THE HOMETOWN HEARTBREAKER

MELANIE SHAWN

The Hometown Heartbreaker

by

Melanie Shawn

Melanie Shawn © 2026

All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this book. No part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from Melanie Shawn. Exceptions are limited to reviewers who may use brief quotations in connection with reviews. No part of this book can be transmitted, scanned, reproduced, or distributed in any written or electronic form without written permission from Melanie Shawn.

This book is a work of fiction. Places, names, characters and events are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic content. It is intended only for those aged 18 and older.

Cover Design by Wildcat Dezigns

Rev. 1.o

1

THE GHOSTS OF BOYFRIENDS AND HOSPITALS PAST

Sadie

No one calls at 3:00 a.m. with good news, everyone knows that. So, when my phone vibrated on the nightstand, lighting up the darkness of my Los Angeles hotel room with a Valentine Bay area code, my heart didn’t just sink, it detonated.

Buddy—my grandfather, the man who once rebuilt a truck engine with a paperclip and sheer stubbornness—was the only reason the small town still had any real estate in my contacts, since I didn’t keep in touch with anyone else from my hometown. We shared an economical four calls a year. Birthdays, Father’s Day, Christmas. A relationship perfectly rationed, like expensive perfume you’re terrified to run out of.

When I saw the number, my first instinct was to ignore the call. As an avoider by nature, when anything triggered my fight-or-flight, I was wheels up, taking off, soaring in the air. In this case, however, instead of following my impulse, I did what any rational, emotionally healthy adult would do when confronted with an unwanted call and answered it. I was either maturing, or self-preservation was not my strong suit, it could be either or both.

After saying hello, the next five minutes were static and fragmented. Key words and phrases like, “unresponsive,” “critical condition,” “life-threatening,” and “next of kin” floated through the receiver while I sat on the edge of the bed in my hotel room, staring at the generic painting on the wall, processing words I’d never thought I’d hear.

Nothing made sense to me. I’m not sure if it was because I was still half asleep, or because I was in shock/denial that the hardest-working, most dependable, reliable, indestructible man I had ever known might be slipping away from this earth, and I would be alone. I would have no family left.

Technically, I had my Uncle Ronald. My biological dad’s older brother, who I’d gone to live with when I was eighteen, but I’d only gotten to know him as an adult. He lived on the East Coast, and although he sent me birthday and Christmas presents, I didn’t meet him face to face until I showed up on his doorstep two days after my high school graduation.

My dad died in a motorcycle accident when I was three, but in those thirty-six months I’d been alive, he’d only seen me twice, so he wasn’t exactly Father of the Year. His attendance, or lack thereof, in my life wasn’t the only thing that lost him that title. The big whammy was that he kept me a secret. No one in his family, Uncle Ronnie included, knew I existed until he died. His parents were going through his things when they uncovered the DNA test results he’d asked my mom to take that indicated, “Richard Montgomery you are the father.”

Even after discovering they had a grandchild, my paternal grandparents hadn’t wanted anything to do with me since I was not a ‘legitimate’ child, like we were living in some antiquated Game of Thrones Jon Snow situation. They also accused my mom of “tricking” my dad by getting pregnant, which anyone who knew my mom found absolutely laughable. She was an angel, the kindest, most selfless, honest, empathetic soul to walk the earth.

Despite my grandparents’ rejection, Uncle Ronnie, who was ten years older than my dad, immediately welcomed me with open arms. He didn’t view his brother, my dad, through the rose-colored glasses his parents had. Also, he had been on the receiving end of his family’s prejudice and bigotry. They disowned him when he came out to them for what they called his “lifestyle choices.” He was familiar with being an outcast of the Montgomery clan. His parents only started speaking to him again, after fifteen years of silence, when they lost their youngest son Richard, who was nothing more to me than a glorified sperm donor, and Uncle Ronnie was the sole heir to the Montgomery legacy.

Uncle Ronnie was the only family I had on my dad’s side—well him and his life partner, Lorenzo Bellamy, who he’d been with for thirty years. As for my mom’s side, it was just Buddy, and he might be gone soon.

That was all I could think about as the doctor explained the situation to me. I tried to focus on the information I was being given, but it felt like my world had been flipped upside down and inside out. When the call ended, I informed the event coordinator for the panel I was speaking on at the advertising conference I’d been asked to moderate letting her know that unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to attend, which had been the sole reason for my visit to the West Coast.

Five hours and one flight from LAX to SeaTac later, I found myself minutes away from arriving in my hometown for the first time since I left the day after high school graduation.

I’d spent twelve years putting distance between myself and Valentine Bay, its suffocating charm, its warm-fuzzy memories, its people…one in particular. Turns out, a dozen years and thousands of miles isn’t nearly long or far enough when the one man you can’t afford to lose decides he’s mortal after all.

“No, I didn’t miss my flight,” I explained to Janine, my assistant, over the phone. “I flew to Seattle instead. I had a family emergency.”

“Oh…okay.”

Her unspoken question was very loud, “You have family?”

Janine and I had worked together, side by side, day after day, night after night, sixty-hour work weeks, and I’d never mentioned anything about my life back in Oregon. Why would I?

Even the CliffsNotes version was depressing.

My dad died when I was three.

My mom died when I was twelve.

After that it was just me and my grandpa, who could barely look at me because I am the spitting image of my mom and grandma, the two greatest loves of his life, both of whom he lost tragically.

“Um, what about your meetings with⁠—”

“Cancel everything,” I instructed, cutting her off as I pinched the bridge of my nose and glanced out the window just as the Uber passed the sign on the freeway that read Valentine Bay next six exits.

Janine, always eager to remind me I was indispensable, peppered me with questions about rescheduling meetings, deadlines, and whether I still wanted the reservation at Le Bernardin with Peter tonight. I barely registered the words, everything felt overwhelming and suffocating.

“Cancel Peter, too,” I replied, my voice steadier than I felt.

There was silence on the phone, and after a few seconds she asked, “What do I say?”

“Tell him I died,” I stated flatly.

There was a two-second pause. I could practically hear the wheels turning as her brain worked to discern whether or not that was sarcasm.

“Do you actually want me to tell him you died?” she ventured.

Yes, I did. It would save me an awkward conversation. I’d intended to end things with Peter for weeks, but like most things that required a confrontation of emotion, I’d let it fester in the soft, recessed corners of my mind, just praying he’d take the hint and move on when I took two to four days to respond to a text, or was ‘too busy’ to see him. He hadn’t. The only reason tonight’s dinner date was in my schedule was that it had been there for six weeks. Getting a reservation at this restaurant was difficult, so he’d booked it in advance.

The truth was, I didn’t even dislike Peter. He was a six-foot-two mergers and acquisitions attorney who sent me clever memes and showed up to work events and dinner parties, exuding charisma and wit. He was good with words, the man could charm birds out of trees. But the relationship was about to reach its one-year mark, and that meant it was time to bail.

Women were always complaining about men not wanting to settle down, not wanting commitment, I’d found the exact opposite to be true. The handful of relationships I’d had in my adult life had all ended because the men wanted more, triggering those good ol’ fight-or-flight instincts.

It wasn’t that I’d put a specific timeframe on my serial monogamy situationships. It just seemed to be that was about the time men started bringing up things like, moving in together, settling down, or, gasp, marriage, dun dun duuun.

The thing was, I wanted those things, truly I did, I just didn’t want them with any of the people I’d dated, at least not in my adult life. So, I cut my losses and bailed every time.

“Just cancel, tell him I’m out of town,” I directed plainly, leaving no room for misinterpretation.

“When will you be back?”

“I don’t know. A few days maybe.”

“But you have the Ashbourne dinner on Friday.” The plea and panic in her voice were evident.

Advertising was a competitive field. It always had been, but with the introduction of artificial intelligence, it was more cutthroat than ever. I’d been trying to lock down Ashbourne Hotel and Resorts as a client for three years. It was a global luxury hotel chain, but they tended to keep things in-house because it was a family run business. I had to admit, I was surprised when Mason Ashbourne, in his role as COO, finally agreed to dinner. No, not agreed, he’d requested the meeting himself after his married CEO was caught in extremely compromising positions with about a dozen different staff members.

The TikToks were going wild of guests staying in the hotels and catching Lyle Ashbourne Sr. in the act.

Janine attempted to warn me, “You know that if you’re not at that meeting, Tyson will⁠—”

“I know,” I cut her off before assuring her, “It’ll be fine.”

Tyson Finch had been gunning for partnership at the firm since my name started getting mentioned as being in the running. Did he deserve it? Nope. But he had a dick and morals that allowed him to take clients out and hire them escorts. I did a lot to acquire contracts, worked my ass off, went the extra mile to make sure they were happy, but securing sex workers was where I drew the line. Also, I didn’t have a penis, and I refused to sleep with my bosses, and/or so those factors worked against me as well.

In fairness, Finch loved the game of advertising. Closing the deal. Catching the white whale. I, on the other hand, fell into advertising. When I moved to New York I didn’t have any plans for work or school, so Uncle Ronnie got me an internship at his firm, Bishop & Black Creative. I started making copies, taking lunch orders, and fetching coffees, and little by little I found myself offering suggestions to the agents. Within six months, I went from unpaid intern to the highest-grossing Jr. Associate at B.B.C. It turned out, I was really good at listening to clients, getting to the heart of their needs, and coming up with creative ways to achieve their goals.

As an only child, growing up in the house with a sick mom and a grandpa who worked twelve-hour days on the farm, seven days a week, I was used to being in my head and creating worlds in there. I’d had to occupy myself a lot of the time.

“What if Finch poaches⁠—”

“I’ll call you after I see my grandfather,” I cut her off for the second time. I understood that the client meeting was a big deal, but right now, I didn’t have the bandwidth to discuss it.

“But, I need—” she rushed out.

“I’ll call you back.” I hung up and took a deep, cleansing breath as I glanced out the back seat passenger window.

It had been over a decade since I’d set foot in Valentine Bay. Twelve years since the day I’d packed my bags, got on a plane to New York, and showed up on Uncle Ronnie’s front porch asking if I could stay for the night. That one night turned into four years before I got a tiny 400 square foot basement sublet of my own, but I never looked back. I’d fled that night heartbroken, angry, and terrified of what my future held in store.

A dozen years was time enough to make a place mythic in my mind, a grainy, oversaturated snapshot. I braced myself as I inhaled the salty sea air and took in the wide, relentless blue sky, a shade brighter than the waters of the coastline that hugged the town. But as the Uber took the exit off the Pacific Coast Highway and into the heart of town, it was the sameness that gut-punched me so hard I almost gasped.

The familiar faded “Welcome to Valentine Bay, Est. 1883” sign, with the loopy blue font and the spray of pink hearts, lording over the boardwalk and downtown like a plastic wedding cake topper. The white clapboard church on the hill where I’d always wanted to say my vows. The same row of red-brick storefronts, still occupied in the exact same order: Main Street Eats diner on the corner, Be Mine Bakery, Ever After Blooms florist, Valentine Tools hardware, Love Letters & Lace Antiques, all of them probably run by the same people who’d run them when I was a kid. The same two-block strip of high school banners flapping from the lampposts reading “Go Cupids!” and I felt a ridiculous pang of nostalgia and sadness, melancholy maybe.

Everywhere I looked, I saw him. Dawson Lockhart. The man who I’d spent six of my formative years with. He asked me to be his girlfriend the summer between seventh and eighth grade, and we didn’t break up until the day after graduation. He was as much a part of this town as the ocean, the pier, the marina, the cove, the beaches, any of it. He was woven into its fabric, woven into my fabric.

The car glided past the fire station, the library, the boardwalk crowded with tourists and locals. It felt like time had folded itself in half, and I was peeking into my own childhood from across some invisible, uncrossable divide. Or maybe this was a Ghosts of Christmas Past sort of thing, and I’d get to visit the Ghost of Christmas Future. I wasn’t sure, but it all felt so strange.

We pulled up to the Valentine Bay Medical Center and the knot in my stomach tightened like it was being twisted in a tourniquet. After taking a deep breath, I got out of the car and stepped onto the sidewalk. The driver retrieved my overnight bag from the trunk and set it beside me.

“Thank you,” I told him. He nodded, got back inside, and drove away.

Dread overwhelmed me as I faced the glass doors buzzing open and shut with the rhythm of exhalation, the faint antiseptic tang already tickling my sinuses. I could hear my own pulse thumping behind my eardrums and, below that, the low electrical hum of the building, the whoosh of the doors, a child’s shriek echoing off the awning before being shushed and softened by a nurse.

Every part of my body wanted to keep me outside, just for another minute, but I forced myself to walk in. The lobby was smaller than I remembered and yet, somehow, more cavernous—a vault of white tile and flickering fluorescent light, the air so cold my breath fogged as I exhaled.

I felt as if the place retained every moment I’d ever spent there, the hundreds of visits I’d made over the last six years of my mom’s life: the birthdays and holidays crashed by my mother’s sudden episodes, the endless, helpless afternoons watching her wither toward a finish line we never wanted to believe was coming.

The nurse behind the check-in desk was new but looked exactly like the nurse who used to give me tiny pink bubblegum pops and stickers when I was a child.

“Can I help you?” she asked. There was an accent, not local, but not unfamiliar. I gave her my grandfather’s name, and she gestured me down a narrow hallway. “He’s in the ICU, room 304, sweetie. Just need to see some I.D.”

I pulled out my driver’s license, slid it across the counter, and she printed out a visitor’s badge for me. I followed the corridor, my stomach leaden, my hands cold and prickling with sweat. The scent of overcooked vegetables and bleach grew stronger as I neared the elevator. A volunteer in a maroon vest smiled at me, and I tried to smile back, but my face got stuck somewhere between a grimace and a sneer. When the doors opened, I ducked inside, pressed the button for the third floor, then stared at my warped reflection in the doors until they split open.

I got off the elevator and with each step I took getting closer to his room, the more my hands would sweat. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Buddy Shepard was larger than life. He was invincible. He was a beast of a man. It had been a couple years since he’d visited New York, and he refused to FaceTime or Skype, so I wasn’t sure what I would be walking into.

A sudden rush of guilt overwhelmed me as I stood outside Room 304. Whatever my reasons were for staying away, and they were good reasons, I should have come back sooner. Over the phone, a few times a year, anyone could fool someone into thinking they were okay. I should have paid more attention.

