Professional baseball player Ethan Remington—Remy to his friends—falls for Dr. Jillian Carter at first sight, but Jillian does things in her own time. It takes her a bit longer to realize this is a man worth hanging onto. And she does…for ten years, through the births of their daughters, through Ethan's career-ending accident, and through marriage counseling to deal with problems he isn't aware they have. A new job, though, sends Jillian on her way to another town, and when Ethan doesn’t follow, she lets the pain overcome the love she’s never forgotten. Ethan convinces Jillian to come home for a weekend where they face all their hurt, all their memories and a past that will either draw them back together or tear them apart for good.

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Read an excerpt:

CHAPTER ONE

 

Jillian

“Hey.” Nothing about Ethan Remington had changed, not the ice blue of his eyes, or the way the light glinted off the natural highlights in his caramel colored hair, or the way his voice washed over me.

Yes. We’d been apart awhile if I was thinking in poetry about his hair. Glinted. Caramel. Ugh.

“Hey.”

This was crazy—the trembling, the shake in the single word, the way my eyes took in every square of inch of him. We were married for ten years. All we could think to say to one another as we stood in the living room we’d once shared was hey. I could still ogle like a champ, though.

He shuffled from one foot to the other and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I put my stuff in the spare room. I figured you’d want the master.”

“Thanks.” I didn’t bother to tell him that the room didn’t matter. This house—our house—was more and less than just a place for us to sleep in separate rooms. It was our past, and now…someone else’s future. My heart ached a little as I pictured a nameless, faceless woman holding her child in the nursery, or some random man whistling his way through an oil change in the garage. Someone else’s future.

“You want me to take those up?” His voice was smoother than warm maple syrup and probably just as sweet as he looked up at me with an expectant gaze and a slight grin tugging at his lips.

“I can get it.” His smile turned to a frown. Oh, this was ridiculous. Letting him carry my bags upstairs didn’t imply anything tawdry. “Actually, sure. Thanks.” He lifted the two bags and my laptop case and winked as he backed up to the steps.

Instead of staring at him as he walked away—a lovely view by any account—I turned around and focused on the framed prints hanging on the wall where family photos used to be. A large painted flower on a muted pastel canvas hung where the first-grade picture of Abs used to smile at us with her toothless grin and black eye she’d gotten from the dog. It had been childish and cruel to take the pictures when I left, but I was hurt he wouldn’t come along with me as I started my new job. I wanted to show him the pain I experienced, let him see what it felt like to have the breath sucked from his lungs as he considered a future without me. God knew I hadn’t been breathing normally much in the last twelve months.

I shook off the anger and moved in a half circle to take in the rest of the room. The spot where our wedding collage had hung now displayed a scrolled metal wall sculpture. As I looked at the wall where Grace wrote her “name” in Sharpie and noticed it had been painted over in a cool khaki color, all the hurt came rushing forward, drowning me in heartache. Someone else’s future.

This house had been Remy’s before we married—the stereotypical bachelor pad. But after we moved in, he took down the baseball trophies and the movie posters and replaced them with family pictures, a piano for Abby and memories I would always cherish. God. It seemed like forever ago. I’d still been an intern, and Remy spent his summers, and part of the spring and fall, traveling the country playing professional baseball. Somehow, back then we’d made it all work. Probably because we’d taken the time to get it right. And now…it was our history, and only a year after I’d moved out, there wasn’t much left to show what we’d once been.

He’d done a lot of work, and the place looked great. But only a few pieces of leftover furniture—his ridiculous leather recliner and a flat screen TV, and some knick-knacks—remained to commemorate our lives here. I’d come home to go through the boxes of our memories shoved away in the attic, out of sight, where memories of happier days belonged. It was time. Our happier days had been swallowed by bitterness and anger. Some his. Some mine.

I swallowed hard, knowing I had to accept a bit of accountability for our breakdown. Ethan was only a fraction of the problem. Yeah. I’d done my fair share, but I held onto the hurt as if he’d been the driving force in the demise of our relationship. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t make it through this time with him. Well, I might have made it through, but then I would have to go through the pain of losing him again. It almost destroyed me once. I didn’t know if I would survive a second time.

