Can't Hold Back Read Online Free

was her. “I felt like they were the boss of me, not the other way around.”
    She nodded.
    “I need to take a kid on a kayaking trip in three weeks. Can’t be popping pills the whole time.”
    “But this is okay? You think the kid’s not going to notice that you’re in pain?”
    Her meaning was harsh, but her voice was kind. Firm. Not a challenge so much as a real question.
    Their paddles dipped into the water. They had quietly come into synchrony, skimming over the water alongside each other, nearly silent.
    “Most people don’t notice.”
    But she’d seen it right away. In his face, she said. In the way he held his upper body.
    He remembered that she was a good observer. She’d seen him, seen through him, as early as their first meeting at the picnic. Later, she’d written about the world so clearly in her emails and letters—though of course back then he’d thought they were Becca’s.
    “Why is it so important to go on this kayaking trip?”
    They were almost across the lake now. The flat expanse of gray-blue water was surrounded by forest. The only civilization visible was the retreat itself, where he could see people moving around, as small and busy as insects. He wished he hadn’t come out here. He’d hated the idea of her office, but this was worse, the two of them out here and her question dangling, as if she had a right to know the answer.
    He chose a partial truth. “The kid, Braden. I served with his dad. He’s…gone. He and Braden were supposed to do a kayaking trip this summer.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
    Strange how easily voices carried out here, how you could hear a whisper spoken several feet away.
    “Yeah, well.”
    “Let me help you.”
    The pain carved a channel down his back, as if in protest of all the times people had said that to him. All the times it had given him hope, and all the times that hope had turned out to be false. The pain got under his ribs, the way it so often did, and made him mean.
    “Like you helped Becca?”

Chapter 3
    Alia filled her plate with vegetable lasagna and made her way through the chaos and hubbub in the retreat’s big dining room.
    She liked the style of the room, a mash-up of ski-lodge chic and French restaurant—bare wooden tables, squat candles, Fiestaware, and dim lighting. She wondered whether Jake or Mira had made the design decisions. She could see it playing out either way.
    “So? How’s it going?” Gabi demanded, as Alia sat with two of her new friends. The retreat’s activities director, Gabi was sweetly chubby, dark-haired, dark-skinned, and thirtysomething. On Alia’s first night, she’d grabbed Alia’s arm and urged her to come sit with her. “With only a few women on staff, we all keep an eye out for one another,” she’d explained.
    Alia took a bite of the lasagna. All the food at the resort so far had been amazing—healthy
and
hearty—and this was no exception. “I think it’s going pretty well.”
    “The residents like you,” Melinda said. Melinda taught paddleboarding, kayaking, canoeing, waterskiing—pretty much anything that involved a boat. “You’re getting rave reviews. And off-color comments. About, you know, happy endings.”
    Alia blushed. “Um, yuck.”
    “Just ignore it.” Melinda tucked a bit of curly hair behind her ear. She was married to Joe, who ran the retreat’s stables, but he was off leading a sunset horseback ride.
    “It’s the downside of being one of just a few women in a testosterone bath.” Gabi smiled wryly. “And somehow it got out that you’re single, too. I’ll say that’s one good thing about Geoff. Keeps the horny horde at bay.” She wrinkled her nose. “If he were better at his stud work, I might not mind so much.”
    Already Alia knew about Gabi that her husband was fifteen years older, a heavy drinker, and sexually neglectful. Actually, she’d learned that in her first fifteen minutes of association with Gabi, along with a bunch of additional facts