The door was open a crack. I stood in the threshold and watched for a moment, anonymous, invisible, as my grandpa squinted at the TV bolted to the wall. His skin looked gray, almost translucent, liver spots blooming up his forearms. There was something so profoundly shrunken about him that I barely recognized the man who, in my memory, had been imposing, almost mythical in his stature. He was the person who’d taught me to shoot a basketball, to gut a fish, to run the bases with my head up and never look back. That man wore the hospital gown like a flag of surrender.

My heart broke, and it was difficult to breathe.

He looked up, and his eyes met mine with a flash of startled, almost guilty recognition. “Sadie girl.” His voice raspy but not fragile. “Well, I’ll be damned. Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes. What on earth are you doin’ here?”

I entered the room and lowered down onto a chair beside him, feeling waves of déjà vu from my visits with my mom. I tried my best to ignore them.

He braced his palms on the plastic rails and tried to sit up straighter, as if that might ward off my worry. “You didn’t have to come all this way for an old man’s indigestion.”

“You had a heart attack and a stroke,” I replied, my voice flat. I was careful not to sit too close, careful not to touch anything—him, the bed, the emotional possibility that this would be the last time we spoke.

That’s how fast it happened with my mom. On Friday I visited her, she was up and talking, and Saturday morning I woke up to the sounds of Buddy sobbing downstairs. I knew, without anyone telling me, she was gone.

Her body, which had fought for years, had finally given up on her. When I was little, I used to tell people that my mom had Julia Roberts disease, because she suffered from the same complications from her Type 1 diabetes as Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias. Like Julia’s character Shelby in the movie, having me put a lot of strain on her body. Her kidneys failed. She was on dialysis for years.

I got more time with my mom than Shelby’s fictional son, and the woman the movie was based on, did. My mom passed away a week before my twelfth birthday. Birthdays were still tough for me.

“How did you find out I was here? Was it that Rita? She can’t seem to keep her mouth shut.”

Rita Burrows, local rumor dispenser, was a human antenna, always tuned in and picking up even faint signals of drama. She liked to say she didn’t repeat gossip, so you have to listen closely the first time.

“The hospital called me. Next of kin,” I explained.

He grunted, “They had no right.”

The silence between us bloomed like a bruise. I counted the seconds, waiting for him to crack a joke or ask about my job or who I was dating, something to reset the energy. Instead, he picked at the edge of his blanket with a trembling hand.

“How are you feeling?” I asked, softer than before.

“I’m fine,” he dismissed. “Don’t let them tell you otherwise. I’m just here for the Jell-O and the nice nurses.”

“They don’t keep you in ICU for Jell-O.”

He waved his hand at me, shooing away my comment, and I noticed just how thin his skin looked. The last time he’d visited was three years ago. I’d noticed he’d lost a little weight, but he told me he’d just gotten over a stomach bug, and I didn’t question it. But he looked frail now, scarily thin.

A knock at the door interrupted us, and a nurse came in with Buddy’s breakfast. He fussed at her as she tried to convince him to eat it, I could see that he was exhausted. I worried he was acting up because I was there. Maybe he’d rest if I left.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a doctor in blue scrubs and a sharp white coat walk in, carrying a clipboard like an old-fashioned prop.

Even in my peripheral vision, he looked familiar in the uncanny way of someone from a previous life, but it wasn’t until he said, “Sadie?” that I turned and saw his face.

“Giovanni Russo?” I said. “You became a doctor. I always figured you’d end up in politics or…prison.”

Giovanni Russo and my ex, Dawson Lockhart, had been best friends. The two of them were inseparable, which meant once Dawson and I got together, the three of us became inseparable. Gio and Dawson were opposites in nearly every way. They were the yin to each other’s yang.

Gio was the life of the party, loud, talkative, flirty, loved attention, and would do anything for a dare. Dawson was the strong, silent type, self-contained, not easily swayed. Once you got to know him, he was funny and outgoing, but he hated the spotlight being on him and only spoke when he had something important to say.

What they had in common was sports. They were both extremely athletic and competitive. They had a friendly rivalry that drove them each to be better and brought out the best in each other.

Gio grinned, his smile just as wolfish and lopsided as it had been in high school. “Funny, my Nonna used to say the same thing.”

“How is Nonna?” I stood, and Gio wrapped me in a hug. It was strange, seeing Gio after twelve years.

Gio and his cousin Genevieve were both basically raised by their grandma, Nonna. Both of their parents had issues and were in and out of their lives. Nonna was their constant.

Nonna had always been a phenomenon to behold—barely five feet tall in her house slippers, but with the gravitational pull of the Death Star tractor beam and the energy of a prizefighter who’d already knocked down every man in her division. She ruled her world with a seamless blend of iron-fisted command and sugar-dusted tenderness, the kind of woman who could whip a room full of wild grandchildren into respectful silence with one sharp “Basta!” and then, a beat later, draw the whole brood into a collective hug so tight you’d swear she was trying to merge your atoms. If I remembered correctly, her accent thickened every year, as if she were deliberately cultivating it for effect, and even though her English was flawless, she preferred to speak in gestures—pointing, pinching, waving, scolding. Her hands had mapped the distance between discipline and affection so many times you could almost see the grooves.

I’ll never forget when my mom went into a coma, about six months before we lost her, it was Nonna who sat with me, holding my wrist like a blood pressure cuff and telling me stories about her childhood in Palermo. She insisted on making me eat, chasing down a vending machine tuna sandwich with espresso she’d managed to conjure from somewhere off-limits. She’d brushed my hair with her own pocket comb and braided it to keep it from getting tangled. She wiped my face with a handkerchief she kept in her pocket and told me, “Strong girls are made, not born.” I’d always left her house with my stomach hurting—sometimes from the food, sometimes from how much I’d laughed, but mostly from wanting so badly to be worthy of her pride. Since I never knew either of my grandmas, I think I just slotted her into that role.

Even when I moved away, Nonna was still the voice in my head reminding me to “walk like a queen,” “hold your spine straight,” “never let a man interrupt your talking.” I’d measured every new boss, boyfriend and mentor against her, with predictable results. The older I got, the more I realized that every lesson she taught me was designed to help me survive in a world that wasn’t built for women who looked or sounded like her, or who came from my background.

Gio’s expression grew even brighter, that lopsided grin promising a good answer.

“Feisty as ever.”

“Hey Doc, I’m ready to blow this popsicle stand,” Buddy interrupted our conversation.

Gio smiled widely and moved to the side of the bed to speak to Buddy. I paid attention, listening for any updates but he was pretty much just asking how he was doing, not going over any new results or information. He’d only been in the room a few minutes when he was paged and had to leave, apologizing to us both for the limited amount of time he’d been able to give us.

Within thirty seconds, another nurse came in to take Buddy’s vitals. He wasn’t thrilled about having to put on the blood pressure cuff, and he wasn’t one to suffer in silence. I don’t think any of the staff would classify him as an easy patient.

Buddy’s defiance faded as soon as the nurse left, but even then, he struggled to keep his eyes open. I felt that awkward dance of wanting to stay—afraid the visit might be the last—and wanting not to exhaust him further. When he looked past me, fixing his gaze somewhere over my shoulder as though he could see straight through to some better time, I knew it was time to let him sleep.

“I’ll come by later,” I told him as I held his hand, squeezing it lightly in what I hoped was reassurance. When he turned his eyes back to me, I drew a quick, sharp breath. I remembered, with humbling clarity, being five years old and holding that same hand in a grocery store parking lot, certain that if I let go for even a second, I’d be lost forever. Now, the hand was smaller, cooler, the knuckles mapped with veins like blue rivers winding their last mile.

“Don’t be a stranger, Sadie Rose,” he said. It wasn’t a plea. It was an order.

“I won’t,” I promised, and before I could stop myself, I kissed the top of his head.

I left the room and, in the hallway, leaned against the cool wall for a second to steady myself. The corridor smelled like vinegar and faint despair. For a moment, I stood and watched nurses wheel elderly patients past, shuffling in pale socks, and thought: This is the finish line we all run toward. Then a voice sounded behind me, “You okay?”

It was Gio.

I shook my head, then nodded. “He’s… I’ve never seen him like that.”

His expression softened. “He’s been struggling for a while.”

The words landed with a thud in my chest. “What happened?”

He hesitated only a fraction of a second, but it was enough. “Paramedics did a welfare check when Carl noticed he hadn’t picked up his mail.”

Carl had been delivering his mail for forty years.

“They found him on the kitchen floor. He couldn’t reach his phone or get help, which is why it was so long before anyone found him. He’d been there for over two days.”

I inhaled, then let it out slowly. “Was he⁠—”

“He’s lucky to be alive,” Gio said, and then, more gently, “but he’s not out of the woods. He’ll be here for at least a week, depending. Then, most likely, he’ll be transferred to a rehab facility. He’s malnourished, dehydrated. They won’t even try a stress test until he’s stabilized.”

“What does that mean, long term?”

He took a second, clearly choosing his words. “You know how stubborn he is. But if he wants to stay here in town, or even in his own house, realistically, I’m not sure if that’s viable to do on his own any longer. He may need home health support. Or…” He trailed off.

I completed the sentence for him. “Or he moves in with family. Which means me.” I laughed, because the alternative was crying and I wasn’t ready for that. “I live in a shoebox in Manhattan, and I can barely keep a succulent alive.” Plus, Buddy would never leave Valentine Bay, it was his home.

He grinned, the sort of bedside manner I knew he’d had naturally and was not taught in one of the courses. “You always were the smart one. You’ll figure it out. In the meantime, you’re here. That’s what matters.” He squeezed my shoulder in a way that I was sure was meant to be reassuring but felt dismissive, and then his pager went off.

“Duty calls,” he said. “But hey, I’d love to grab a drink and catch up, while you’re in town, it’s been too long.”

I grinned and nodded. “Thanks, Gio.”

He gave a little salute and jogged away, leaving me alone in a hospital corridor thick with ghosts. Suddenly, I had an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia and had to get out. When I walked out of the hospital, my senses were assaulted by the sticky sweetness of the air, the cries of seagulls squabbling over a trash can, the metallic taste of panic climbing up my throat. I found myself standing on the sidewalk with no plan, my purse, carry-on overnight bag, and no idea what to do next.

I considered calling for another Uber, but the thought of explaining to a stranger why I was in town with an emotional support suitcase made me want to crawl into a hole. So I did what any good New Yorker did, I walked. On the way downtown, I pulled out my phone and started trying to book a room because, like it or not, I was back in Valentine Bay for at least a few days.

2

PLUS-ONE, MINUS EMOTIONAL AVAILABILITY

Dawson

Ifucking hated weddings. That wasn’t a casual “I hate waiting in line” kind of hate, or even the more understandable “I hate people who chew with their mouth open” brand of mild irritation. My dislike was dense, fossilized, bone-deep. I could feel the weight of resentment, as solid and cold as a tombstone, pressing against my chest.

Weddings were a symbol, a reminder of the only life I wanted and one I only had myself to blame for fucking up.

Which was why, on the morning of my brother’s wedding, I was standing in my bedroom, staring at my closet like it was the mouth of a hungry lion. The house was silent except for the sound of my own teeth grinding. I was stuck somewhere between the urge to punch a wall and the impulse to just crawl back under my faded comforter and stay there for the rest of my natural life. Instead, I forced myself to grab a crisp white dress shirt and put it on.

As I buttoned it, I walked to my dresser and grabbed socks from the top drawer. When I did, I noticed the faded paper edge peeking out from my wallet. I did my best to ignore it. On this day, of all days, I didn’t need to pull it out and look at it. It had been years since I’d looked at the photo strip we’d taken on the boardwalk when we were thirteen. The four tiny rectangular images were seared into my memory but holding them in my hand and looking at them would cause my heart to break all over again.

That didn’t stop me from grabbing the leather billfold and retrieving the nostalgic keepsake. I stared down, studying the images as if it were the first time I’d ever seen them. In the first photo, Sadie’s mouth was wide open in a fake scream as I pretended to bite her earlobe. The second one, she stuck her tongue out at me, her bright blue eyes sparkling, and I had a huge smile on my face. In the third, she’d pressed her lips to my cheek with a cartoonish, exaggerated pucker. And the last one, my favorite, was almost serious. We were looking at each other, only our profiles were visible, but you could feel the energy between us, the connection, the sparks.

Part of me wanted to close my fist around the photo strip and crumple it, or grab scissors and cut it into tiny pieces, or strike a match and burn it. Instead, I just stared down at the strip in my palm, feeling an ache at the spot right above my heart. Weddings, fucking weddings. It didn’t matter whose it was—friends, a second cousin, a co-worker’s best friend, hell, even strangers who booked my family’s ranch—being anywhere near a wedding yanked the memory of Sadie out of whatever dark hole I tried to bury her in. I’d told myself that meant I was a hopeless romantic. But the older I got, the more I realized that wasn’t it at all. I was just a man who’d ruined the best thing in his life and couldn’t let the wound scab over, no matter how hard I tried.

I slid the photo strip back into the wallet and shoved it into my back pocket. If there was a world record for fastest time getting dressed for a formal event, I broke it that morning. I knotted the tie, shrugged into the jacket, and forced myself to the mirror. Most people said I looked like my brothers. I supposed it was true; we all had the Lockhart hair—dark brown, thick with a slight wave—and the same jawline that made us look permanently pissed off, even when we weren’t. But lately, I’d started to see something else in my face, a kind of weariness that didn’t belong to a man who was thirty. My old man’s eyes stared out at me from the mirror, full of secrets and disappointments. I left the tie crooked, grabbed my keys, and walked out the door.

As I stepped onto my front porch, I wondered, as I did every time I forced myself to go to one of these events, if I should have tried harder to forget her. There probably wasn’t a therapist in the greater Valentine Bay area who wouldn’t have said, “Yes, definitely, move on, get closure, do trust falls, whatever.” My own version of self-care was patching up the walls around the memories and pretending I couldn’t hear them clawing at the plaster from the inside.

In fairness, I’d tried to move on. I’d dated other people. A lot of other people. In fact, I was sort of notorious for it at this point. My brothers and I had always been referred to as “heartbreakers,” either as a play on words from our last name Lockhart, or because every time my mom gave birth to one of us, the first thing the nurse said was, ‘You got yourself a heartbreaker” or “He’s going to be a little heartbreaker” or something to that effect for all four of my brothers. My mom stands by her story, friends say it’s a play on our last name. Either way, for the past decade or so, I’d been living up to the title.

