If Only in My Dreams, page 1
If Only in My Dreams
Carrie Aarons
Copyright © 2021 by Carrie Aarons
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Editing done by Proofing Style.
Cover designed by Okay Creations.
Do you want your FREE Carrie Aarons eBook?
All you have to do is sign up for my newsletter, and you’ll immediately receive your free book!
To every version of our teenage selves who sang All I Want for Christmas, or My Only Wish This Year, in our childhood bedroom while hoping our crush kissed us under mistletoe.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Epilogue
Also by Carrie Aarons
About the Author
1
Madison
You can go home again, but it’ll mean heads whipping around in familiar recognition when they notice it’s you walking down the street.
Some of those humans who belong to the heads will even stop, say hello, tell you how sorry they are with pity and second-hand embarrassment on their faces.
And you’ll smile self-deprecatingly and say something like, “Everything in life happens for a reason.”
But really, does it? Do terrible things, mortifying things just happen for no bigger picture reason at all? Because I’d like to believe that my divorce, a horrifically public thing if measuring on the scale of normal people’s divorces, was not fated by the universe or pointing me down some lonely road blessed by a Rascal Flatts song.
Rutlend, New York, is covered in a foot of snow, so you’d think I could bundle up in the North Face parka that reaches my ankles and be unrecognizable to anyone I might know. But no, people in my hometown run in small circles and can sniff out any type of gossip, which I should have expected.
When my mother asked me to go to the small market on the charming downtown street to search for cinnamon and cloves, I should have told her I didn’t feel well. But I already felt like a burden having moved home to stay with them for a bit, and so I agreed.
So here I am, standing in the middle of Sprig and Sprout, searching for spices. It’s one of the shops that line the downtown of Rutlend, cutesy little brick storefronts that sell arugula, candles, or baby clothes for way over top dollar. I like my hometown, though, and have certainly missed its cold winters after living in Florida for so long.
There is just something about the holiday season that feels more magical in the cold snow. Which Rutlend definitely has a ton of.
But all I can think about as I scan the market are the four people who already stopped me in here to get a glimpse of the hometown’s latest disgrace.
William and Madison, the perfect couple who would name their kids classic American names and go to little league baseball games every Saturday. Oh, how freaking stupid had I been? I should have seen it coming a mile away, but I’d put all of my eggs in one basket and now had nothing to show for it.
My husband, oh, shit, ex-husband and I met the first day of college and I never looked back. My heart had still been reeling from … well, that’s a story for another day. But I was rebounding, glanced up from a Spanish textbook, and there he was.
William Cathcart III, the son of a wealthy Florida family who swept me off my feet and made me forget any other boy I ever thought I loved. We were engaged by college graduation, had a ridiculously expensive soiree at his family’s Star Island mansion, and honeymooned at a palace in the South of France.
Two years, almost to the date of our wedding, the ink on our divorce papers was dry.
Now I’m six months out of that and still stuck on an emotional roller-coaster. Most days I can’t get out of bed for an hour each time I wake. I can barely eat, and my life seems meaningless.
My thoughts are locked onto my ex-husband as I meander down the aisle of the store.
And proceed to completely run into someone.
“Oof.” The sound comes from my belly as I latch onto the shelf next to me, trying to keep myself upright.
“Jesus,” a voice hisses.
I realize I’ve dropped the basket of minimal items I was going to purchase, and bend to snatch them up. Maybe the person will just wander off, and save me the embarrassment, especially if they know exactly who I am and why I’m back in my hometown.
But no. Two shoes are standing stock-still right in front of me, waiting for me to stand back up. My cheeks blush with heat, knowing whoever it is will no doubt ask me about my goddamn divorce, and I really wish, for the thousandth time, I hadn’t come here.
Or maybe that I hadn’t come home.
But I was not expecting the person in front of me, not in the least. I didn’t think he’d still be here, living in this little affluent bubble of Rutlend, a place he hated so much.
I thought if I ever saw him again in my life, I’d be given some cosmic forewarning, some kind of sign to prepare myself and my weak will where he’s concerned.
No. Here he is, assessing me with a pair of blue eyes, the bluest you’ve ever seen in your whole life.
Tall, impossibly so. Taller than any man I’ve ever encountered. Pale, flawless Irish skin with a shock of black hair. Jaw and cheekbones cut from stone, Porter Kelly is mysteriously, dangerously good-looking. His attractiveness comes in the way he carries himself, how he never directly looks anyone in the eye.
