The Mills & Boon Christmas Wishes Collection. Maisey Yates

bit his lip, and turned away. “I wanted to stay.”

      The air thickened with unsaid words.

      “Did you, though? You left so early after Imelda and Edgar’s party…”

      He stared straight ahead, gray clouds drifting toward us in an angry jumble. We were going to get stuck in the car, sheltering from the coming storm, if we didn’t get home soon. I held my tongue, though. I wanted an answer.

      “I was two weeks late for that job and my boss wasn’t happy about it. I had to go.” His voice had an air of anguish to it, and I thought something had changed with Kai. Something had stolen the light from his eyes. Was it his boss? There was a bitterness to Kai that was out of character when he spoke of his time away.

      “What’s going on, Kai? You don’t seem like the same guy who left Cedarwood.”

      He smiled, but it was more like a grimace. “I’m not. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.”

      By the set of his jaw, I knew to leave it alone, that whatever it was would come out soon enough. Kai harped on about how holding toxic emotions inside damaged a person, but I sensed he needed time to mull over whatever it was.

      “I’m glad you’re back, even if it’s only for a little while.”

      With his hands on the wheel, he said, “Me too, I love it here.”

      ***

      At the lodge, Kai stood behind me, shrugging out of his coat. Voices carried down the stairwell. I stopped, straining to hear. It was Amory and Cruz, having a heart-to-heart by the sound of it.

      “I’m sorry I’ve kept you at arm’s length all this time. It was just easier if we were going to break up, to protect myself, my heart,” Amory’s voice carried down the stairs.

      “Promise me you’ll always say how you’re feeling? Don’t run away, don’t hide it. The thought of losing you…”

      It was such a happy thing to witness – two people so in love they were willing to forget their own dreams for each other. Not wanting to intrude, I tapped Kai’s arm and pointed outside, and we crept away to let them chat in private.

      We went to the chalets by the lake. I watched him for a beat, and it was as obvious as his shadow that something plagued him. He was quieter than normal and something inside me wanted to make it better, or at least show him I cared. When I’d been twisted and coiled tight like a snake, Kai had recognized it in me, and helped me, in myriad ways, by his cuckoo breathing techniques and enforced exercise, but mostly by listening, and not shrugging off my concerns. Sure, at the time he’d been my employee, but it went beyond that. And I wanted to reciprocate.

      “Hey,” I said, “do you want to head into town, and have a drink?” It tugged at my heart the way his whole demeanor had changed, like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.

      “Sure,” he said.

      Twenty minutes later we arrived at the Shakin’ Shack, and took a seat at a softly lit booth at the back. I ordered us two beers, thinking alcohol just might loosen his tongue and get him to open up to me.

      We made small talk for an hour before I figured out how to broach it with him.

      “Remember when you said you were searching for something, a feeling, a place you belong…? Did something happen to prompt that?”

      He nodded, a faint smile touching his lips. “That sounded a little too mystical, right?” He shook his head as if he was embarrassed he’d shared the idea with me. “Have you ever felt so lost you just don’t know where you fit any more?”

      I smiled and tried to find the right words, “Most of my life I felt that way, growing up with a mother who was there, only in body but not in spirit. The thing is, I know now that I can’t change her. I can help, I can be there, but I can’t change the way she thinks, the way she acts. I can only hope being around will help.”

      We hadn’t talked about my mom, or her issues, but I’m sure he’d heard about it through the grapevine. It was a small town, after all, and word had got around that my mom had arrived at Cedarwood and stayed barely an hour, vowing never to return.

      “What is it with parents?” Hurt crossed his face. “Before I left Australia, I found out I was adopted. Imagine, at the grand old age of thirty-one, your parents suddenly announce they’re not your parents.”

      Shock rendered me mute. I couldn’t imagine being told such a thing. Surreptitiously, I surveyed Kai, pain etched firmly on his face. Silence engulfed us. I was hesitant to say the wrong thing. In all the time he’d stayed at Cedarwood, he hadn’t alluded to any problems back home, and I wondered if that had cost him, keeping it bottled up, and now it was finally spilling out. What had changed to bring it back to the fire now?

      I’d pegged Kai for some kind of nomad, a drifter searching for adventure, but really he had been running from his past, from a secret. It reminded me of my mom and the baby in the black and white photographs. There was a momentary flash of anger toward these people, our parents, whether biological or not, keeping things from us – in Kai’s case, something so major that it had caused him to flee.

      “Why did they suddenly tell you now?”

      Kai’s face darkened. “My father had a close call in a car accident. He was fine but it scared him and I guess he wanted to right his wrongs. He called me over and they sat me down and blurted it out. It was tough, knowing my life was essentially built on a lie, but deep down I could sort of understand it. I mean, you hear these kinds of stories all the time.”

      I weighed up what to say that wouldn’t sound like platitudes. “Do you know who your biological parents are?”

      “That’s the thing. I just packed up and left. Thought I’d worry about all of that later, come to terms with it first, see a bit of the world, and make sense of who I am now that I’m not Kai Davis, not really. Unbeknownst to me, my father did some investigating and phoned me last week to tell me my biological parents died, years ago. Substance-abuse issues… So now I don’t even get to make the decision about whether I want to meet them. It’s another choice taken out of my hands and I feel cheated. Like I’m adrift…”

      For all his easy-going calm, Kai had been hiding his own pain. That’s the thing about pain – it rises to the surface eventually and you have to deal with it. He’d obviously tried to forget, to keep busy, to run from it, but it caught up to him.

      “I guess they did what they thought was best at the time, even though it doesn’t make it right. I can’t imagine any parent wanting to hurt their child, no matter how old he grew.”

      “Yeah, I would be able to see that if it was anyone else’s story, but because it’s mine and I’m living it… Sometimes their audacity takes my breath away. They should have told me. I should have got to meet my biological parents, or at least had the choice.”

      What if my mom had a secret like this? The child in the pictures… how would I feel? Probably the same way Kai did. I shuddered at the thought and once again weighed up whether some secrets should stay buried.

      We sat in silence, pondering it all.

      “I’m glad you told me, Kai.”

      He wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Saying it out loud makes it real, you know? For some reason I feel like a failure, like I wasn’t good enough to hold on to. I know it’s stupid, but that’s how I feel, and I can’t shake it. Sorry, what a downer I am. But that’s sort of where I’m at. I don’t know what to do, whether to go home, or what…”

      I gave his hand a squeeze.

      He stared into my eyes, and my heart just about tore in two.

      ***

      Back at the lodge, Kai headed out, so I told Amory I was going upstairs to do some paperwork, and took my laptop into my room. The phone rang just as I puffed my way up the stairs. I dashed to