Case in point, I was on my way to pick up a date for the wedding, but my head and heart had a mind of their own. The thing about obsessive thoughts is that they don’t take orders. It’s not a democracy in your brain, it’s a goddamn coup every time the right trigger hits. Like waking up hungover and alone with a stranger. Or seeing the spot on the beach where you guys watched shooting stars and told each other you loved one another. Or witnessing two people promise to love each other for the rest of their lives. Or buying the house that we’d always talked about owning and living in.

That one was my bad. I took full responsibility for those actions, but I couldn’t help myself. Starting as early as twelve years old, we used to ride our bikes out to the north side of town, up to Cupid’s Cove, and there was a storybook cottage on our way that had a wraparound porch that sat on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Sadie mentioned once that she’d always loved the house, and I promised her I’d buy it for her. I always kept my word.

I sat in my truck, hands locked on the steering wheel, and forced myself to focus on the road. The only silver lining was that the wedding wasn’t at the church, which was where Sadie had always planned our wedding. Today’s nuptials were going down on the south lawn at the ranch, with the vineyard and the ocean in the background for the kind of rustic-chic photo ops that made the ranch’s Instagram followers foam at the mouth. All I had to do was show up and do my part to look like a functioning Lockhart.

First, I had to pick up Dr. Angela Chang. Within two minutes, the first time we hung out, Angie and I agreed that neither of us had the bandwidth for anything that required real emotional investment. Like everyone else I dated, I made it clear this wasn’t serious and it would never be serious. It wasn’t exclusive. Zero pressure. Zero promises. She’d just moved to town to take on the role of attending physician in ER which meant long hours and not a ton of time to spare for her personal life. And I was…well, I was me. Whatever that meant these days.

I checked the time as I pulled up, ten minutes to spare if she was ready on time, which she always was. I liked that about her. She was never late, never flaky, never cared if we went days without texting. She had her own life, one that didn’t have anything to do with me. If I were a different man, maybe that would’ve bothered me. But I found comfort in the low-maintenance rhythm of our routine: occasional dinners, occasional sex, and a mutual understanding that neither of us was anybody’s forever.

Her apartment was one of those new, boxy complexes that tried to pass itself off as “urban chic” despite being surrounded by a quarter mile of cow pastures. She answered the door in a burnt orange wrap dress, hair pulled up in a slicked-back ponytail highlighting her model-like features: almond shaped eyes, high cheekbones, perfectly asymmetrical face and full lips. The first time I saw her in scrubs, I thought she looked young and didn’t give her a second thought. But then I spoke to her and realized she was smart, classy, sarcastic, and age appropriate. Angie carried herself with a kind of graceful, don’t-fuck-with-me composure that I respected.

“You look gorgeous,” I told her as I we walked down the path from her condo to my truck.

“You scrub up quite nicely yourself,” she returned the compliment as I helped her into the passenger seat.

After heading to the driver’s side, we were on our way to the ranch, a five minute drive away.

I thought I was doing a good job of disguising my anxiety when she eyed my knuckles with a frown. “Rough morning?” she asked, voice dry as a salt flat.

“Just didn’t sleep that well,” I explained away my behavior.

She shifted in her seat. “I’m excited to finally meet the last two Heartbreakers.”

Since Angie had only been in town for a few months, she’d yet to meet all my brothers. We ran into Damon, my middle brother, at sushi one night. I went to the bathroom and when I walked out he was hitting on her. He had no clue she was there with me. It was actually pretty funny.

“What are their names again?”

“Dean and Dylan.”

“One of the nurses, Carly, was telling me that your mom named you all after TV show characters or something. Is that true?”

I nodded. “My mom came to the country, and she didn’t know the language. She watched TV to learn English, and she named us all after characters from her favorite shows.”

Angie’s eyes lit up, which is usually what happened when I told people that story.

“That’s amazing! Wait, so you are clearly named after Dawson’s Creek.”

“Yep.”

“I love that show, but I’m team Pacey, sorry.” She cringed slightly.

“No worries.” If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard that, I’d be a wealthy man. I mean, I did okay, so I guess I’d be wealthier. “My mom is as well, but she wanted all her boys to have D names.”

“Oh, okay.”

“So wait, your brother Dean is that Gilmore Girls?”

“Yep.” I nodded.

“This is fun.” Angie clapped. “Okay, and then there’s Damon. Damon. Damon.” She stared out the window as she repeated his name three times, clearly searching her mental Rolodex for characters in television series. “Oh!” She spun towards me. “Vampire Diaries!”

“Yep. You are three for three.”

A smile of pride and satisfaction spread from ear to ear. “Who’s left?”

“My youngest brother, Dylan.”

“Dylan. Dylan. Dylan.” Once again, she stared out the window. After a few minutes, she turned. “Give me a hint.”

“Okay, um, zip code.”

Her face scrunched up. “Zip code?”

I nodded.

“What kind of a clue is zip—Oh! Beverly Hills 90210!” She pointed at me as if she’d caught me in something.

“Yep.”

“Dylan McKay,” she repeated. “I was Team Dylan.”

“I would have figured that show was before your time.”

“I loved him on Riverdale, so I started watching it,” she explained. “Binging teen dramas is my guilty pleasure.”

I hoped my mom didn’t find that out. She’d probably invite her over for a ‘girl’s night.’ This relationship was not at the point where Angie should be hanging out with my mom independently. Which is why bringing her today was a mistake. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

We drove past the brittle yellow grass of the valley, up the curving back road to the Lockhart Ranch. It was before noon, and already the sky looked like someone had washed it with bleach. I turned into the ranch and could see the main house from halfway up the road, the sunlight catching the copper roof and turning it into a second sun.

“But the brother that’s getting married today, that’s not any of your younger brothers, right?” she asked. “This is the older one who you weren’t raised with.”

“Right,” I confirmed.

“Is it weird for you?” Angie tilted her head to the side. “Having an older brother pop up out of nowhere?”

I inhaled slowly, unsure how much I wanted to explain. My older half-brother Deacon St. Claire, whose wedding we were celebrating today, had only come into our lives a few months ago. My mom had him when she was a teenager, years before she met my dad and had my brothers and me.

She came over from Spain alone at age sixteen and found work with a wealthy family. A couple years later she got pregnant by a man who wanted nothing to do with the baby. She ended up giving my oldest brother to the family she worked for, who had struggled with infertility.

The husband lied to her about her access to her son, and he lied to Deacon about being adopted, which is why he was only now in our lives, thirty-six years later.

“Not really,” I sighed. “We always knew about Deacon. My mom never kept him a secret. I’m happy she finally has her whole family.”

It had always felt like something was missing in my mom’s life, and now, she had all her boys. It was like he was the last piece of the puzzle for her.

Angie watched me for a second. “Is he nice?”

I understood why she was asking that. Deacon St. Claire came from money. Old money. He’d also made billions himself. When people found out I was related to him, they always had questions about what he was like.

“Yeah, he is,” I told her. “And he just… I don’t know. He fits.”

“I’m excited to meet him,” she declared as I drove my truck behind the admin buildings where I typically parked every day for work.

I watched as Angie took everything in. The property had been transformed and looked like it had been ripped out of the pages of a bridal magazine: white chairs fanned out in precise arcs, bunting strung between trees, an aisle scattered with rose petals. There was a trellis at the end, covered in pale pink climbing roses.

Unfortunately for me, this was not an unusual sight. Lockhart Ranch was a wedding destination. We hosted anywhere from fifty to one hundred weddings per year.

I had to admit, it felt strange bringing a date to the wedding. I’d never done that before. All of my relationships were too casual for a family event. In this case, however, Angie invited herself, and I’d gone along with it because she was chill and I liked her. But now that we were here, at a family wedding, it felt like a lot.

This might have been a mistake.

When we stepped into the white-gold sunlight, Angie paused under the eaves. She scanned the lawns, the pastures, the careful rows of Adirondack chairs and flower trellises, her eyes moving with a clinical, nearly predatory precision. She let out a low whistle. “It’s… massive.”

“Is it?” I asked, wondering what it looked like through her eyes.

Growing up on the ten-thousand-acre property, I was immune to its expanse. It all just felt like my backyard. But I supposed that, from an outsider’s perspective, it could be impressive.

“Yes,” she confirmed, then stated, “I want a tour.”

Before I could answer, she was already stalking ahead, taking in the full sprawl of the Lockhart Ranch as if she were a codebreaker deciphering its secrets from the layout alone. I watched her for a second, straight-backed, steps crisp even on gravel and felt a pulse of something not quite dread, not quite regret. Maybe apprehension.

I was definitely having second thoughts about her attendance. I tried to push it out of my head and decided to focus on giving her a tour.

Most people took in the ranch in manageable chunks—the longhorn paddocks here, the barn and equestrian center there, the gabled main house perched at the highest point of the property, a kind of queen bee presiding over its ten thousand minions and the endless, manicured rows of grapes running downslope to the bay. But Angie wanted the whole story, all at once. I liked that about her, too.

She turned to face me and shrugged. “You’re the expert. Where’s the best place to start?”

I considered the options, then jerked my chin toward the left. “We’ll start with the animals. That’s usually the crowd-pleaser.”

We walked the familiar path, side by side at first, then with Angie forging ahead anytime something caught her attention. The animal complex was just past the vineyard but before the guest bungalows, so we skirted the edge of the vines and took the shortcut through the kitchen garden. I pointed out the tomatoes, which my mom always planted with militant precision in concentric circles, and the row of lavender that lined the east fence, thick with bees even at this hour.

“So,” Angie said, “this is a full working ranch, right? Not just tourist stuff?”

“It’s both,” I explained. “We have about two hundred head of longhorn cattle, mostly for show, but we still run a small operation. The vineyard and spa were my mom’s brainchild. She optimized the rest of the property for guest experiences—bike and ATV riding, hiking, fishing, and animal encounters. If you’re into miniature goats, this is basically Mecca.”

Past the kitchen garden, we stepped into the animal enclosures. Our first stop was the chicken run—fifty-odd hens, a couple of ornamental roosters, all of them fluffing and strutting in the dust. Angie crouched at the fence, studying them like a scientist observing a controlled experiment.

“They look happy,” she commented.

“All our animals are rescued,” I explained. “This has basically become an animal sanctuary. Not a lot of ranching goes on, just rehabilitating. My mom has a thing for taking in strays. Not just animals, people, too. Out of our seventy-plus staff, only about five were people who we hired through traditional avenues. The rest were people going through a tough time, down on their luck, basically in need, who my mom gave shelter, schooling, and ultimately jobs to.”

“So she’s a softie?”

“If you’re on her good side, if not...” My eyes widened and I shook my head.

Angie laughed, a low, honest sound. Then she stood and scanned the nearby pasture, where some dwarf goats were headbutting the hell out of a battered plastic tub.

She pointed. “Are those the mini goats?”

“Yes, but if you say ‘mini’ around Dean, he’ll start reciting breed histories, so… fair warning.”

“Noted.” She grinned. “Does Dean work with the animals?”

“Yes and no. We all do a little bit of everything. He helps out if we are short-staffed or if he gets a wild hair, but his official role is CFO. He went to Princeton and did his undergrad work in business management and hospitality.”

“What about you? What’s your official role?” she asked.

People thought that just because our name was on the gate, my brothers and I were handed our positions. The truth is that we’ve worked every miserable job there is here, from mucking stalls to painting cabins to unclogging toilets to serving as unwilling child wranglers at the petting zoo. But now we all hold official titles in the company. “I’m the CEO, Dean is the CFO, Damon is the COO and Dylan is the G.M. We all work really hard to hold up the standard my mom and dad have set.”

We moved on to the next enclosure, which was a fenced field with a pair of bored-looking hooved creatures, one zebra-striped and the other dun. “That’s Zonk and Luna,” I said. “Zonk is half-zebra, half-donkey. Mom liberated him from a petting zoo that wasn’t treating him well. She thought he looked sad.”

“Liberated him? Like stole him?” she asked by way of clarification.

“We don’t ask,” I told her. “I learned the term plausible deniability when I was eight thanks to my mom and her rescues.”

She broke into a man’s backyard who had dogs chained up to a tree with no food and water to “liberate” them. When the police showed up and started asking me questions, I told them I didn’t know where we got the dogs from. It was true, I hadn’t. My mom told me later. When I asked why she hadn’t told me so I could have helped her, she explained plausible deniability.

“Your mom sounds like a legend.”

I nodded. “She is.”

The tour continued, past the pig pen and the sheep fold, where Angie spent a long minute telling a particularly majestic ram that he was, in her words, “an absolute king.” Then we hit the cattle paddock, where the longhorns grazed with slow, heavy dignity, and Angie took in the massive, spiraling horns with something close to awe.

“They’re like dinosaurs,” she said.

“They’re jerks,” I corrected.

Her eyes twinkled with delight. “Even better.”

While we watched, one of the calves ambled up to the fence, eyes enormous and ears on high alert. Angie stuck her hand through the mesh and let the calf sniff her fingers. “Do they all have names?”

“Yep, that’s Cowlvin. Mom names every animal on the property. Even the chickens.”

She smiled, but there was a softness to it now. “That’s sweet.”

“She believes every living creature deserves to feel seen and respected. This is her way of doing that.”

Angie nodded, I could tell she was genuinely impressed.

We left the animals and cut back toward the main house, shoes dusted with hay and dirt. She paused at the vineyard’s edge and looked back over the patchwork of fields and barns, the silvered underside of the bay beyond, and the hills cradling the whole crazy operation.

“I don’t think I’d ever get tired of this view,” she breathed in awe.

We walked through the first two rows of grapevines—the pinot noir block—while I filled in the basic story of the ranch. Four generations, starting with my great-great-grandfather ran longhorns up and down the coast until the price of beef collapsed. The family pivoted to a working dude ranch for city people looking to cosplay as cowboys for a weekend. My grandfather saw that was doing well and wanted to expand. So he did. The problem was, he was smack dab in the middle of expansion/renovations when he passed away from a brain aneurysm. Then it was my dad’s turn to take hold of the reins. Sadly, he nearly ran the entire business into the ground. He’s great at big ideas, not so much day-to-day tasks that need to be done. Thankfully, my mom saved it by transforming the business into the vineyard/luxury resort/animal refuge it was now.

Angie listened, shifting her gaze from row to row. Her eyes widened when she caught sight of a wild turkey waddling through the cover crop between vines.

“So you grew up here? On all of this?”

“I did.”

“And now you work here every day, with your brothers?”

“I do.”

