“Of course I heard,” I replied bitterly. “He’s like a goddamned legend in this town. It’s all anyone was able to talk about for weeks.” Despite my hatred for him, Pembrooke adored their golden boy. The kid who was a football prodigy. The one who made it to the NFL. All I wanted was to have him out of my life completely, only to have him shoved down my throat at every turn.
“Well, she got sick of him avoiding his family. Said it’s been going on too long, so she and Noah are going to get him. Harlow set it up so he can do the rest of his rehab here.”
“So he’ll be here for a while?”
“I don’t know,” she shrugged, “I would assume so. I mean, I know he’s out for the rest of the season, and I’d imagine physical therapy and training will take a while to get him back into playing shape.” Leaning forward, she placed her hand on mine and squeezed. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I know how much he hurt you, and I hate that you may have to see him again. I wish there was something I could do to make it all better for you.”
That right there was just one of the reasons I loved Chloe with all my heart. She made it so damned easy. She gave her love so willingly that it was impossible not to return it. But I wasn’t the same little girl I’d been before.
Yes, I was broken. My armor was dented and bent, but I was tougher now. And Ethan Prewitt no longer had the power to hurt me. Feigning a casualness I definitely wasn’t feeling, I stood from the couch and took a fortifying breath.
“It’s okay,” I told her softly. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
She stood as well, skepticism written on her face. “You sure, honey?”
I shrugged and offered up a smile. “As long as he stays the fuck away from me for as long as he’s here, how could there be any problems?”
3
Ethan
Being back in the house I grew up in for the first time in six years was surreal, to say the least. It wasn’t as if I’d intentionally planned to avoid Pembrooke and everyone in it when I first left, but the longer I stayed gone, the more excuses I made for keeping my distance, the easier it got. Then it was no longer easy. By the time I wanted to go back to those people, one in particular, it was too late. I’d stayed away for too long.
Jesus, I’d really made a mess of shit.
“Since you can’t take the stairs with your crutches very well, we’re putting you on the sleeper sofa,” Harlow talked as she lugged my bags into the den. “We just got a new mattress for you so it should be comfortable.”
“That’s fine,” I mumbled as I crutched along after her, Noah following slowly on my heels. I scanned the once familiar room and noticed all the subtle changes that had been made, a new paint color, a wainscoting along the walls, little things like that. “You’ve remodeled,” I said, stating the obvious. “It looks nice.”
“Well,” my sister huffed as she dropped my luggage on the floor unceremoniously and rested her hands on her hips. “You’d have known if you’d have bothered to come home once or twice in the past six years. A lot of changes have been taking place while you were off being a big shot NFL dickhead who was too busy for his friends and family.”
“Harlow,” Noah spoke up, warning in his tone.
She threw her arms out at her sides. “What? I’m only saying exactly what everyone else is thinking.”
“And you’ve been at this shit all last night and the entire way home. I think he gets it, Wildflower. You’re pissed. Time to stop beating the hell out of a dead horse, yeah?”
When I got Harlow’s phone call the other day, I hadn’t thought I could possibly feel any worse. I’d been wrong. Knowing I’d hurt my sister with my absence, hurt my whole family, cut like a goddamned knife. When our grandmother had died when I was fourteen, Harlow had uprooted her entire life, leaving behind her job, her friends, to come take care of me. She hadn’t even blinked.
“I’m not beating a dead horse,” she continued, the two of them arguing like I wasn’t standing right there. “I’m just stating facts. One of those facts being that the only time I’ve managed to see my little brother since he was drafted was when I packed my family up and hauled my happy little ass to Denver. And here’s another fact for you!” She really was on a roll. “Sitting in a car for seven hours with one hormonal teenage girl and a little boy with the attention span of a flea is a nightmare. But do you hear me complaining about it?”
“Yes,” Noah and I said at the same time.
She ignored us both and continued. “No. You know why? Because I’d suffer through that nightmare if it meant seeing my baby brother, if it meant those two terrors got to see the uncle they adored. But does he show me the same courtesy?” She let out a humorless laugh. “Oh no! Why should he have to bother himself with something as mindless as considering other people, when he knows his sister will do it for him?”
“You’re right, babe,” Noah said in a placating, yet slightly sarcastic, tone. “You should be nominated for sainthood.”
“Damn right I should!” she finished, finally winding down from the millionth rant I’d had to experience since they showed up at my place the night before.
Knowing just how to calm her down, Noah moved toward his wife and wrapped her in his arms, leaning in to kiss the side of her head. “Time to wind down, baby. Why don’t you go upstairs and run yourself a bubble bath, and I’ll bring you up a nice, big glass of wine in just a bit. How’s that sound?”
Harlow sighed, leaning further into him, and I was hit with that all too familiar pang deep in my chest. The one that made me feel like an interloper, the third wheel in my own home for years. It wasn’t that I disapproved of Harlow and Noah’s relationship, I truly was happy for them. But I’d spent most of my childhood feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere. My parents died when I was so little that I barely remembered what they looked like, and we were sent to live with our grandmother.