Besides, the year we’d spent apart had destroyed every last feeling I had for him—at least I told myself it did every morning when I crawled into or out of bed depending which shift I worked. Nothing remained of what we had, and this visit was no more than a way to write that in our stars. I had the divorce papers tucked inside my bag, and the house had been sold. All we had left to do was sort the rest of our stuff and be on our way—our separate ways.

Sometime during my reminiscing, he returned. “I’m gonna get a beer. You want a beer?”

“Sounds good.” I followed him to the kitchen and stood behind him, close enough I could smell his cologne and feel the heat from his body. I reached out then jerked the hand to my side as he turned, holding out the bottle he’d just twisted open.

Spinning away, I took a long drink. “Wow. That’s good.” Good was an understatement. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a beer. Between work, the girls, the divorce—I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done a lot of things.

“Did you have any problems getting off work?” He took a swig of his beer as though this was just a casual question, a conversation starter; but it was more, and the flutter of his eyelids said he knew it, too. He’d gone after the one subject guaranteed to start a full-on battle between us.

As a doctor in a pediatric research and care hospital, my shifts varied—mostly by their own length—and I’d barely been able to steal a whole weekend away. Since he’d gone after the one issue guaranteed to widen the rift between us, I shook my head. “No. I just…” He tilted his head. I’d never been an effective liar against the all-knowing powers of Ethan Remington. “Yeah. It was kind of a problem, but I figured we needed to get this done.”

He nodded, stared down at his bottle, and peeled a few inches of the label with his thumbnail. “Yeah. It’s not every day you end your marriage, sell your house, move on. I guess that merits a couple days off.”

I caught the bitterness in the words, the hidden meaning. It wasn’t as if he tried to disguise it as something else behind a smile or a glint of his eyes. I’d taken the happiest human being I’d ever met and destroyed something inside so the usual joy radiating off him was as absent as I’d been over the last year. I’d done it, and I would have to live with it.

As if he could read my mind, he reached out to lay his hand on my arm. “I’m sorry, Jilly. I didn’t…This is hard.”

It was hard for me, too, but as usual, the world revolved around Ethan and his feelings—I had to hang onto that anger, or before the weekend was over, I would be begging him to take me back and let me come home, job or not. Still, there wasn’t much point in fighting with him.

I turned away and ran my hand over the granite island top—the one with the slope that made grapes roll off onto the floor—the one Ethan had installed himself after watching a weekend of fixer-upper shows on cable.

Maybe I was being too sensitive. I’d barely gotten any sleep the night before, then worked this morning until I had to leave to catch my flight. As refreshing as the beer tasted, and despite all the things we needed to say to one another, all I really wanted was a hot bath and a warm bed.

From behind me, he sighed. “You’re probably tired. You want to relax tonight and get started in the morning?” When I nodded, still amazed at how well he could read me, he set his empty bottle on the counter next to mine. I smiled when they slid just about an eighth of an inch to the left. He moved his to the opposite counter and pointed to the stairs. “I’m gonna check in with the girls. You want to talk to them?”

This hurt me as much to say as it probably did him to hear. “I’ll call later. I don’t want them to know we’re together and think we’re trying to work it out. No point in getting their hopes up.”

“Right.” I listened to his soft footsteps on the tile. When I was sure he was gone, I braced my hands on the counter and sucked in ten or twelve deep breaths.

While the year had been hard for us, our daughters had suffered in ways I couldn’t bear. Remy had adopted Abby as soon as we married. Now at thirteen, she blamed me and was so angry that I’d moved her away from him we could barely be in the same room.

Grace, our six-year-old, missed bedtime with Daddy. They’d had a routine. While I blamed myself enough for both of us, and she’d never said a word, she’d taken to sleeping with the light on and hid her books in the closet, so she didn’t have to see them anymore. I wasn’t Remy, and there was no disguising it. Though I’d tried, I didn’t make the voices like Daddy. My hugs weren’t as strong. I didn’t tuck the blanket right. So, my little girl went to bed alone, untucked, unread, and unhugged.

Jordyn, only still a baby at four, would never remember a time when she had her whole family together. The situation hadn’t quite manifested itself in behavior yet, but the same independence that had her trying everything on her own, refusing all help, and the way she pouted after she spoke to him…it wouldn’t be long until she blamed me, too.