body with fire that would incinerate us both until we were ashes.