Things had been good for a few years, until the day Harlow took off for reasons that were her own. And I’d felt abandoned for the second time in my life. That feeling only got worse when Gram died. Sure, Harlow had given up everything and come back to be with me, but it was only a short time before her and Noah got together. Then she was pregnant and they were starting their own family.
I spent years struggling with where I fit into everyone else’s lives. The weight of feeling like a guest in my own home pressed down on my chest, growing heavier and heavier with each passing year until the desire to escape and build a life of my own, a life where I didn’t constantly fear abandonment, became all I could think about. The only time I ever felt a reprieve from that pressure was when I was with Eliza. She was gifted at making me forget I was unhappy. I was happy when I was with her. I could confess everything I was feeling to her without risk of judgment, and she would just make everything… better.
And it was for those reasons that I ran.
Because I knew, I knew that she was the only person with the power to make me stay. She was the one thing I’d give up my dreams for, and that fucking terrified me. She was my best friend, the one person I depended on above everyone, and I found myself considering giving it all up just to stay close to her. Before I knew it was happening, I’d begun contemplating all the what ifs.
What if I didn’t enter the draft?
What if I gave up football?
What if I stayed in Pembrooke with her instead of taking off to start my own life?
What if, what if, what if.
So I ran. And I never looked back.
The sound of Harlow’s voice pulled me from my musings. “I can’t. I need to go pick Evan up from Chloe’s before he drives her to drink. Between him and her girls, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was already halfway into her second bottle.
I wanted to ask so badly what she was talking about, but after years of consciously avoiding any topic that could have potentially led to the mention of Eliza, Noah and Harlow had eventually stopped mentioning the Anderson’s altogether. I knew they had two girls and that De
rrick Anderson had been elected into the position of Sheriff, but that was about the gist of it.
And I knew that if I gave into that desire and asked, Harlow wouldn’t have bothered to tell me anyway. She’d have withheld information as punishment just for the fun of it. I loved my sister, but she could be a little sadistic at times, especially if you’d done something to piss her off. And to say she was mad at me would have been putting it mildly.
Harlow left a few minutes later. Lucy was in her room, avoiding me, and Noah was tucked away in his office going over the playbook and practice schedule for the following week, leaving me alone in a house that was too quiet, with nothing to do but think about what a shitty brother, uncle, and friend I’d turned out to be.
I eventually grew restless. My own company strongly lacking, and boredom having set in, I needed to get the hell out of there. The door to Noah’s office was partially open, so I chanced a knock before pushing it the rest of the way.
“Hey man, what’s up?” he asked, lifting his head from the thick binder on his desk.
“Nothing. I was just wondering if I could borrow your car for a bit. I’m going a little stir crazy and thought it might be a good idea to get out for a bit.”
He looked at me skeptically for several seconds before finally asking, “You sure you’re good to drive?”
“Doc cleared me just before we left Denver,” I assured him. “I’m good to go as long as it’s not a long distance or manual transition. And seeing as how Harlow’d track my ass down and drag me back if I made a break for it, I think it’s safe to say I don’t plan on driving very far.”
I tried to keep my tone casual, but I knew he picked up the underlying tension when he sat back in the chair and released a heavy sigh. “Look, I know she’s been riding your ass pretty hard, but it’s just because she’s missed you. Just give her a bit. She’ll get over it and be back to her usual crazy self in a matter of days.”
I braced myself on my crutches and reached up to rub at the back of my neck with one hand. “I get it. Really. Bailing and never coming back was a dick move, but I had my reasons—”
“And that’s the same bullshit excuse you’ve been using whenever we’ve brought it up to you for the past six years.”
“Well, bullshit or not, that’s the truth of it. They might not be the best reasons, but they’re mine, okay. I’m not saying I went about it the right way. I know I didn’t, and I’m sorry for what I put you guys through. But I just needed…” I let out a breath as I struggled to find the right words. “I just needed to get away. I never expected it to be for so long.”
I could tell from his expression that he wanted to pry. Years of living under the same roof had taught me that my brother-in-law was a fixer. He wanted to dig into my issues until he came up with a solution. Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t in much of a sharing mood. How did you admit to a person who’d busted his ass to give you everything that, irrational as it might be, he was just one of many issues I had that pushed me to leave?
I never claimed it was a sane line of thought, but there it was. I was resentful of what Noah and my sister had with each other. They were had love, a family of their own, a place to belong. It was everything I’d ever wanted, but kept coming up short of achieving. I loved them both to death, but I resented that they had each other when every time I started to feel secure something happened to take that feeling away from me.
Before he could question the motives that had kept me away for so long I spoke. “So you gonna let me borrow your ride, or do you want to play chauffeur to me the entire time I’m here?” I gave him the carefree grin I’d perfected over the years, the grin that screamed life was good and there were no problems in the world. That grin was a lie, but he didn’t need to know that. “I’m all for the whole Driving Miss Daisy thing. I can even sit in the back seat to help you get into character.”
With a roll of his eyes, he shifted in his seat, reaching into his pocket to retrieve his keys. “Try not to wreck it,” he said, tossing them to me. “Your sister’ll have my ass if you get hurt again, and with you here, I’m no longer the one in the hot seat. I’d like to keep that streak going as long as possible.”
