Love, Unwanted (Discovering Love #3) (17 page)
Read Love, Unwanted (Discovering Love #3) Online
Authors: Ra'Chael Ohara
Tags: #Romance, #Contemporary, #New Adult & College
Phoenix
I didn’t know what I was getting myself into the night I walked in that storage unit and first laid eyes on Caroline Taylor, but even before we really exchanged words, I knew she was different.
She’s beautiful, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, but it was more than that. I walked into that closet and it felt like there was an invisible string between us pulling me toward her. That’s how I knew when she left me that first night standing outside the pub that it wouldn’t be the last time I saw her. It couldn’t be.
I had to beg almost on my knees before Violet finally cracked and gave me the place where she worked. I wasn’t surprised to find out she worked at a library. She’s intelligent. I learned that within the first minute of our first conversation.
She’s also shy and sweet. I was almost convinced she had some kind of magical power. I would do anything for her. That’s why, when she looked at me that day in the park and told me about all the things she wanted to try, I jumped at the chance to help her. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to help; but I had my selfish reasons for it as well. It was my way of keeping her in my life for a little while longer.
I could have never known what she would come to mean to me over the next few months. I never wanted those feelings. I never asked for them. After seeing how hard my dad broke after Mom passed away, I didn’t want to love someone like that. Love destroyed him. I would be damned if I let it do the same to me, but it happened.
Sometime in those months, I fell in love, but I did my best to ignore it. I tried to fight the feelings, but it was useless. Every kiss, hug, simple touch, and then the night I made love to her pulled me closer and closer to her. She embedded herself in my soul and it scared the shit out of me.
The night she whispered the words, “I love you,” to me in her sleep, I froze because she said what I was thinking. I loved her, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to leave.
Caroline Taylor is an amazing, beautiful woman and she didn’t need an ex-alcoholic rock star anchoring her down. I thought it would be best if I left her and let her move on, give her a chance to find someone worthy of the kind of love she had to give.
It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The kind of pain I felt was unbearable. She was on my mind 24/7. I couldn’t shake the thoughts. It was like a knife going through my heart every time she would call and I hit ignore. Staying away from the suite was torture when all I wanted to do was be in my bed with her in my arms.
I didn’t even want to be at the pub the night she showed up. Shaun dragged me there. I was bored and had a headache from listening to some ditzy girl go on and on about anything to do with her. I was two seconds away from leaving when I felt Caroline there.
I just knew, when I turned my head, I would see her. I was sick to my stomach and internally fighting between walking away and looking at her. Of course I had to look. I hadn’t laid eyes on the woman I was in love with for a week. I needed to see her and it was so fucking excruciating.
I saw such heartbreak in her eyes and I knew I was the cause of it. I put that hurt there. I was blind. I couldn’t see the pain was because I walked away from her, betraying the trust she put in me the night she allowed me to make love to her. I didn’t deserve her, and I knew it was best I stayed away from her. That’s why I flirted with that girl in front of Caroline.
I don’t know why I followed Caroline out into the parking lot. I just wanted to make her understand why I left. I wanted to try to convince her she deserved much better than me.
I didn’t get that chance. She let me have it and every word she spoke was pure truth. I was a coward. I was running away from the only person in my life who ever meant something to me, the only person to have loved me for me, not for my fame, not for my money, but for me.
Why? Why would I give that up? Because I was scared. That night I realized I would rather have but a few moments, days, weeks, months or years of love from her than nothing at all. I would do anything to get her back, but I was too late.
I thought I could go to her house and tell her that I loved her, make her see that I realized I was wrong about everything. I thought I could assure her I would never make a mistake like that again if she would just take me back.
I didn’t get the chance. It seemed like every word I spoke that night just made the situation worse between us. I know she wanted me to leave, and I finally did, but I wasn’t giving up. I would come back every damn day for the rest of my life if that’s what it took to make her listen to me.
Then I got that call from Violet and my world stopped. Someone took my baby. What if I never got the chance to tell her how I truly felt? What if someone took her away before I ever really got the chance to have her completely? That’s all I could think about.
I wanted everything I never thought I’d want. I wanted to marry her, I wanted her to have my babies, I wanted to grow old with her and just spend the rest of my existence loving her and the life we would create together.
I wasn’t going to let anyone take her away from me. It was by chance Mick popped into my head. I didn’t want to believe he would do something to her, but he was always just so against her from the start. He never took the chance to get to know her.
