Silent Hearts (Hamilton Stables 3) by Melissa West

at least it didn’t have to. He could have denied it, made up something else, tucked away his desires for a safer time. But in that moment, her beautiful face before him, those soulful eyes of hers trained on him, he couldn’t hide his reaction. Now he might have ruined the only friendship he had left.
    “Long time no see,” Mama V said as he parked beside the main barn.
    As usual, the grounds were impeccable, all green and vibrant. The woods surrounding the farm full and beautiful. The white fencing had been painted recently and the main offices and barns renovated for the upcoming tour season. As Nick took in all the beauty of the farm where he was raised, he found himself wondering why he didn’t join the farm instead of Industries. Why he didn’t find a place here with his brothers instead of going out on his own with Industries? His father could have hired someone to run Industries when he retired, he could have promoted someone; there were a thousand options available.
    Instead, Nick dove headfirst into Industries, when on the farm he would have been free of the stress of corporate life. Every day he could have stepped outside to fresh air and visited the horses, breathed a little.
    But no, he chose the other path before him, never stopping to think whether he actually wanted to be a corporate man.
    He thought of his high school dream of being a pro angler, how close he’d been, and then the decision to go to Northwestern, his father’s idea; a degree could only help him.
    He’d met Britt his sophomore year and was immediately captivated by her. She was earthy in a worn book kind of way, an English lit major, with aspirations to seek her MFA and become a distinguished literary novelist/professor. And she was well on her way when tragedy struck.
    She went in for her annual women’s checkup, and that was how they first found the lump in her breast. At first, no one was overly worried. She was healthy; tired but healthy. And then her blood work came back before she’d had the chance to get in for her CT scan, and suddenly everything was urgent.
    The CT showed stage III breast cancer. She had more tumors hiding within her breasts that weren’t so easily detected by a breast exam. She was referred to an oncologist and her first surgery was scheduled, and they were hopeful. God, they were hopeful.
    But then chemo and radiation, and more chemo and radiation, only to go back in to find the cancer still there, living despite all the chemicals they threw at it.
    Nick would never forget the look on her doctor’s face when she told Britt they’d done all they could do. He was holding her when she took her last breath, and still to this day, he would wake sometimes and feel like he was back there, holding her, knowing any second would be his last with her and desperate to hold on just a few seconds longer.
    He didn’t think he would survive her death, and in some ways he didn’t. The Nick he’d been before died along with her.
    But now, so many years later, he wondered not if he’d ever loved her, because he knew he had, but if she was ever the right wife for him—the true love of his life. Though the thought made him feel sick to his core, he couldn’t deny the validity of the question.
    She’d never fished with him, never taken a picture of him after a giant catch, and there was no way she ever would have done something as radical as learning to scuba dive.
    Britt was the very opposite of Becca, and yet at the time she’d seemed like the perfect match for him. She was Ivy League, from a solid family, had Southern roots in Alabama, with her mother’s grandparents. And Nick’s mother adored her immediately, though it was hard not to. Britt was polite to a fault, forever smiling, never loud or inappropriate. But that also meant she was never wild, never free-spirited, never adventurous. Which was fine. One didn’t have to be adventurous, but the problem was—Nick was.
    At heart, at root, in his joints and