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I start to follow, but Miles catches my fingers in the dark.

“Come with me,” he says quietly. “There’s something I want to show you.”

Then he leads me away from the farmhouse and into the oldest, darkest part of the trees.

Chapter 10

Audrey

Miles leads me through a gap in the fence and into a section of the property where the trees stop being crops.

These firs are enormous and clearly wild, older than any harvest. Snow muffles everything until the darkened world contains nothing but our footsteps, our breath clouding in the moonlight and his warm hand wrapped around mine.

At the center of a small clearing stands a lone tree so enormous I stop walking just to look all the way up.

It towers over everything, branches heavy with snow, sixty feet of evergreen that has clearly never seen a saw.

"My great-grandfather planted this tree," Miles says. "It all started right here, and every generation since has spared it. It's the one tree on this farm that will never be cut."

He looks up into the branches and smiles, the sight making my heart skip a beat.

"When hockey gets too much, or the money, or being the guy who's supposed to fix everything… I come here to forget it all." His breath fogs in the night sky. "It's stupid, but this tree is the one permanent thing in my life that I know for sure will always be exactly where I left it."

I take a breathy, not really sure what to say.

Miles's heart is huge, but I see the pain and struggle beneath. It must be hard for him to be this honest, and suddenly I'm done protecting him from the whole truth about why I'm standing right here with him.

"Miles. There's a part of the wedding story I didn't tell you."

He turns and looks at me.

"I told you Brett was marrying me for the inheritance. What I didn't tell you is what I actually heard him say while I was standing in the hallway in my dress."

I move forward and place my palm on the trunk of his great-grandfathers tree, hoping it might help me vanquish the images suddenly surfacing back to the front of my mind.

Somehow, it doesn't work.

The memory of Brett's profile through the crack in the door flashes, the way he laughed while straightening his tie in the mirror. That same easy, handsome smile I'd fallen for years ago, was now aimed at a joke made entirely at my expense.

"He told his best man I was beautiful, beautiful but easy. Safe enough to build a respectable life around. A life that meant his family would finally give him what he really wanted."

"Money?"

I nod. "And his best man laughed and said the million dollar inheritance might make up for me being shit in bed."

Miles goes very, very still.

"I stood there while Brett just laughed and high-fived him. On our wedding day." I make myself keep going, because the worst part isn't Brett. "And here's what I'm actually ashamed of. It hurt, Miles. Not because it was cruel, but because I spent years wanting more than he ever gave me. He made out like he was sacrificing everything, but you know what? I was too. I had dreams, I wanted things."

"Of course you did."

I shake my head. "I even liked sex before I met him. I loved it. I wanted passion and mess and trying things, and the man in my bed was so bored by me that I started believing my own appetite wasn't normal. Something to apologize for or be embarrassed about."

The silence lasts one second.

Then Miles moves in front of me and the fury coming off him has actual heat.

"That man," he says, a low growl forcing my eyes to his, "had everything. Your mouth. Your body. Your filthy laugh and everything you wanted to give him. And he was too fucking stupid to open the gift."