Then he started acting weird a few weeks before Caroline was taken—disappearing at odd hours and for days at a time, taking secret phone calls. It wasn’t until after I received the call from Violet and remembered walking in on Mick and Marcy talking secretively a few weeks before I put two and two together.
I drove all the way out into the country to an old property Mick told me long ago that he owned, the entire way thinking my imagination was running away from me. I was just desperate to find her, so I was suspecting anyone. Mick was a creep, but he wouldn’t have kidnapped her, right? Wrong.
When I crashed into that barn and saw him with a gun aimed at my birdie, getting ready to end her life, I knew there were two options—I had to stop him or he had to kill me too because I wasn’t living without her.
I saw our future and I was going to fight for it. I could have killed him. I could have put a bullet in him and never felt a lick of remorse over it and I would have if Marcy hadn’t gotten the gun.
I held as much hate for her as I did for Mick until I got a glimpse of the woman slowly dying inside of her. She was going crazy and Mick was behind it, pulling the strings on his puppet and dragging her deeper and deeper.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to say when she told me I loved her. I’m sure any other person would have lied. They would have said anything to get out of that situation, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t lie about my love for Caroline a second longer.
It’s a miracle she didn’t kill Caroline and I both. Actually, no, that’s not right. It was Caroline who stopped her. Even after everything Marcy had done to torture her, Caroline still had a heart of gold.
She didn’t see the Marcy who just had a gun pointed at her not moments ago or the Marcy who just shot Mick. She saw a broken woman, a desperate one, a girl who craved love and never received it. My baby saw an enemy on a ledge, but instead of turning her back on her and letting her jump, she talked her down. She held her and told her it would be okay. I didn’t think it was possible, but in that moment, I fell in love with her a little more.
That’s how they stayed, both rocking on the floor until the police showed up and took Marcy away. Marcy was later sentenced to life in prison for the kidnapping of Caroline and the murder of Mick.
Caroline and I? Well, we started living our future. We could have let those events shape us into different people. We could have let it hold us back from ever really being together, but we took it, dealt with it, and moved on…together, falling more in love with each day that passes.
“Smile, birdie,” I whisper in her ear as the photographer points his camera at us. I know what he sees through his lens—me standing behind Caroline with my arms wrapped around her middle. She looks beautiful today. She’s wearing the most beautiful wedding dress.
We’ve been married less than an hour and I already can’t wait to have her to myself again, to bring her home, not as Caroline Taylor, but as Caroline Castle.
“I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” I say in her ear before placing a soft kiss to her temple. “It doesn’t get any better than this.”
“Honey…I’m pregnant.”
THE END
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Acknowledgments
Limitless Publishing—Thank you for taking a chance on The Discovering Love Series and me. Your company has been so amazing to work with. I feel so blessed to have met such wonderful people.
Scott and Bree—Thank you for loving me through my craziness and supporting me on this silly and fun ride.
Mom and Dad—I love you! Thank you for procreating such an awesome child!
Tiffany—Thank you for sticking with me even though I tend to go MIA a lot of the time. And thank you for always having the best synonyms for the dirtiest of words. You really are the best editor. Thank you for being so patient with me. Love you!
Boom—Seriously, I’d be lost without you! Thanks for the brutal honesty. I love you!
Lori Whitwam—You’re amazing! Thank you for answering all my questions and not thinking I’m crazy for asking them.
Sabrina Owensby—You are a blessing. You just don’t know how much I appreciate everything you’ve done and continue to do for me. You’re my PA but you’ve also become a great friend!
Amy Jones—The World’s Best Pimp! Thank you for working so hard to get my name out there and for everything you do for the Untamable Ladies!
Beta Readers—I love you all and I’m so grateful for you. Thanks for taking the time to read my words and give me your honest opinions.
To anyone who has ever shared, liked, or commented on a picture or post for one of my books, your support means everything to me! Without you, my dream wouldn’t even be possible! Mad Love.
About the Author
Ra’chael Ohara was raised in small town, Bellevue, MI. She married her soul mate at nineteen and moved to Lansing, MI where they raise their beautiful daughter. Her love of reading is what eventually drove her to sit down and write her very own alpha romance series. When she’s not typing away on her computer she loves being surrounded by her loud, rambunctious, but sweet nieces and nephews.