Well, except for me, but only the handful of times I treasured like special gems in my back pocket.
“Um. Hi,” I squeak, so uncool that I want to punch myself in the face.
He raises an eyebrow, smug and unreadable, and I about want to die right here on the spot.
Porter Kelly was part of the popular crowd when we were growing up, but only by default because of how handsome he was. Still is, but back in high school, all the girls were dying for a shot with Porter. He’d walk around the halls with his aloof, bored, serious expression, and everyone mistook him for a bad boy.
But he wasn’t that. He never cut class, always participated in sports from what I could see. On the rarest of nights would he even drink one beer.
Porter was a threat because no one could figure him out. Hell, he let me the closest out of anyone and I still had no clue what went on inside that head of his.
Well, I guess we all do now … kind of.
A few years ago, he released a book. I wasn’t even aware he was a writer, but it was inspired by a true story. The novel is about a kid from the burbs of Upstate New York who grew up with a single mom, hiding in plain sight. Because … his father was a famous musician who had cheated on his famous actress wife, and then paid off the one-night stand for years, eighteen to be exact, to keep it quiet.
It wasn’t hard to read between the lines; Porter was the baby they’d accidentally had. And just before the book released, Gregory Monay, famous soft rock guitarist for the band Evermore, had tragically died. The pieces put themselves together.
No one had known who he was for all of those years. But there I’d been, the secret who warmed his bed most nights during junior and senior year of high school.
“Where is your husband?” He sneers, and it’s practically a bullet to my chest.
Leave it to Porter to bring this up and make it feel like an insult that anyone would actually want to marry me. As if he wasn’t the one who used me and kicked me to the curb in high school, as if I had left him for William. In reality, Porter never treated me as anything but a booty call, using me for sex, while my teenage self fell head over heels for him. And then, two months before high school graduation, he told me he “wasn’t feeling me” any longer and that I shouldn’t take it personally.
I think he ripped my heart from my chest at that moment.
But I’m just so tired. I have no will left to fight, especially with the guy who has been the source of many nightmares and broken hearts whenever I think of him.
“Honestly? I’m not sure. We got divorced.” I shrug nonchalantly, as if admitting that to him isn’t almost as embarrassing as getting divorced in the first place.
Porter rears back, surprise and shock marring his gorgeous face. “I hadn’t … I didn’t hear that.”<
Notice how he doesn’t offer an apology. But I guess I can appreciate that, and at least he isn’t wearing a sympathetic look.
“That’s surprising, considering half the East Coast has. Yes, I’m officially a divorcee.” Just saying the word makes me want to vomit.
I’ve always been the believer in one marriage for life. I’d say yes to the man I loved above all; we’d have a brood of little babies and then grow old together and sip tea on the porch while gossiping.
Here I am, twenty-six with a ring indentation on my left hand but no diamond sparkling there. That had been one of the hardest days, when William had asked for my three carat emerald-cut stunner back because it’s a family heirloom.
“I can only imagine how high-maintenance you were as a wife.”
My right shoulder jerks back, like he’s jabbed it and I’m up against the ropes. It singes, like I’ll have a bruise there, when really it’s only my ego, heart, and confidence that have taken a massive blow because of his words.
I’d seen Porter a handful of times since high school; a couple times when I was home from college, once when I was engaged, and once when I was married. Each time, he not only sneered at me and judged, but he’d said something extremely rude to my husband last time that William wouldn’t repeat. I just know I got an earful about my wretched, impoverished town and how he wanted to get back to Miami as soon as possible.
“And I see you’re still as big of a pompous asshole as you were back in high school, Porter. At least I got out of this town, and didn’t make money off the heartache of my own mother.”
The words burst from my lips, coming from a place of furious hurt. I slap my hand over my mouth, barely believing I just said that. I’m not that person, I don’t take my feelings out on others and I’m rarely rude. God, I was voted Nicest Classmate our senior year of high school.
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” Porter growls, stepping toward me.
I suck in a breath, more shaken up that I’m not scared at this moment but … turned on? What the actual hell? How am I fresh off a divorce and haven’t spoken to this guy in years, yet he still has the ability to do this to me?
Just one more eye smolder, and not another word, Porter swerves around me and off in the opposite direction, leaving me alone in the aisle, still clutching a shelf full of pancake mix.
Not even a month into moving back to my hometown, and I’m arguing with an ex-fling in the aisles of the grocery store.
