“You can’t be him,” she whispers. “Jace?”
Instantly, my inner bear growls. My name. How does she know my name? More importantly, how does she know who I am in relation to Alexis? If she knows my name, then she knows a lot more than she’s letting on, and I’d be willing to bet that she’s about to tell me something I’m not supposed to know.
I look down at the little baby in my arms, and that’s when it hits me. I realize, suddenly, why he’s so comfortable with me. Most babies wouldn’t let a stranger hold them. Not like this. Most babies wouldn’t want someone they didn’t know or trust to be the one rocking them, but this baby doesn’t seem to mind me one bit.
Which means he knows me.
And he knows me because he’s my son.
“She didn’t die in the car accident, did she?” I ask. I don’t look up at Polly, though. I keep looking down at Brandon because if I look up at her, I’m going to have to find out the truth, and there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to.
Six months ago, I laid my fiancé to rest.
She died in a car crash while pregnant with our child.
She died carrying the child we were going to love, going to raise, going to give our lives to.
She died, and I left everything behind and locked myself out in the mountains.
“No,” the woman whispers. “She didn’t die.”
I swallow hard.
“So, it was a lie?”
“You have to understand, Jace. She did it to protect you.”
“Where is she?” I ask. “Why are you here with our baby?”
“She’s...she’s gone, Jace.”
So, she wasn’t dead then, but now she is. How convenient.
“How can I trust anything that you say?” I ask, and the woman starts fishing around in her diaper bag for a minute before pulling something out.
“She told me that if there was ever trouble to come find you,” Polly says. “She said you’d be in the mountains, and you’d be angry, and that this would explain everything.
She hands me something and I know even before I touch it what it is. It’s the locket I gave her as an engagement gift. Oh, she got a ring, of course, but I couldn’t leave it at that. I was too excited, so I gave her a locket with pictures of us inside, and now I’m holding it in my hand.
I look at it, and my heart hurts, aching as I stare at the gift that I had so carefully selected for her. Then I look up at Polly.
“Please,” I whisper, finally feeling myself break. “Tell me what happened.”
Chapter Three
Polly
Alexis told me a lot of things about Jace, but she never told me that he was handsome, or that he was kind, or gentle, or hot.
She didn’t tell me that he had loved her so very deeply that she had broken him.
And she didn’t tell me that he would be staying in this tiny little cabin in the middle of nowhere. She’d directed me toward a town, and I’d b
een on my way when the storm hit.
“She told me you’d be in Storm Haven.”
“That’s on the other side of the mountains,” he says.