“You’re really lucky.”

I knew I was, but sometimes, most of the time, it felt like none of this mattered without the person I’d planned on sharing it with. No. I was not going to think of her today. I pushed Sadie out of my mind.

We reached the guest bungalows, twenty-eight luxury-rustic units laid out in neat rows, each with its own porch swing and view of the ocean. The first five were original to the ranch—my dad built them himself, with help from his brothers, in the seventies. They were dark, cramped, and smelled like pine-scented bleach, but guests loved them. My mom added the rest over two decades, each more elaborate than the last. The newest one had a copper bathtub and a fireplace that lit with a remote control.

Angie ran a hand over the porch railing as we passed. “Did you ever live in one of these?”

Nope, but I lost my virginity in one. I didn’t feel the need to share that with her.

“No, these are for guests only. Mom runs a tight ship.”

We circled back toward the front of the property, detouring past the spa, which could have easily been in Malibu or Napa Valley. All glass and raw timber, it gleamed in the sun like a high-end resort with its own Zen garden and a koi pond the size of my entire childhood bedroom.

“Is this place for real?” Angie asked, stopping to gape at the reflecting pool and the stone fountains.

“Very real,” I assured her. “My mom built it after she realized the best way to get brides to book this place was to promise them luxury treatments.”

Angie grinned. “That’s pretty genius.”

“Yep.”

She let that one hang in the air, then said, softer, “You’re proud of her.”

I nodded. “She’s a force, that’s for sure.”

It was great when that force was focused on external things, the problem came when that energy turned inward. Once she got her mind set on something, she was like a dog with a bone, and there was no stopping her.

Lately, it was one of her sons settling down and giving her grandchildren. Thankfully, Deacon showed up and took some of the pressure off. He had his own daughter, Tabitha, and a stepdaughter, Blake, who Mom was loving spoiling.

I had reservations regarding her reaction to me bringing Angie today. I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. We weren’t even exclusive. I knew for a fact she was seeing other people, and if I wanted to, I could as well.

“I can’t wait to meet her, your mom.” Angie beamed as we headed toward the ceremony area where everyone was gathered before the main event.

I smiled back, despite the growing knot of anxiety in my stomach. This was a mistake. We weren’t together. This was casual. Bringing someone as a date to a family wedding was not casual. I fucked up.

3

MY SUITCASE HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED

Sadie

Downtown Valentine Bay was all salt spray and the sound of gulls, every storefront pulsing with the leisurely contentment of a weekday at the precipice of summer. If I pressed my thumb to the pulse of this town, I would have found it sluggish but steady, nothing like the frantic, arrhythmic beat of Manhattan. I walked the length of Valentine Blvd, my rolling suitcase plunking over every seam and divot in the sidewalk, the familiar fish-and-batter tang from the Bluewater Inn’s kitchen prickling my senses and making me briefly, inappropriately hungry.

I tried to book a room at the Bluewater online, but as I hit the “next available,” the page blinked and spat at me: No Vacancy. The Bluewater Inn had no rooms? That wasn’t a great sign. Peak tourist season hadn’t even hit yet. There were flyers everywhere for the upcoming Valentine Bay Summer of Love Festival, the annual event that officially kicked off the tourist season in a couple of weeks.

Who were all these people coming to stay in Valentine Bay, Oregon, now that the logging and fishing industries had aged out and died? Who was I kidding? I may not have been back in my hometown for over a decade, but I knew why the vacationers were there. These were wedding guests, spa getaways, people who bought into the kitsch of Valentine Bay’s love theme.

Speaking of love, a bachelor party of at least a dozen walked past me. They wore matching t-shirts airbrushed with the phrase “Last Catch Before the Hitch.” The groom looked like a stock photo, brawny and sunburned with an American flag bandana tied over his fading ginger crew cut, so thoroughly not Dawson Lockhart, and yet I immediately thought of him anyway.

I knew why my mind went to my childhood sweetheart. It happened anytime there was even a mention of a wedding, marriage, or family. It was because we’d planned our lives together. I know a lot of teenagers do that, but for whatever reason, when we did, I believed it would actually happen. I believed it so much that, twelve years later, I still hadn’t been able to move on. I’d tried, but it was as if he was tattooed in my DNA. It was unnerving. A lot more so since I was back in his town.

Anxiety shivered through my chest. I wished, for a moment, that I’d stayed at my conference in Los Angeles instead of hopping on the first flight back. But the prospect of Buddy alone, lying in a hospital bed, had pulled me here as surely as a rip current.

I just needed to keep a low profile, make sure Buddy was back on his feet, and then get out of here without my heart breaking…again.

With that objective in mind, I pulled out my phone and called the Hearts Afire Resort and Spa, which was another hotel in town. The woman on the phone sounded like she’d had her last three drinks comped by management and she put me on hold. I tried to ask if it would be better to book through their website, but instrumental Muzak began to play.

As I waited, I took a breath and scanned the sidewalk ahead. There were at least four new businesses I didn’t recognize, all painted in the same Instagram-friendly palette of seafoam, blush, and gray. I’d barely registered the name “Valentine Bay Beauty” across the salon when I heard the voice I’d spent years dreading and craving in equal measure.

“Sadie!”

I gripped my suitcase handle so tight it began rolling into the back of my leg. Selma Lockhart emerged from the salon, a vision in tortoiseshell sunglasses and a linen jumpsuit the color of fresh sage. She was so tiny that she could have been mistaken for a child playing at being a grown woman, but as soon as she dropped the glasses, her dark eyes were full of the kind of laser-precise maternal warmth that had sustained me through the death of my own mother.

“Selma?” I did my best not to sound like I was about to start crying or run away.

She enveloped me in a hug before I could finish saying her name. Selma had always hugged me like she was determined to wring out every bit of sadness in my soul. I wasn’t prepared for how much that one gesture would flatten me. For a moment, it felt like I’d never left.

She pulled back and touched the sides of my face with both hands, searching for any trace of the girl I’d been. “You’re so grown up, so beautiful,” she said, her voice low and private, like she was telling me a secret.

I tried to smile, but my face felt stiff and out of practice. “It’s Botox,” I teased. “I can’t move my forehead.”

She laughed, then pulled me aside so that an elderly couple could maneuver past us on the sidewalk. “What are you doing here, mija? Nobody told me you were coming home.”

I hesitated, the truth already thick on my tongue. “Buddy’s in the hospital. He had a heart attack and a stroke.” I swallowed.

Her face changed so quickly it was almost magical to watch. The laugh lines collapsed into concern, and she pressed her hand to her chest as if to keep her heart from launching itself out of her body. “Mi Dios. I’m so sorry, Sadie. Is there anything we can do?”

“No, I just came from the hospital. He’s doing okay, for now.” I glanced down at my suitcase. “I was just going to get a room and go back and see him.”

“No, no, no. Absolutely not! You are coming back to the ranch.”

My stomach dropped out from under me. The last place I wanted to go was Lockhart Ranch. I’d spent nearly every day there during the six years Dawson and I were together. It was more my home than Buddy’s was. After my mom died, he just sort of retreated into the farm. He had three thousand acres of land, a Christmas tree farm, and a produce stand with vegetables and fruits we grew.

Every day, he got up before dawn and I wouldn’t hear him come back in until close to midnight. It was like being in the house and seeing me was just too painful for him.

“Oh no, I couldn’t.” I shook my head.

“You have to! My oldest son is getting married!”

Her oldest son. My brain snagged on that phrase, as if the words themselves had teeth and were tearing at the fabric of my thoughts. Selma’s oldest son was Dawson Lockhart—first boy I ever kissed, first boy to break my heart, first boy to make me believe that soulmates, fate, and perpetually entwined destinies were real things and not just the punchline of some cosmic joke.

I felt my cheeks go pale, betraying me, and I pressed a hand to the side of my neck, where the pulse thudded so hard I thought Selma might see it.

Dawson…getting married?! With clinical detachment, I noted the dull roar that had replaced all other sound in my ears, as though someone had filled my skull with seawater and was sloshing it around for dramatic effect. Waves of dizziness made it hard to focus on anything in the periphery, sharp, bright points of memory stabbed at me instead: the way Dawson used to rub the soft skin behind my ear with his thumb, the smell of hay and earthy musk on his flannel shirts, the way his hands were always warm even in the dead of February.

I tried to keep my face neutral. Maybe even a little bit bored, an, “I’ve moved on, see?” expression. I half-hoped Selma would let the comment float away, but Selma Lockhart was many things—tenacious, stubborn as a barnacle, emotionally clairvoyant—but subtle was not one of them. Of course she saw through me. She always had.

“Sadie, mija, are you okay?” Selma’s hand was on my arm now, gentle but insistent. She searched my face with those uncanny olive-green eyes. I could practically see her scanning my biomarkers for signs of distress, like a mom-shaped MRI. I forced my lips into a smile, but it was thin and brittle, threatening to fracture at any second.

“Oh, I’m fine,” I lied, my voice not nearly convincing enough. “I just…wow… a wedding.”

“Actually, they’re already married, they said I do over Christmas and this wedding is a surprise for the bride. His wife is just inside the salon. She has no idea that the ranch is getting set up as we speak. You have to meet her, you will love her,” Selma enthused.

Every cell in my body wanted to reverse course, to pivot on my boot heel and make a break for safe anonymity. But Selma Lockhart’s gravitational force had always been stronger than whatever cowardice lived inside me, so I stayed rooted there, blinking in the midday sun as she made introductions at a speed that could cause whiplash.

“And not only her…” Selma’s hand fluttered toward the salon. “She has a teenage daughter, and he has a five-year-old from his first marriage.”

The words did something to the inside of my stomach, a slow rolling twist that threatened to migrate up to my heart and choke it. I repeated the last part of her statement like a question because I didn’t trust I’d heard right, “First marriage?”

Selma’s face lost some of its lightness, the smile pulling gently into a frown. “Yes, mija. His first wife passed away during childbirth. Heartbreaking.”

A knot of guilt strangled me. I didn’t keep up with anyone from home, not even online. The only news I ever got was filtered through Buddy, and he hated talking on the phone. In fact, he had a talent for summarizing things down to two-word headlines: “Farm’s booming.” “Town’s overcrowded.” “Weather’s bad.” The messy, human complications never made the cut.

But this? This was a seismic shift. My mental map of Dawson had always stopped at the night we broke up, as if he’d been preserved in amber, untouched by the years and immune to the wounds of adulthood. I felt unreasonably betrayed to learn life had continued for him, that it included a wife and a child and even grief I’d never been invited to share.

“Who is he—" I started to ask, but the door to the salon swung open and a stunning woman with blow-dried, straw-gold hair stepped out. Her aura was one of chill, confident, self-possessed.

Behind her trailed two girls: one was the mirror image of the adult version who looked to be in her early teens, the other was the five-year-old with a cascade of curly hair and a gap in her smile wide enough to swallow whole blueberries.

“Jenna, I want you to meet my honorary daughter, Sadie.”

Honorary daughter? My insides curled up at the phrase, equal parts warmth and the kind of heartbreak you only get from being reminded of who you used to be to someone. I tried to imagine what Jenna would make of this, the ex-girlfriend shuffled into the family lineup. I braced for awkwardness.

Jenna, for her part, handled it with the smooth competence of a woman who’d been through at least one PTA cage match. “Nice to meet you, Sadie,” she greeted me with genuine warmth, and I could see in her eyes there wasn’t even a hint of recognition. This woman had never heard of me before.

Not that I would have expected Dawson to talk about me. We broke up twelve years ago. But I had to admit it did sting that I didn’t even get a mention to his wife.

I forced myself to remember to breathe and smile, so I didn’t pass out or throw up, which were very real possibilities. “You too.”

“And these are my granddaughters, Blake and Tabitha.”

“Tabitha Marie St. Claire,” the little girl clarified. “But you can call me Tabby, like a cat.”

Again, I forced myself to smile “Nice to meet you Blake and Tabby.” As the words came out, I realized the five-year-old said her last name was St. Claire. And that was Dawson’s daughter.

“St. Claire?” I glanced up at Selma.

“Her dad is my son, Deacon St. Claire.”

Her son? Oh, her oldest son. It was in that moment that I remembered the son she’d put up for adoption. I’d only heard about him two or three times. The subject wasn’t a secret, but I recalled when it was brought up, it made Selma sad because she wrote to him and never got a response. Clearly, he must have gotten in touch with her, and he was her oldest son.

The embarrassment of my mistaken identity groom came on so fast I nearly tripped over it. My whole face went hot, then cold, then hot again, a violent oscillation of mortification that had nothing to do with Selma and everything to do with the fact that for half a second, I’d let myself imagine Dawson was still mine in a way that would matter, even now, after all these years and I’d been crushed when that false reality was stolen from me. The worst part was how badly I wanted to believe it, despite knowing it could never be. Selma must have seen right past my feeble attempt to play it cool, because she wrapped her arms around my neck and squeezed with a ferocity that threatened to snap the bones if I let myself go limp.

“Oh, sweetie, did you think I was talking about Dawson?” she whispered into my hair, her chuckle so warm and motherly I nearly started sobbing on the spot. There was something about being seen so deeply that it made you want to hide under a table forever.

I tried to recover with a pathetic little laugh and the world’s worst poker face. “No,” I lied, which made it worse, obviously. “I mean, it was just—yeah, I just.” My voice fumbled its way through the sentence, each word a speed bump for my dignity. I squeezed her back, then did my best to extract myself from her embrace and vicinity, creating enough distance to signal that I was totally, completely fine and not at all falling apart.

“Well, it was nice to see you and nice to meet you all,” I said, in the same awkward tone you might use to a dentist you just ran into at a funeral.

I started to walk away, but Selma ignored my farewell and grabbed the handle of my rolling suitcase.

“What are you doing?” I asked as I spun back around.

“You’re staying at the ranch,” she declared, as if it were a law of physics.

Before I knew what was happening, she was wheeling my case toward a row of parked vehicles like she’d just repossessed a stolen child. With her other hand, she clicked the key fob. The back hatch of a detailed luxury SUV rose with a pneumatic whump, and she hoisted the suitcase in with a kind of brute grace that should not have been possible for a woman her size.

“This is great! You can come to the wedding.” Her voice lowered to a whisper, but the cheerful register of someone who’d already decided for both of us. “You’re family. It wouldn’t be right if you weren’t there.”