My smile became more genuine the moment the cool metal of the keys touched my palm. “I’ll do my best.”
As I shifted my crutches and started for the door, he called out from behind me. “Curfew’s midnight, shit-head.”
I kept going as his laughter followed me down the hallway. I couldn’t wait to get rid of those fucking crutches so I had a free hand to flip him off next time he made a smartass comment like that.
* * *
I drove aimlessly, following the dirt paths made by years of tires through the mountains I’d grown up in. I let my mind clear of everything as I soaked up the landscape surrounding me. Being in nature like this was the type of solitude I didn’t mind. With so much beauty all around me, it was difficult to concentrate on the downward spiral my life seemed to have taken.
By the time I made it down the mountain and back into town, the sun had set. The street lamps all through the downtown area lit up, giving Pembrooke a quaint glow as I slowed the truck to a crawl and took in the changes to the town I’d grown up in. There weren’t many really — the auto body shop on the corner of Main and Sycamore had been replaced with one of those chain pharmacies, there was now a Starbucks on the outskirts of town, and Hal’s Hardware had become Hal & Son’s Hardware. But despite the fact that everything appeared to be the same, it felt different. I’d grown up here, so much of this place used to be engrained in me, yet as I made my way down the roads with the wooden boardwalk sidewalks, I felt like little more than a tourist.
And something about that realization sat like lead in my stomach. I couldn’t remember wanting anything more than to escape this place, but now that I was back, taking it all in, there was a sadness creeping in that it was no longer a part of me.
It wasn’t until I pulled in front of one storefront in particular that I put Noah’s truck into park and cut the ignition in order to fully absorb what I was seeing.
What used to be Sinful Sweets Bakery was now Sinful Sweets Café. And it was… bigger. Much bigger. From the looks of it, they’d added a restaurant that more than doubled the size of the original bakery. The lights inside were turning off, like it was closing down for the night, and as I watched from across the street I couldn’t help but wonder when Chloe had decided to expand.
Then the glass front door of the café opened, and I completely forgot what had caught my attention just moments before. Because I recognized who’d just stepped through and was now locking the place up. Everything inside of me froze solid at the sight of her. The last time I saw her she’d been a girl growing into a woman, but the beauty I was suddenly staring at was all woman. All hints of the girl were completely gone, and that pang at the sight of her hit my chest again. The loss so acute it almost stole my breath.
Christ, she’d grown up. I didn’t know why that thought surprised me so much, but it did. I guess I always imagined her looking exactly like she had the last time I saw her. I’d never stopped to consider what she would look like as an adult, but what I saw just then left me completely stunned.
Not having seen me, she turned and began down the boardwalk in the opposite direction, and something inside of me revolted at the thought of letting her get away. It was as though my body had a mind of its own, not bothering to communicate with my brain as my hand opened the door to the truck. Before I knew it, I had a ball cap pulled low over my eyes and my crutches beneath my arms. I was limping after her at a slow pace, making sure not to draw her attention. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to achieve with my little stalking expedition.
All I knew was that I wasn’t ready to let Eliza out of my sight just yet. Now that I’d actually laid eyes on her something told me it would be impossible to stay away.
4
Eliza
Past
Dad was still raging. I could hear him sh
outing and cussing from his and Chloe’s bedroom before I had enough of his anger and her sad, watery eyes and took off to the back deck. I knew they were both upset for me, but that didn’t mean I wanted to deal with it just then.
“Thought you might be out here, kiddo.”
The unexpected sound of Ethan’s voice startled me. I had just enough time to reach up and dash the tears off my cheeks as he rounded the side of the house before coming and taking a seat next to me on the deck stairs.
Too embarrassed to face him now that he knew I was sitting outside crying, I kept my head bent and let my hair act as a curtain between us. Ethan and I were actually starting to become pretty good friends lately, but that didn’t mean I wanted him to see me crying like a baby out here all by myself. “What are you doing here?”
“Chloe called Harlow.”
“Of course she did,” I replied angrily, wiping at my still wet face since the tears refused to stop. “I’m fine, you know. I don’t need you to sit out here and babysit me like I’m some dumb kid.”
I knew I was being rude to him for no good reason, he wasn’t the one who’d hurt me after all, but I couldn’t help it. Even knowing it wasn’t his fault, I wanted to lash out in the hopes of making someone else feel just as badly as I did.
“Hey,” he said in a soft voice, leaning close so he could bump my shoulder with his. “Look at me for a sec.”
I didn’t want to. I didn’t want him to see my face all red and splotchy from crying. Even though we were becoming friends, I still had a little bit of a crush on him. I knew nothing could ever happen, he was nineteen and I was only thirteen, but he was still the cutest guy I’d ever seen. And right at that moment I looked like a gross mess. When I refused to meet his eyes, he used his fingers to gently lift my face to his. His beautifully strange yellowish-green eyes smiled down at me, and just like always, I thought they had to have been the prettiest eyes I’d ever seen before on a boy or a girl. Depending on what color he was wearing, sometimes they actually looked gold.
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