As if this year could get any worse. Though, I guess I shouldn’t wish it upon myself. Based on my track record recently, it can only go down from here.
2
Porter
The groceries go down with a thud on my kitchen counter, and the smack feels about comparable to the visual one I got at the market.
Madison Goldwin. Back to her maiden name, because Cathcart was no longer in use.
Divorced. Jesus Christ, I’d missed some hell of an update when I decided to get off social media last year. And I can’t believe Harry and Diane didn’t tell me, considering I’ve been working for her parents for the past two years.
A jingle sounds down the hallway, and then my seventy pound golden retriever, Jenny, appears in the kitchen.
“Hey, girl.” I scratch her behind the ears as she rubs up against my leg like a cat.
Co-dependent should be her middle name; the animal is like my shadow. With russet blond shaggy hair all over her body and no ability to talk back, Jenny is the only woman I’ve ever decided to live with.
She sits right on my foot, a roadblock to me unpacking and putting away the food currently melting on my counters, but I kind of don’t mind. Going into those bags means reliving what just happened at Sprig and Sprout, and I’m not ready to do that.
Not that my brain listens to that logic. From the moment I saw her standing in that aisle, the tip of her button nose rosy from the cold and her sunflower blond hair looping in and out of the pink plaid scarf around her neck, I’ve not been able to think of much else than Madison.
She’s still so damn pretty, and it burns me up inside with rage. How dare she waltz back into our hometown looking like the picture of sunshine when she has just been dumped and sent packing?
Divorced. No longer married. No longer off-limits, or forbidden for me to touch or think about.
Shit, this was going to be the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever had to put up with, and that’s saying a lot.
Jenny makes a whimpering noise at my hand, and instead of putting the ice cream in the freezer, I head for the back door of my ranch to let her out.
I bought this place with half the advance I was paid by the publishing company who picked up my book. A two-bedroom, two bath ranch on a side street about ten minutes from downtown Rutlend, the place cost me a cool five hundred thousand and change. But what else was I going to spend my money on?
I’d gawked at the price my agent pushed across a table to me when we inked the deal for my first book. But what publisher wouldn’t want a book where the banished, hidden son of the most famous rock star in the world paints a thinly veiled true story of what his life was like having his father keep him a secret?
Yeah, you bet your ass I took my emotional trauma and laughed all the way to the bank.
My little ranch might be small, but it does the trick, and the owners who lived here last did most of the renovations. I have a kitchen decked out in stainless steel and subway tile, my living room boasts wainscoting in a manly navy blue, and a master bathroom with heated floors. After all, what or who else was I fitting here? It’s the perfect size for a single me, a status I very much intended to keep.
“Come on, girl. It’s freezing.” I motion to Jenny to get going on the piss front because my hands are starting to numb.
As my dog skitters around the yard, flopping in the snow, my mind turns back to the predicament I’m in.
Madison’s parents are like the co-mayors of Rutlend. Harry and Diane Goldwin are some of the nicest and richest people in our affluent suburb of New York City. Located about forty minutes via train line from the city that never sleeps, Madison’s family lives in a stately colonial that was built back during the Civil War. It’s been restored many times over, and that last time I was there about a month ago, Diane was redoing her master bathroom … again.
Harry was a big deal in the early days of the Internet and sold his company for a whopping two hundred million when his kids were young. That’s to say, he’s set for life. But the two of them didn’t want to just settle down and retire. So they bought the old brunch cafe at a defunct train station, fixed up both the restaurant and the line, and now run a seasonal business where families come to ride holiday-themed excursions on the train.
It’s one of the most popular attractions during November and December. Anyone who is anyone in Rutlend buys yearly tickets to the Polar Express.
Christmas in my life is lonely, especially now that my mother and I barely speak. Three years ago, I made an unforgivable decision, at least in her eyes, but I was tired of living a lie. It was either my truth that came out in my book, or the love that came with being silent. I chose myself, and she’s hated me for it ever since.
Which is why, when the Goldwin’s needed a guitar player on the Polar Express, I said I’d do it. I was bored and looking for a way to avoid real life, so why not play some Christmas tunes for my hometown for a few weeks in December. I got free cookies and coffee most rides, and I liked Harry and Diane. They’d always been nice to me.
They probably wouldn’t be if they knew how I treated their daughter way back when, but that bit of narcissist in me ignored the voice of disappointment whenever I thought about it. I like being around them most because the Goldwins are the most normal, platonic, happy family I’ve ever been around.