“Selma, no, really, I don’t want to—” I started, but it was clear she wasn’t listening. She was already halfway back to the salon, heels clopping on the concrete like a pair of tiny gavels. I rushed after her, raising my voice to a harsh whisper. “I just… I’m not ready to face people. It’s been a long day, it’s a lot.”

She stopped, turned, and leveled her gaze at me. It was the first time I’d seen her look truly serious all afternoon. “Fine,” she said, voice low and soothing. “You don’t have to socialize. You can take a nap if you want. Nobody will bother you.”

I hesitated at the word “nap,” which was Selma code for “lock yourself in a room with snacks and cry for three hours.” But what were my alternatives? Going to a motel room by myself with nothing to do but spiral.

“But Dawson, I don’t know if…” I started, then trailed off as I realized how long it had been since I’d actually talked to him. The Dawson in my head was still eighteen, still possessed of that effortless country swagger with a half-grin that could turn my insides to mush. The real Dawson was almost certainly nothing like that now.

Selma must have read my mind, because she waved off my concern like she was shooing a mosquito. “He’s on a work trip,” she said with the heavy finality of someone who’d already called in the airstrike.

A work trip? His estranged older brother is throwing a surprise wedding at the ranch, and he’s on a work trip? The last I heard, he worked on Lockhart Ranch. All the boys did.

What work trip could he possibly be on?

I tried one more time to protest, but the words came out in a cascade of half-formed objections. “Selma, I’m honestly fine. Really. I can get a room. I don’t want to impose. I’m sure you have a million things to do with the we⁠—”

She put a hand up, palm out, as if physically blocking my excuses. “Sadie Rose Shepard, it is settled. You are coming home with me, or I will drag you by your hair. And don’t think I won’t.”

I saw the look in Selma’s eyes. There was no stopping her, not now. I had the distinct sense of being swept up in the current of someone else’s life, with no idea where the river would spit me out. Selma Montez-Lockhart was diminutive in stature but possessed hurricane-level force. She was maybe five feet even, and that was on a good hair day. Her skin was olive and radiant, her features dramatic and perfect, like someone had ordered her from a catalog of genetic upgrades. She dressed in soft neutrals that made her look even more angelic, but everything about her movements said she’d gut you with a paring knife if you crossed her. The only flaw, if you could call it that, was the steel in her eyes, which told you exactly how much she’d endured and exactly how little she cared for your self-pity.

It looked like, whether I liked it or not, I would be staying at Lockhart Ranch and going to a wedding. It wasn’t what I had on my bingo card for my visit back, but once Selma decided something was going to happen, it was best to go along with it. I may have been gone for over a decade, but even I knew that.

4

PLOT TWIST IN A BLUE DRESS

Dawson

Iwas used to weddings on the ranch. I’d witnessed hundreds over the years. When your family runs the sole luxury dude ranch and vineyard in the county, you get accustomed to seeing strangers in tulle, drunk on rosé and joy, doing the Chicken Dance at two in the afternoon. But this was the first time one of my siblings had been the groom. It wasn’t subtle, but my mom’s firstborn was raised by billionaires and had made billions of his own, so Deacon spared no expense for his bride.

For the reception, the staff had transformed the barn into something you’d see on a reality show—industrial string lights zigzagged across the rafters, wood farm tables set end to end under extravagant chandeliers decorated with antique rose garlands and fairy lights, and enough bouquets of wildflowers to make it look like the blooms had followed us from the meadow and multiplied. Even the weather showed up for the occasion, a perfect seventy-two degrees with a breeze strong enough to keep the bugs down but not so strong as to upend the centerpieces. There were at least two hundred people, but I only recognized about thirty, mostly staff and family, the rest of the guests Deacon had flown in from Hope Falls, where he and Jenna lived.

I’d come stag to every previous wedding I’d ever attended. It was easy, peasy. No pressure, nobody ever expected the grumpy Lockhart brother to step onto the dance floor. But this time, I had a date, and the novelty of it put me on edge.

I sipped my beer and watched her on the dance floor. I still wasn’t sure why I’d gone along with it when she invited herself. I hadn’t even finished the sentence—“I have to go to my brother’s wed—” before she’d exclaimed, “I love weddings!” and started shopping for a dress. I’d been racking my brain trying to figure out how and why I’d let this happen. The only thing I could figure out was that it had something to do with the fact that lately I’d been wanting more than just casual hookups, not with Angie, just with a life partner. Who was I kidding? I wanted it with the-who-shall-not-be-named because our relationship ended twelve years ago, and it was pathetic that I hadn’t gotten over it.

The silver lining of the day was that my mom had been so busy with the event, my “date” and I had slid under her radar. No introductions had been made, which was a huge relief to me.

In fairness, having Angie on my arm hadn’t been all bad. During the ceremony, she laughed at the right times, awed at the correct moments, and she was a hit at the reception. She was eating up ranch gossip with the staff and even made my dad blush with a story about her first day in the ER. Now, she was on the dance floor with some of the Hope Falls guests doing TikToks. That left me at the edge of the barn, nursing a beer and wishing there was a polite way to Irish exit my own brother’s wedding.

My brother Damon found me by the pie table where the strawberry rhubarb was already whittled down to a single, glossy wedge sweating under the string lights. Damon nudged past me with the practiced elbows of a man who’d spent his entire adolescence fighting for the last slice of pie and attention. As the third in line, he had major middle child syndrome. He also had the easy confidence of a younger sibling who’d never known a day of not getting what he wanted. It didn’t hurt that he could charm his way out of anything and had deep dimples that made the opposite sex swoon from the time he was old enough to flirt, which for him was in preschool.

“She’s cute,” he said, already using his fork as a pie retrieval tool, eyes locked on the orange flash of Angie spinning on the floor. “I’m honestly surprised this one lasted. Never thought I’d see you with someone who wore heels taller than a fence post.”

I wanted to ignore his commentary, but Damon’s whole personality was persistence. He’d always been the brother who never stopped talking just because you didn’t answer. If anything, that only made him more determined.

“We’re not serious,” I relayed, hoping to cut off the conversation before it got traction.

Damon made a ceremony of licking strawberry goo from his thumb with a carnivorous flourish, then pointed at me with the fork, using the tines to punctuate the air. “You brought sand that wasn’t serious to the beach? No wonder you look miserable.”

I knew I shouldn’t bite, yet, “I’m not miserable,” slipped out anyway.

Oldest child habit: always defend, never admit.

Deacon showing up on my mom’s doorstep technically stripped me of my position as the eldest of her sons, but I still considered myself the oldest of my brothers. I was the oldest Lockhart. It had been such a huge part of my identity my entire life.

Damon’s brows sailed up, and he forked an entire quarter of pie into his mouth, then talked around the bite. “Tell that to your face.”

He was right, of course. Weddings were always shit days for me. Each time I watched a couple stand before God and their family to declare their love and commitment to one another, it was a blinding reminder of the future I’d lost. Every bouquet toss and first dance reminded me of all the things I’d planned on having by now and didn’t.

I tried to reset my mood with a long drag from the bottle. The microbrew was so cold it burned straight through my teeth and throat, settling in my stomach like a dare. I kept my eyes on the dance floor, where Angie and several other guests were flossing (the dance, not the dental routine), and tried to tune out the anxiousness in my chest.

Damon finished his pie, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and nudged me with his elbow. “C’mon, man. At least pretend you’re having fun. It’s a party. Not a funeral.”

He meant well. But Damon was the kind of guy who could talk himself out of any bad mood, and into any girl’s pants, in under five minutes. I’d never understood how we could share genetic material and be such polar opposites.

I scanned the crowd again, wondering if maybe I’d have a better time if I ducked out to the stables to check on the newborn foals. But then I saw my mom. She was standing at the far end of the barn, framed by a pyramid of champagne glasses and enough wildflowers to camouflage a small animal. She wore her signature look: a vintage tea-length dress, her hair falling around her face in soft waves, she looked like a cross between a ’50s wife and a Disney princess. She caught my gaze and began to stride straight towards me. I braced myself, certain she was about to drag me into a receiving line or—worse—ask me to make a toast.

But then I sensed a disturbance, like a subtle ripple in the air. It was the way a few heads turned at once, the kind of micro-climate shift that only happened when Dr. Giovanni Russo walked into a room.

Gio, my best friend since Little League, the devil on my shoulder, my forever wingman. He was wearing a three-piece suit like he’d been sewn into it, stubble that looked intentionally careless, and sunglasses that he slid off as he crossed the barn. He looked like he’d just walked off a magazine spread, and every woman in a ten-yard radius took notice.

But Gio’s eyes weren’t scanning for women. He was locked onto me, moving with a kind of single-minded purpose usually reserved for ER trauma code or last-minute airport sprints. He cut through a cluster of guests, sidestepped a toddler with a confetti cannon, and stopped right before the dessert table.

I didn’t want to ask the obvious, so I kept it light: “If you’re here to stop the wedding, you’re about an hour too late.”

He didn’t answer, just glanced past me, eyes flicking behind me. I turned and saw my mom, a few feet away, her tiny frame vibrating like a chihuahua with a secret. And then, she approached and said, “Dawson, I need to talk to you. Now.”

Beside me, Damon who never took anything seriously, smiled, his expression was pure glee as he sing-songed, “Somebody’s in trouble.” He loaded another chunk of pie onto his plate, then motioned to Gio. “Did someone forget to RSVP?”

“I’m not here for the wedding,” Gio confirmed what I’d already suspected, that there was another reason he was there.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, looking between him and my mom, noting the tension radiating off both of them. It’s not that I cared he crashed my half-brother’s wedding. Originally, I’d planned on him coming as my plus-one, but he ended up having to work, and Angie inserted herself into that role. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, who died?” Damon asked, picking up on the weird vibes.

Speaking of weird vibes, as I stood there, goosebumps rose on my arm and the tiny hairs stood at attention. I felt myself being drawn to something, or someone, who caught my eye on the back porch. It was a woman, rather, the silhouette of a woman. Before any of the rest of my senses caught up with telling my brain who I was looking at, my body knew. The hairs on the back of my head and my arm stood straight up. My chest grew so tight I couldn’t breathe. My pulse raced wildly. All I could focus on was that blue dress moving in the breeze, the way the barn floodlights made the fabric glow, giving her an angelic aura. Every step the figure took made my pulse spike.

For a second, I doubted myself. It couldn’t be. But my body remembered even if my brain didn’t. Even from a hundred yards away, in the shadow, I knew it was her. I felt it in the cold sweat that prickled the back of my neck, the way my left hand went numb, the way my heart started rabbit-punching my ribs like it was trying to escape.

I didn’t move, didn’t breathe. For years, I’d managed not to think about how she’d move, or what she’d wear, or the sound her laugh would make if it ever punctured a room I was in. Now it was all I could do to stay standing.

“Sadie’s back,” Gio said, voice pitched low.

It was a bomb detonating in the middle of a barn too pretty for reality TV. The words didn’t echo, but they didn’t have to. I felt them hit, hard, right in the soft spot I’d spent a decade and change trying to cauterize.

There was a moment where everything around me seemed to drop to half-speed. I heard Damon whistle, low and impressed. I watched Gio’s face, the awkward, apologetic twist to his mouth as he waited for my reaction. But I didn’t feel any of it. All my senses had telescoped into a single, hyperaware focus.

Then my mom spoke, “I was coming to tell you that.”

“Sadie?” I breathed. Her name came out hoarse and dumb sounding. “She’s back.”

Damon whistled, a long, low note. “Holy shit, that’s a plot twist in a blue dress.”

I looked at my mom. Her eyes were shimmering with emotion, and it was not just pride in her perfect wedding or her freshly-minted daughter-in-law and granddaughters, but something sharper, something that made me think she’d orchestrated this surprise visitor.

“When? How? Why didn’t you tell me?” I stammered, hating the uncertainty in my voice, hating that I sounded hurt instead of pissed. But they were fair questions. Everyone else seemed to know.

“She just got here. Just got into town. She was resting in your room during the wedding,” my mom explained, and for a second her words landed on me like a memory, the way she used to orchestrate playdates or run interference when my brothers and I were fighting.

“In my room?”

My mom nodded. “I was going to tell you, but then I saw you brought someone, and Sadie said she was just going to rest, so I thought I’d tell you after, but then she was feeling up to coming out and…”

Damon clapped me on the back so hard I almost dropped my beer. “This is going to be epic,” he said, like it was a season finale and I was the only one who didn’t know the script.

I tried to process it. Not just that Sadie was back, but that she’d been back long enough for the news to circulate that Gio was coming to tell me, and clearly my mom knew. She’d been in my room. She’d been in my bed. Well, my childhood room and bed.

My eyes shot back to her. On the deck, Sadie stood, her arms folded, looking like a celestial creature. Her brunette hair was long, flowing down around her shoulders. The blue dress she wore perfectly matched the color of her eyes.

What was she doing here?

Why was she back now, after all these years?

Why had she been lying down in my room?

I felt like I was high, or in some alternate universe. Everything was too sharp, too bright, like my brain had been spiked with some emotional amphetamine. My thoughts couldn’t keep pace with the raw signals coming off my body—was I sweating? Shaking? Every cell vibrated with the faint, punishing memory of a thousand heartbreaks, all colliding at once.

I wanted answers, but I wasn’t about to wait for an explanation. Not from Gio, not from my mom, not from anybody. Instinct took over. I set my beer on the dessert table so hard it sloshed over the rim as I started for the deck, tunnel vision closing out everything but the blue aura where Sadie stood.

All I could see was her, backlit and unmovable, the same way she’d hovered in my mind for months, years, after she left town. Every step toward her was like stepping off a cliff I’d already fallen from once, but my legs moved without input from my brain. I didn’t know what I was going to say when I got to her, only that I had to say something, even if it was just her name, a syllable, anything to break the spell.

That’s when Angie intercepted me. She moved into my path with the reflexes of a trained ER doctor—rapid, precise, impossible to dodge. She smiled up at me with the same confidence that had landed her in my passenger seat of this shindig. “You owe me a dance, cowboy,” she said, the words sweet and sharp, curling her arm around mine and tugging me inexorably off course.

I tried to sidestep her, but she didn’t let go. “Angie, I⁠—”

“You promised,” she said, voice bright as Christmas tinsel.

For a split second, I considered pulling free, just yanking my arm back away and bulldozing my way through the crowd towards the embodiment of my life’s greatest mistake. I could have gone straight to Sadie, made a scene, finally let the mess I’d been keeping on ice spill into the open. But I didn’t. Because despite what people sometimes thought about me, I wasn’t an asshole. Not on purpose, at least. It wasn’t in me to disappoint someone who was trying to enjoy her night. Not if I could help it.

