Memory of You (A Misty Cove Love Story) Read Online Free PDF Page A

we get through Christmas with so much bitterness between us?
    We arrived at his cottage ten minutes later.
    It was just as I had remembered it. The Christmas lights that lined the edge of the roof sparkled, like they had years ago.
    As we walked up the porch, I caught sight of a glittery-silver snowflake through the window and fresh tears came to my eyes. It had been our thing. Despite the warm December weather, Bryce and I had always decorated his parents’ cottage with winter wonderland decorations to give us the feel of Christmas in a snowy place. He had also done the same to the cottage he had rented for us the night he had proposed.
    “I don’t know if I want to do this.” My voice wavered. It would bring back so many memories of the past, of what I had lost so long ago, what I had missed during my marriage to Milton.
    “Too late. Merry Christmas, Jade.” He opened the door—which was adorned with a silver tinsel wreath—and waved me inside.
    I stood inside the doorway, my gaze taking in the candles and the fake snowflakes on the coffee table. It came to rest at the 3D silver tinsel Christmas tree in the center of the spacious room. I couldn’t even remember how many times I had seen that Christmas tree.
    Being here, seeing all the decorations that I had once helped to hang, having him close by made me feel as if I’d gone back in time.
    “Are you trying to punish me?” I asked as he closed the door behind me. “You knew how much I loved this.” I waved a hand at all the decorations.
    “I’m not.” He laid a hand on my back and I almost jumped from the shock of his touch. “This is the only kind of Christmas I know. I decorate like this every year.”
    The cottage was larger than Gran’s, and to me it had always felt like a second home. It had belonged to Bryce’s parents until his father died from a heart attack and his mother followed six months later, committing suicide. Bryce was sixteen at the time. The deaths of his parents, especially the suicide, had rocked Misty Cove because even through her grief, no one ever thought Reece Colman would kill herself. But things like that always came by surprise. It was Gran who had taken over the responsibility of being there for Bryce, like a biological grandmother would do. When I had left him at the altar, she had wept for both of us. She had urged me to talk to him, to forgive him. But in the end she had given up and told me it was my life, and that I could make the decisions I found were right for me.
    I walked around the living room, my fingers brushing over snowflakes that hung from the ceiling, the chain link garland, and the icicles. Even with sadness and confusion surrounding us, it was still beautiful, still magical.
    “I didn’t do any cooking. We have to order in.”
    His mother used to be an amazing cook, and her meat pies and cinnamon cookies had been the hit of the town. Bryce, on the other hand, could burn a pot of boiling water.
    “I’m relieved about that.” I laughed, remembering his attempt to bake bread which turned out to be a brick.
    “Go ahead, laugh.” The ice in his voice melted. “You’re not much better of a cook.”
    “At least my food is still somewhat edible.” He was right. Cooking had never been my thing either. Luckily, Milton had preferred to eat the hired chef’s gourmet meals rather than mine, which he never made a secret of hating.
    “Look, Jade,” Bryce came to stand close to me but not enough to touch. “I’m sorry about what I said earlier… that I’m just doing this for Gran. I’m doing this because no one deserves to be alone for Christmas. I thought tonight we could leave the past behind and try to be friends.”
    “I’d appreciate that.” With those words, in the moment, I felt like I was standing in front of the old Bryce again, the man I had loved so much and wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Not the man who had given my heart its first cut.
     

Chapter Eight
     
    While we waited