So I let Angie lead me out onto the dance floor as my mind still zeroed in on the girl standing alone on the back porch. We merged into a slow-moving current of couples, the air thick with perfume, aftershave, and the confining tingle of too many feelings. The music was some old Otis Redding song, one of those crowd-pleasers engineered for swaying and nostalgia. I barely registered it. My head was somewhere else entirely.

As soon as we started moving—her hand in mine, her other on my shoulder—I became hyper-aware that my whole family was watching. My mom, arms crossed, and lips pinched tight with the knowledge that she’d just dropped an atomic bomb into the middle of my life. Damon, eyes wide and wild with anticipation, like he was front row at a sporting event. Even Gio, who I could tell was already regretting whatever part he’d had in this drama, hovered at the edge of the floor with his hands in his pockets and his face set to “concerned bystander.”

Beyond them, past the swirl of party guests, Sadie stood. She was unreadable, her face lit from behind so the details were lost, but the shape of her silhouette was enough to demolish every wall I’d built since the last time we spoke.

I let Angie spin herself into me, but my body moved on autopilot. Every step, every turn, every fake smile was a stall tactic, a countdown. I was already plotting how to break away, how to get to Sadie before she disappeared again. But for now, I was stuck. Because this was my brother’s wedding, and Angie was my date, and sometimes life was just a series of obligations you had to wade through to get to the thing you really wanted.

5

MY KNEES HAVE LEFT THE CHAT

Sadie

The back porch of the main house overlooking the grounds, had always been one of my favorite views in the world. Between the ocean, the hills covered in vines, and the green pastures filled with grazing animals, it had always given me a sense of peace. Tonight, however, I stepped out into it, the air strung taut with the salt of the harbor and the sweetness of wedding cake. I was a bundle of nerves. I slid my hands down my torso, feeling the awkwardness of my borrowed dress courtesy of Selma, a human misfit piece jammed by force into a puzzle where every other edge fit just right. The reception was a living thing, a current of laughter and clinking glasses, children darting underfoot, guests chatting, dancing and enjoying the open bar. I stood on the porch, frozen, hugging a sliver of shadow along the railing.

I was acutely aware of myself as an interloper; everyone here belonged to some constellation of family or community, and I was a returning ghost, still haunted by this town and all its people.

One in particular.

Dawson Lockhart.

My eyes automatically tracked to him. He was on the dance floor with a woman across the sea of farm tables and fairy-lit trellises, a hundred yards and a thousand memories away. I thought I was prepared to see him again, but apparently, I wasn’t.

The second I laid eyes on him, my knees went weak to the point that I thought they might give out beneath me. My heart stopped. Just stopped. There was a sucking sound in my chest, as if my ribs had collapsed, and suddenly the world was nothing but Dawson Lockhart. The noise of the party faded to a distant, watery roar, the clatter of plates and the buzz of wine-loosened conversation sank into the lavender-flecked dusk. Time stood still. The earth tipped, and I hung, for the first time in years, in the gravity of him.

He looked good. So good I had to swallow twice before I could remember how breathing worked. He was taller than I remembered—maybe it was the way he carried himself now, shoulders squared and head unbowed—the thick brown hair, the strong jaw darkened by a day or two of stubble. He wore a white button-down, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, exposing tanned, muscular forearms. The woman in his arms was beaming up at him, but he wore the broody expression he used to get when he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. He looked the same, if you squinted—the same hazel eyes, the same slanted dimple in his left cheek—but he was completely different, like someone had rewritten his DNA when no one was looking.

“Hello, beautiful!” The voice crashed in from my left, loud and friendly as a pair of arms scooped me up and spun me bodily off the ground before I could so much as squeak. I braced for impact, but instead landed on my feet, dizzy and windblown and face-to-face with Damon Lockhart.

At least, I was ninety-nine percent sure it was Damon. He and Dean were mirror images—same brown hair and brown eyes, same devil-may-care grin—but Damon had a way of broadcasting his arrival like a parade of trombones while Dean preferred to stay under the radar.

“Hi!” I managed, trying to keep my composure, though I was shaking like a leaf. Damon beamed, eyes crinkling at the corners.

He whistled, looking me up and down with open approval. “Wow, New York looks good on you.” Damon cradled my upper arms in both hands.

His hands were big and warm and astonishingly gentle, especially given that he was using them to shake me the way a labradoodle might shake a beloved chew toy. “I can’t believe you are here!” he said, giving my shoulders a final, affectionate squeeze before releasing them. “Still as beautiful as ever. You look exactly the same, Sadie.” His gaze was guileless, the smile that split his face as broad and open as I remembered.

A laugh escaped me. “My crow’s feet would disagree with you.”

“You mean your smile tracks? Nah, all those are just proof you are living a happy life.” He looked ready to launch into a string of compliments, but thought better of it and pulled up short. “What brings you back, anyway? Last I heard, you were living the big-city dream in New York.”

The question landed harder than I expected. I glanced at the barn, at the twinkle lights strung over the arbor, at the crush of happy, half-drunk faces I didn’t recognize. I’d known I’d have to answer that question tonight, but the words still felt foreign in my mouth. “It’s Buddy,” I said. “He’s in the hospital. Heart attack and stroke.”

Damon’s face fell, all traces of flirting vanished. “Shit, Sadie. I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks,” I said, and meant it. “I saw him earlier. He’s stable, at least for now. I just got off the phone with the ICU, and they told me he was sleeping.” I tried to make it sound like good news, not the devastation that had blindsided me and was imploding my life. “I’m going to head back there soon.”

Damon exhaled, relief sagging his shoulders. “I’m glad he’s okay. I can’t imagine him staying down too long. He’s too stubborn to let something like that take him out. That man is a legend.”

His statement was oddly comforting. Damon had always had a way of saying the right thing at the right moment, like feelings were facts, not emotional landmines.

“And you’re here crashing the wedding for old times’ sake?” He wagged his eyebrows.

“Oh, no, I um…” I found myself suddenly stumbling over my words. “I just got into town this morning and ran into your mom. She pretty much⁠—”

“Kidnapped you,” Damon finished, chuckling, although I knew he wasn’t kidding.

“Insisted on me coming back here,” I corrected. “She said that your brother was getting married. I remember her talking about him.”

“That’s right. Deacon. The prodigal son has returned.” Damon motioned over to the groom dancing with the bride.

The resemblance between the brothers was uncanny. Selma’s genes were definitely strong. “That’s amazing. I’m so happy for her that she has all her boys together.”

I sensed Damon was gearing up for another round of small-town reunion interrogation when a familiar voice sliced through the space between us—Selma Lockhart, who could out-maneuver, out-love, and outlast anyone in Valentine Bay. She materialized at my side with the uncanny speed and silent tread that only mothers and apex predators possess, her hand already on my forearm before I’d registered her approach.

“Don’t you two just look thick as thieves?” Selma chimed. “Did you let Sadie get a word in edgewise, Damon, or did you overwhelm her with charm?” The mock-stern expression she shot her son would have made even the most hardened cowboy wither, but Damon just grinned widely.

“I was just welcoming her back,” he said, and for once left it at that.

Selma turned back to me, her gaze scanning my face, and I felt the full force of her motherly radar. “How was your nap, honey?” she asked, her voice dropping into the register reserved for lost pets and wayward children. “Was the room okay? Did you have everything you needed?”

I felt my cheeks warm, not quite used to the way she could make me feel like a daughter-in-law at a family reunion I didn’t remember RSVPing to. “I, um—couldn’t really sleep,” I admitted, rubbing the side of my neck. “But I did rest, and the room was perfect. Thank you so much.”

Lying in Dawson’s childhood bed, in his childhood room, had been a little bit of a mindfuck, especially since it was as if it had been hermetically sealed and nothing had changed. The same photos, posters, books and trophies that had filled the space when Dawson was in high school were still there. It was as if I’d stepped into a time machine.

Selma nodded, as if this confirmed something she already suspected, as she took my hand in hers and patted it. “That’s all right, mija. You have a lot on your plate. Have you heard any updates on Buddy?”

“I just spoke to the hospital. They said he was sleeping.”

“Well, in that case, you should come and enjoy the party.” There was a twinkle in her eye that made the suggestion feel more like a matchmaking plot than a wedding party invite.

Damon sensed my hesitation and did what he did best, took control of the situation and put everyone at ease. “You know what this party needs?” he asked, extending an elbow like a game show host. “A waltz.”

A smile of gratitude tilted on my lips as I took his arm, and he guided us down the porch steps. We walked into the barn, all soft lantern light and golden hum, but the energy on the temporary dance floor was unmistakable. I hesitated, not because I didn’t want to dance, but because my nerves were strung up like the twinkle lights overhead and every cell in my body wanted to run and hide behind the nearest ice sculpture.

“Shall we?” Damon held out his arm.

Sensing my reservations, he claimed, “It’s a scientific fact that dancing increases endorphins.” I smiled up at him, and he winked. “If you’re not careful, you might even have fun.”

I didn’t think ‘fun’ was in the cards, but I’d settle for surviving with my dignity intact by not embarrassing myself.

I took a deep breath, and we stepped onto the edge of the dance floor, which was crammed with bodies of people I didn’t recognize. The music shifted to an upbeat, bouncy, and infectious melody, and the crowd’s mood swung with it.

Damon wasted no time. He pulled me in with a drama-king flourish, hand pressed to my lower back, the other finding my palm. I was so startled I forgot to resist, lost my footing, and laughed in a wild little hiccup as he spun me into the beat. We twirled around the floor, him taking the lead and pulling out moves I’d only seen on Dancing with the Stars. When a slow ballad came on, Damon slowed us to a sway, then dipped me just enough to make me clutch at his arm.

“Where did you learn to dance?” I asked, surprised by his hidden, or maybe not so hidden, talent.

His grin was devilish as he responded with a vague and suggestive, “I’ve had a lot of practice making women smile.”

I couldn’t help it, I laughed out loud, for real, the first time all day. The relief flooded out of me, fizzy and sweet. I let Damon twirl me again, past a group of tipsy guests line dancing in a circle, past a table of older partygoers who watched with benevolent inebriation.

That’s when I saw Dawson.

He was still dancing with the woman in the orange dress. She was beautiful, the kind of beautiful that didn’t try—black hair pulled back in an effortless ponytail, high cheekbones, a form-fitting off-the-shoulder dress that molded to her hourglass figure and left her olive-skinned shoulders bare. She was saying something to him, something that made him smile, just a little, just enough to reveal the dimple in his right cheek.

For a second, I thought I might puke right there on the temporary parquet.

Damon must have noticed the change in my rhythm because he slowed, following my gaze.

“She’s gorgeous,” I admitted. The words came out strangled. Was that his girlfriend? Just because he wasn’t getting married today didn’t mean he wasn’t in a serious relationship.

“Mmm,” Damon made a non-committal sound as he shrugged. “She’s not you.”

It was a sweet compliment, and I took it as such. I appreciated him trying to make me feel better that his brother was with a woman who could easily be a Victoria’s Secret or Sports Illustrated model.

He spun me again, faster this time, and I was happier for it because it was in the opposite direction of Dawson.

The song faded on a high, sweet note, and I stepped out of Damon’s arms and thanked him for the dance, I even meant it. He gave a mini-bow and relinquished me to the crowd with a generous, “Anytime, beautiful. My dance card is always blank for you.”

I stepped off the parquet floor and rushed out of the barn, desperate for a breath of air that wasn’t saturated in body heat and nostalgia. I didn’t make it ten feet before I was stopped in my tracks. A man stood in my path. Not just any man. Dawson.

He was close. Maybe a foot away. The breadth of his shoulders and the way he stilled the air around him enveloped me. I could have reached out and touched the fabric of his shirt, or the tender skin at his throat, or the square cut of his jaw where a day’s worth of stubble caught the glint of lantern light. For a wild second I was seventeen again, he was mine, and I was his, and no time had passed at all. My heart was hammering so hard that I worried it might shake something loose in my chest.

All my senses lit up at once and assaulted me from every angle. His scent wrapped around me, warm, masculine, and dangerously addictive. The intoxicatingly sensual aroma was clean, earthy, and distinctly male, drawing me closer to him. Up close, the lines at the corners of his eyes framed them in a way that only made them look older, wiser, and somehow sexier. The flecks of gold swimming in his whiskey irises caught me off guard. I’d forgotten how they’d shift from hazel to honey as the light changed. I absorbed the information in less than a second, and still my brain managed to catalog the tiniest of details, the freckle on his left cheekbone, just above the faintest scar, the same spot I used to press my lips to when I needed to remember he was real.

“Hey,” he said.

Just that. Hey.

The word hit me like a sucker punch. His voice—lower than I remembered, rougher at the edges—rolled over me in a wave. I was so lost in him I barely registered how lightheaded and woozy I felt. If he’d touched me, even accidentally, I’m not sure I’d have made it. My knees were already telegraphing distress signals and my heart was performing escape artistry against my ribs. The only thing that kept me vertical was the determination not to let him see how much this reunion was affecting me. I had too much pride for that.

He stood staring at me, hands at his sides. He did not reach out for a hug or handshake. That was mercy, or maybe it was strategy. I watched the muscles in his jaw work as he searched for something to say, but it was clearly an effort. I wondered if he felt it too, the gravity, the magnetic draw to one another.

“You look…” he inhaled a shaky breath as his eyes scanned my face as if he couldn’t quite believe I was there, in the flesh, standing in front of him. “Good,” he finally finished. “You look really good.”

“Thanks.” I grinned, swallowing hard as butterflies threw a rave in my stomach. “You too.”

His gaze flicked up, lingered for a second, then dropped away. All the familiar rhythms between us—joke, tease, deflect—had evaporated. Only the raw, unsaid things remained.

He cleared his throat. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, um…” I was caught off guard by his question, causing me to stumble over my words. “Um, your, um, mom invited me. I ran into her downtown, and she sort of insisted I come back and⁠—”

“I mean in town,” he clarified.

The words echoed Damon’s question earlier, but this felt like more stakes were involved. Dawson’s stare was a searchlight, cutting through all pretenses. I found myself staring at his hands, remembering how they’d always found mine in the dark, how they’d steadied me when nothing else could. Now they were fists at his sides, knuckles blanched white.

“It’s Buddy,” I replied, once I trusted my voice not to crack. “He had a heart attack. And a stroke. I was in L.A. at a conference, and I got on the first flight.”

I wasn’t sure why I was telling him my entire life story. It’s not like he’d asked for it.

There was a pause, the kind that swelled until everything else in the room went quiet. Dawson’s tough-guy façade crumpled at the edges, his eyes filling with concern. He’d always had a very special relationship with my grandfather, perhaps even a stronger bond than I had with Buddy.

“Is he okay? I mean, is he going to be okay?” he asked, concern dripping from every word.

“I think so…I hope so. He’s in the ICU now. I saw him as soon as I got into town. I left so he could rest. I just spoke to the hospital, and they said he’s sleeping comfortably.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and the words sounded like he meant them. Like he’d been waiting a decade to say it.

I nodded, feeling suddenly exposed and unsure of what to do with my hands. “Thanks.”

The silence that followed was somehow worse than any argument we’d ever had. He looked at me, really looked, like he was taking inventory of all the years that had passed and trying to figure out where they’d gone. I couldn’t stand it.

Before I could form a coherent excuse, I noticed the woman from the dance floor—the beautiful one, the one with the effortless hair and blinding smile—floating toward us. Her walk was deliberate, all grace and confidence, and she was looking right at Dawson. For some reason, the sight of her made my stomach twist. Maybe it was jealousy, maybe it was relief, maybe something worse, but I knew I couldn’t bear to be introduced to her. I’d kept it together long enough, any longer and my mask would slip.

“I should go,” I blurted. “I need to check on Buddy. Nice to see you again.”

He opened his mouth—maybe to protest, maybe to ask more questions—but the woman was already at his side, hand on his arm.

“Dawson.” She said his name with practiced intimacy, and he straightened a fraction, turning toward her. He looked back at me, tried to say something with his eyes. I ignored it.

“Take care,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt. I turned on my heel and walked away, careful not to break into a run.

I made it all the way to the front of the house before the adrenaline ebbed and my hands started to shake in earnest. The evening air felt different out here—drier, sharper—and I gulped it down like water after a marathon. I didn’t look back. I told myself that if I just kept moving and didn’t think, eventually the ache in my chest would dissolve into something smaller, more manageable, like a papercut you stopped noticing.

I pulled out my phone from the pocket of my dress, thumbed it awake, and opened the ride-share app. My vision blurred slightly as I jabbed at the screen, only for a familiar voice to snap me out of it.

“You making a break for it?”

I turned to find Gio Russo walking towards me, eyes crinkled in concern rather than mischief.

“I’m heading to the hospital. I need to check on Buddy.” It was technically true, but mostly I wanted to put as much distance between myself and Dawson Lockhart as possible. My hands trembled, not from the night air, but from the aftershocks of the encounter. I hoped he didn’t notice.

He stepped closer, just enough to lower his voice. “You want a ride? I can take you.”

I hesitated, shifting from foot to foot. “Are you sure? I don’t want to make you miss the⁠—”

He cut me off with a gentle wave of his hand. “I wasn’t even technically invited. I went full Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn.”

My brows lowered as I tried to figure out what he meant.

“Wedding Crashers,” he offered, explaining the reference to the actors who starred in the movie.

“Oh right.” I smiled, and he extended his arm towards what I assumed was his vehicle.

“Shall we?”

“Yeah, thanks, if you’re sure.”

He opened the passenger door of his SUV dramatically and bowed, like a chauffeur in a black-and-white movie. That made me laugh—a short, sharp sound that shook off some of the tension coiled in my chest. I slid into his Audi. It still smelled new, leather and ozone and some faint citrus from an air freshener he’d probably bought on a whim. Gio got in, started the engine, and pulled away from the ranch. We drove away from the farm, the fairy lights, and the distant, pulsing hum of wedding music, which faded in the rearview until it was just another echo in the dark.

Neither of us spoke for the first mile. I watched the beams of the headlights paint the road in yellow stripes, watched them dip and bounce as we hit the gravel. I was waiting for my brain to catch up with my body. It felt like my heart was running on one set of instructions—get out, get away—while my mind lagged a few steps behind, still replaying the last ten minutes on a loop.

I glanced at Gio. He was alert, but relaxed, one hand on the wheel, the other tapping a casual rhythm on the console as if he were perfectly at home in this situation. Maybe he was. Small towns had a way of making you believe everything was under control, even after a decade of chaos.

He cleared his throat and finally broke the silence. “You want to talk about it, or should I put on some music?”

I considered pretending nothing happened, but that was pointless. Gio, of all people, would see right through it. “I’m fine,” I said, which was a lie, but not a dangerous one. “It was just weird, seeing him again.”

He nodded like he understood the full weight of that sentence. Maybe he did. It wasn’t just the seeing. It was the way Dawson’s presence had consumed me, the way his voice had made the years fall away, the way my body had instantly remembered what it was like to be his. I’d told myself I was over him, that I’d moved on, that high school heartbreak didn’t count in the real world. But my lungs were still filled with the smoke and memory of him, and I didn’t know if I would ever truly clear the air.

But at least I hadn’t fallen to pieces. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I nailed the reunion, but I hadn’t been reduced to a blubbering mess of unresolved feelings. At this point, I was counting that a win.

I stared out the window and tried to make sense of the landscape, tried to anchor myself to the present. The fields were silvered by moonlight, the houses spaced wide apart, the ocean a black promise just beyond the hills. Nothing here was the same as I remembered, and yet it all felt inevitable, as if my return to this place had been written in some small-town DNA code that refused to let go.

6

ONE EX, OVER EASY

Dawson

Sadie Shepard was back, and she’d only gotten more beautiful.

I hadn’t slept a single minute last night, and honestly, who could blame me? Some news deserved to keep a man awake: a barn fire, a hard frost in May, a bear in the chicken coop. Sadie Shepard walking back into my life after twelve years? That wasn’t just news. That was the universe’s mic drop.

It was difficult enough to try and wrap my head around her return, but then there was the reason she was here. Buddy Shepard—the man who’d once dragged himself to a calving cow with a shattered collarbone and then showed up to the Annual Police and Fireman’s Fundraiser pancake breakfast the next morning, arm in a sling, acting as if nothing happened—was lying in the ICU hooked up to machines that beeped and breathed for him. The man who cut firewood for every widow in the ZIP code each winter without fail. The man who built wheelchair ramps for veterans on weekends. Who always, always paid his bar tab in cash.

Men like Buddy Shepard weren’t fragile, they were cut from a different cloth. He reminded me of a combination of the Dos Equis and Marlboro Man. Tough. Indomitable. Indestructible. They didn’t make men like him anymore.

I knew the kind of cloth Buddy was cut from because I’d grown up idolizing it. My dad travelled a lot for business when I was growing up, and Buddy had been like a surrogate father to me for two decades, teaching me everything there was to know about horses, respect, and the proper way to shake a man’s hand. He’d shown me how to change the oil in a ‘69 Chevelle, how to throw a perfect spiral, how to tie a fishing knot and cast a line without tangling it, and how to stand up to a bully without ever raising my voice.

He taught by example. He was tough, solid, and impossible to knock off his axis. Once, when I broke my wrist riding broncs, Buddy told me not to let anyone see me cry. He didn’t say it to be cruel, it was a lesson in composure, in dignity, in holding a little bit of yourself back from the world. I took the lesson to heart, maybe too much.

And now he was lying in the ICU, after a heart attack and stroke, most likely wired to more machines than the NASA control room.

I loved that man. Hell, everyone did. But when he lost his daughter, Sadie’s mom, he shrunk a little. He wasn’t the same after Rosie died. He was a shadow of a man. And from what people said, even that version was a shell of himself. He never recovered fully from losing his wife to cancer. I didn’t remember Mrs. Shepard because I was only two when she passed away. But my parents talked about what a lovely woman she was and how Buddy lit up every time she walked in a room, or even if her name was mentioned.

Sadie was all he had left, and I ruined that for him too. I should’ve been the one to keep her close. Instead, I did the one thing she couldn’t forgive. The one thing no one could forgive. My own mother couldn’t look me in the eye for weeks after Sadie left.

Graduation night, I went with my classmates to celebrate at Bluewater Inn, which was a senior rite of passage. We had four rooms booked and everyone was staying the night, except Sadie. Buddy was very strict and even on graduation she had a curfew of midnight. I almost went home with her, but it was grad night, and I justified staying to let off steam. The truth was, I knew if I went home, I’d be expected to get up early for chores, that’s what ranch life was, and I didn’t want to do that hungover. So I stayed.

All I remember is drinking beers with Donovan Valentine, Gio and a few other guys from the football team in one of the rooms, and the next memory I have is waking up in bed with Vicki Blair in nothing but my boxer-briefs. I scrambled out of that bed, horrified, but it was too late. Sadie had come by with coffee and donuts, and she saw us through the window. I was so hungover, my head was killing me as I clumsily tried to get dressed and go after her.

I did manage to catch up with her at Buddy’s, but her mind was already made up, she was leaving. She’d already packed her bags and had a flight leaving SeaTac that night. She wouldn’t tell me where she was going or how long she’d be gone. She just handed her promise ring back to me and told me goodbye.

The finality in her farewell still broke my heart to this day. There was no screaming, no arguing, no fighting, just tears silently sliding down her face as she handed me the promise ring I’d bought her for her sixteenth birthday. I begged her to say something, anything, to yell at me, call me names, because I deserved it, but she wouldn’t do any of that. I could see the heartbreak in her eyes, feel the betrayal radiating off of her and it didn’t just break my heart, it annihilated it. She simply told me that there was nothing left to say, kissed me on my cheek, and climbed into Herbie, with Buddy in the driver’s seat, and drove away.

That was the last time I saw or spoke to her before yesterday.

It’s not like I’d just let Sadie slip away. I’d tried, fuck, I’d tried to make it right. In the months after she left, I bombarded every possible avenue in attempts to contact her, text, phone, DMs, email, every social media account, desperate for a single word from her. But she went dark. It was like she’d been vaporized from the earth. She blocked me on every platform, so I got creative and went old school. I wrote her actual letters. I gave them to Buddy, and he assured me that he’d make sure she got them, but she never responded. Not once.

I understood. She deserved so much better than I’d given her. After what happened, how could I expect her to even read my name without her stomach turning? I tried to put myself in her shoes. I’d imagine her as the one who’d done what I’d done.

Would I have forgiven her?

The answer was always immediate and the same…of course, I would have. All it would have taken was seeing her or hearing her voice, just knowing she was sorry and that she still loved me. I could never throw away what we had on a stupid mistake. But I wasn’t Sadie. She had every right to set her boundaries, and she had. I had no one to blame for losing her and the future we’d planned but myself.

The first few weeks after she left, I tried to stay busy. I went on a trip to Vegas with my friends and tried to drink my heartache away. Then when we got back to town, I threw myself into work on the ranch. But even when I was covered in mud and sweat, cleaning stalls or doing repairs, my mind would worm its way right back to Sadie.

I’d see her everywhere: in the way a horse flicked its ears, in the sunrise over the eastern hills, in the wildflowers she used to stick behind her ear every May. Night was always the worst. At night I’d lie on my back, staring up at the ceiling, and try to remember the exact pitch of her laugh, or how her hair smelled after a day on the water. I’d count the hours since she’d left and try to convince myself I was getting over her, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw her walking away from me, head held high, shoulders set like steel. I’d imagine her in some city a thousand miles away, drinking artisanal coffee or reading on a subway, and wonder if she ever thought of me at all.

Then days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, months turned into years and at some point I looked back and realized that the pain wasn’t any better, but at least it was behind me. But now she was back. And the pain was still there, like it just happened yesterday.

No matter how hard I’d tried to rest, my mind wouldn’t shut off, which is why I hadn’t been able to sleep at all. Even with the windows open, the air inside my bedroom had felt suffocating. I’d tossed and turned in my own sleepless sweat. By 4:00 a.m. I’d given up and just gone into the ranch for the day. I told myself that the animals always needed feeding, and moving, and medicating, and unlike people, they didn’t expect explanations for silence.

The forty-degree dawn burned off the last of my mental fog. I’d parked my truck behind the main barn and started in on the horses, letting the repetition of the chores drown out the mess in my head. It worked right up until my walkie buzzed with a call from the main house. Mom’s voice came through loud and clear, “Dawson, sweetie, I need your help in the kitchen.”

It wasn’t uncommon for me to get called up to the house. All three of my brothers worked at the ranch, but as the oldest Lockhart, I was still the first on the list for anything my mom needed. I let Fernando, the barn manager, know where I was at with the stalls and headed up the gravel path toward the main house, past the admin offices and maintenance building.

I took the back porch steps two at a time. As I approached the sunroom, I could hear voices and laughter. One laugh in particular stopped me in my tracks. It had been so long since I heard it that it struck me square in the gut. I was sucker punched with a bowling ball. The sound danced through me like wind chimes in a warm breeze, light and musical, curling around my ribs and settling near my heart. It was sunshine in sound form. I stood, paralyzed, and waited for the world to stop tilting.

Despite being off-kilter, I was drawn inside by the siren’s call. I opened the door, and there she was. Sadie Rose Shepard. The sight of her at our family kitchen table nearly knocked me over, even though I’d spent the night prepping myself for exactly this moment. It was a sight I’d seen a thousand times over the years we were together. She looked identical and yet a dozen years older and a thousand miles more complicated. Same thick dark hair falling around her face, same hands wrapping tight around a coffee mug, but there was a watchful set to her jaw now, a glimmer of armor I hadn’t seen before.

Had Sadie stayed at the ranch the night before? She must have. When she left the reception to go to the hospital, I thought that meant she was gone. It didn’t occur to me she might be staying here.

The dogs noticed me first and rushed up to greet me. My mom had five domestic animals: a cat named Banjo, who was a terror, two German Shepherds named Ranger and Rex, and two golden Labs named Lady and Duchess. All four dogs abandoned their posts begging for food and rushed towards me for scritches. I bent down and gave them each good scratches behind their ears.

“Good morning, honey,” Mom chirped cheerily, and then, to Sadie, “I don’t know why he’s their favorite. I walk them, feed them, play with them… it has to be an alpha thing.”

Animals and babies had always gravitated towards me, from the time I was a kid. I couldn’t explain it. Some people said it was a pheromone thing, others, like Mom, claimed it was my alpha-energy. I think they just sensed I wasn’t a dick.

I straightened to a standing position. “Right, and you’re not alpha?” I teased.

Mom grinned, and her eyes narrowed. “Okay, then I think you have hidden chicken in your pockets.”

I walked over, leaned down, and kissed my mom on the top of her head. “Whatever you need to believe to make you feel better.”

My mom swatted me playfully on the arm, and Sadie’s eyes flicked up to mine. They were still that ridiculous shade of sea-glass blue. As soon as our gazes locked, I felt something in the center of my chest crumble, perhaps the walls of protection I’d attempted to build. It had been over a decade since we were together, but it was like I’d never built up any callus.

“Morning.” She smiled.

“Morning,” I managed to speak over my heart, which had lodged itself somewhere above my collarbone.

I was doing my level best not to stare, or drool, but Sadie just sat there at the table, framed perfectly by the window, the soft golden light of morning slanting across her hair in a way that made her look both breathtakingly familiar and impossibly out of reach. It was like déjà vu, times a thousand, and yet—something was off. Her shoulders were hunched, her gaze fixed on the swirling cream in her coffee, and even her breath seemed held, waiting for the next blow.

Mom bustled between us, pouring water into a kettle, flipping omelets, the very picture of orchestrated hospitality. But her eyes kept darting—not just at me, but between us, as if she could bridge the entire chasm of history with enough French toast and maple sausage. She started talking, fast, her hands moving even faster. “I was going to run Sadie to the hospital,” she began, “but I forgot I promised the Miller’s I’d drop off dog food at their place before ten because Betty is still recovering from her hip surgery and they have all those rescues⁠—”

“I can call an Uber,” Sadie cut in, her voice crisp and businesslike. She stood, chair scraping across the tile, and reached for her bag. Today, instead of a blue summer dress she wore a white V-neck T-shirt and blue jeans. She looked just as, if not more beautiful in her casual clothes. Her stance was defensive, like she expected me to lunge or argue, but all I could do was watch the way the sunlight caught the gold flecks in her hair.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mom snapped, her voice sharp in that way that only mothers of four boys can manage. “You think I’m going to let you get into some stranger’s car when there’s a perfectly good Lockhart here to drive you?” She shot me a look, all but daring me to refuse. “Dawson can take you.”

I stood there, mouth slightly open, and tried to make my brain work. I wanted to say something—anything—but every possible word felt like a landmine. I couldn’t say, “I missed you,” or “Please don’t leave again,” or even just, “Good morning.” Instead, I nodded, and the motion felt like it belonged to someone else.

“Oh, and I’ll have your bags moved into cabin ten once the Hope Falls guests have checked out this afternoon.”

“You don’t have to⁠—”

My mom lifted her hand like she was one of The Supremes telling Sadie to stop in the name of love. “This is not up for discussion, mija.”

I could see a battle happening behind Sadie’s gorgeous baby blues. Ultimately, she did the right thing. She may have been MIA for a dozen years, but she remembered arguing with Selma Montez-Lockhart was an exercise in futility.

Instead, she said a simple, “Thank you,” shouldered her bag, and headed toward the door. I watched her slip past the kitchen island, the distance between us growing with each step. Her movements were so quick, they practically left afterimages.

Mom was having none of it. She blocked the exit with a skillet in one hand and a dish towel in the other, like a linebacker dressed for brunch. “Dawson will take you.”

I found myself obeying before I could think to resist. I caught up with Sadie at the mudroom, where she was shoving her arms into a faded green jacket. She still didn’t look at me. Her jaw was set, and there was a tightness in her posture I didn’t recognize, like she’d been training for years to avoid me with the least possible effort.

“Can I give you a ride?” I asked, finally finding my voice, but it sounded rusty and unused. I was smart enough to know that just because she acquiesced in front of my mom, did not mean she would comply away from her.

She looked up then, and for a split second, the armor fell away. There was curiosity behind her eyes, but also something much harder, something like fear, or maybe anger, or maybe just exhaustion. Then it was gone, and she was back to Sadie Version 2.0, the older, more guarded version.

“It’s fine,” she said. “You don’t have to play chauffeur. Really.”

“I want to,” I admitted, and immediately hated how desperate it sounded. But it was true. I wanted to be near her, to make up for every single thing I’d broken, even if it was just for the drive.

7

HANDS AT TEN AND TWO, EYES TO YOURSELF

Sadie

Some muscle memories never die, no matter how deep you bury them.

The moment Dawson fell into step beside me on the way to his truck, my traitorous brain served up the highlight reel, his hands at my waist, that ridiculous grin, the way he used to swing me around like I weighed nothing and make me laugh so hard I’d snort. I actually used to snort. God help me.

He opened the passenger door for me, and I stepped up. The second I put on my seatbelt, nerves began popping like kernels of corn in hot grease. I was going to be alone with Dawson, really, truly alone with him for the first time in twelve years. We went from spending every day together, basically from sunrise to hours after sunset, not leaving each other’s side, to cold turkey. No contact. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. It was jarring to say the least, mildly traumatic to say the worst.

The truck dipped to the left when he climbed into the driver’s side and shut the door.

“I was actually wondering⁠—”

“If we could go to Buddy’s place before the hospital,” Dawson finished, glancing at me sidelong, a practiced efficiency in the way he checked the mirrors and pulled out.

I stared at him, momentarily stunned that he still had the ability to do that, to read my mind. “Yes, please.”

The grin that spread on his face—rare, unguarded—made my chest feel like it was being rung like a bell. I took the opportunity of him staring straight, concentrating on the road, to study him. He was broader than he’d been twelve years earlier, his jaw square and unshaven, the tendons in his forearm standing out as he turned the wheel. In high school he had been uniformly gorgeous, but now he was sexier, older, built for heavier burdens. For a fleeting second, I hated him for it.

“I need to grab a few things for him,” I tried to clear my mind of all things Dawson. “His books, mainly. He’s convinced he needs to work while he’s in there.”

He moved his arm to the back of the bench, and his knuckles grazed my shoulder. I felt it—a jolt, involuntary, a muscle memory of teenage desire that I had spent the last decade waiting to happen with someone else, but it never did.

I turned to look out the passenger window, pressing my lips together, hyper-aware of the truck’s interior closing around me—old leather, earth, soap, and the faintest trace of his cologne, the same as always, all of it arranged with the same precise, maddening Lockhart efficiency. New truck. Same Dawson. Same everything.

Which meant I was in serious trouble, because the last time I’d sat in this exact passenger seat, I’d been stupid enough to think I was exactly where I was supposed to be and I’d be there forever.

And I feared, some part of me still held those beliefs to be true.

We drove in silence on backroads we’d driven hundreds of times before along the edge of Valentine Bay, the morning shrouded in a shifting mist that made the town look like a faded photograph. Memories came flooding back of times we’d shared downtown on the pier, at the drive-in theater where we snuck in after closing and nearly got mauled by a raccoon, on the beach watching shooting stars.

We passed the row of waterfront rentals where the twelve-year-old versions of ourselves once TP’d and almost got arrested. A little further on, the road curved past the marina where we built a bonfire out of driftwood and Dawson gave me my promise ring on my sixteenth birthday. Every landmark felt like a wound, and the truck’s tires rolled right over them, one after another.

I tried not to watch his hands too closely on the wheel, but each turnoff or swerve onto a gravel road lit up some dormant circuit in me. I’d always loved his hands. They were so large, so strong, so manly, even as a preteen. Those hands were now man-hands, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how good they would feel on my body.

In an attempt to bring myself back to the present, I stared out the window. I watched as we drove past the boardwalk and was forced to march through a landfill of memories. I was bracing for it, but that only seemed to amplify the effect.

My phone vibrated. I glanced down and saw it was Peter. There was no way I was going to speak to him right now. I silenced it.

“You can take that if you need to,” Dawson mentioned offhandedly, but I could hear the tension in his voice.

“No, it’s fine.” I put the phone away.

“What’s it like—” I started to ask

“How is it being—” he spoke at the same time.

We looked over at each other and started laughing. It was something that we always used to do. We would be quiet for so long, and then both start talking at the exact same second. It was the strangest phenomenon I’d never experienced with anyone else.

He grinned. “Go ahead.”

“I was just going to ask what it’s like having Deacon in your life, not just as an abstract concept.”

Dawson had always taken so much pride in being the oldest brother, and even though he still was technically the oldest Lockhart, I wondered if it bothered him at all.

“It’s good, I guess. I’m just really happy for my mom.”

I nodded. I’d figured that would be his take. When I’d known him, he always put other people’s feelings before his own.

“Do you get to see him much?” I asked.

He nodded. “He’s been coming up pretty regularly with his family. They’re actually going to be spending some time over the summer because Deacon’s business headquarters is in Seattle, and Blake is going to intern.”

I nodded, wishing I had more to say. I couldn’t think of anything. My mind was blank. Well, not blank. I did have thoughts, and unfortunately, apparently, no filter.

“I thought you would have had kids by now.” I wasn’t sure why I said it. Maybe I shouldn’t have, maybe it wasn’t my place to.

His jaw tensed as his fingers tightened on the steering wheel. I saw the whites of his knuckles. I instantly regretted making the comment and wished I could take it back.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said⁠—”

“No, that’s okay, yeah, life hasn’t really turned out…how I thought.”

“Right.” Part of me wanted to ask why. Why hadn’t it turned out how he thought? All he talked about when we were together was having a family. At the time, truth be told, it freaked me out a little because I was never sure I even wanted one and even at thirteen, fourteen years old he knew he wanted to be a dad.

He was so sure of everything. He was so sure about us. About us getting married. About us working on his family’s farm together. About us starting our own family and having three kids, our first by our mid-twenties. About the house we would live in. The house was the only thing I’d been one hundred percent on board about. It was the one piece of the life puzzle that I’d bought into wholeheartedly, with zero reservations.

From the time I could remember, driving around Cupid’s Cove, I’d always loved the white farmhouse with the black trim and wraparound porch. I nicknamed it Seashell Cottage because I always found the best seashells on the beach that was essentially its backyard. The house was my contribution to our dream life, the rest all mapped out by Dawson before we could even legally drive. So the fact that we were thirty and Dawson was not only single, he was childless, shocked me.

Dawson’s phone was open on the dash, and notifications rattled through, but he ignored them: a missed call from Gio, a text from Angie, a calendar alert about an upcoming farm expo. He seemed determined to be present, or at least to perform the gesture of presence for my benefit. I found myself wanting to ask him—really ask—how he was, if he ever thought about that night, if he did think about it, what he thought.

“Do you ever miss it?”

I glanced over at him. My heart pounded wildly. Was he asking if I missed him, missed us?

“Valentine Bay?” he clarified.

“Oh, um, yeah…” I swallowed and looked out the window at the pines going by. “But sometimes it’s like missing a place that never existed. Or like missing yourself when you were a different person.”

My phone vibrated again with a call. It was Peter. Again. I sent him to voicemail.

“You sure you don’t need to get that?” Dawson questioned.

“I’m sure.” Peter was one more call away from being blocked. I appreciated the fact that he wanted to have a conversation with me, but blowing up my phone to make it happen was not the mature way to go about it. I’d messaged him the night before that I was going to be out of town for a while and that although I’d enjoyed our time together, I didn’t see us going anywhere so I thought it would be best if we ended our romantic relationship. He called within seconds of me pressing send. He tried to talk me out of my decision, claiming he’d just been too busy to put in the time our “relationship” deserved. I explained to him it had nothing to do with time investment he’d put into our relationship. I gave him the classic, “It’s not you it’s me,” but in this case it was very true.

Since last night, he’d called and/or texted a half dozen times.

I pressed my forehead to the cold glass, wanting to feel something to focus my attention on. The ocean was a slate gray, whipped into peaks by the wind. It was beautiful and completely indifferent to us.

We pulled off onto the old North Bluff Road, and as we crested the rise, I saw Buddy’s house for the first time since I left twelve years ago. In memory, it was a storybook place: the two bedroom, two bath classic farmhouse with a wraparound porch, blue trim, and a riot of potted geraniums. The reality was jarring.

The place looked shockingly bad. I mean, I’d always known the house was a little worse for wear—a two-story built in the thirties, with peeling paint and a porch that sagged like a hammock—but seeing it now, through an adult’s eyes, it appeared practically condemned. The front steps were caving in, one window was covered with what looked like a trash bag, the yard hadn’t been mowed since, what, last summer?

The truck hit the gravel of Buddy’s driveway, causing both of us to lean forward instinctively. The phone vibrated in my hand a second time, the name Janine pulsing insistently on the screen. For a split second, I considered shoving the phone into the glove compartment and pretending it hadn’t happened, but my thumb betrayed me, pressing Accept with a reflex born of years of professional Pavlovian response.

“Hey, Janine,” I said, pitching my voice into what I hoped was a cordial, in-control tone not a stressed-out, panicked tone.

“Hi! Hi. How are you?” she demanded, with all the subtlety of an air raid siren.

“Great. Fine,” I replied, the lie tripping off my tongue with ease.

“Sadie, I know you’re dealing with family stuff, but I really need you here. I’ve had Raul, Mallory, and Star asking for approvals, clients are getting restless, and Finch is sniffing around like a shark in chummed water⁠—”

I cut her off. “Janine, I’ll be back when I can. Until then, please postpone everything. As far as the team just have them email me.”

Raul, Mallory and Star were all Jr. Associates on my team. I knew they were capable, they were just terrified of Arthur Collins, the owner of the firm. That fear tended to affect their creativity. When I was there, they didn’t have to worry about any backlash because I took the hits if Arthur wasn’t pleased with any work.

Janine inhaled sharply. “When you say postpone, do you mean, like… a day? A couple days? Or are we blowing up the schedule for the rest of the week?”

“Assume the worst,” I said, and instantly regretted the phrase. “Sorry. I mean, clear my calendar for the week.”

The sigh she emitted could have powered a wind turbine. “Sadie, you know how the clients are. They need their hands held, personal attention, they want to feel like you work for them twenty-four-seven and they are you’re only client.”

It was ridiculous because it was true. I almost laughed. Instead, I picked a piece of lint off my sleeve and tried to keep my voice steady. “Just tell them I’m on bereavement.”

No one could be upset if I were on bereavement.

There was a beat of silence. “Is it actually bereavement?”

“No, Buddy’s alive. He’s in the hospital, but… I’m just not available.”

The silence expanded, thick and uncomfortable. For all Janine’s neuroses and shark-like energy, she was loyal, and she had stuck her neck out for me more than once. I could picture her at her desk, glasses perched on her nose, hair pulled into a high, angry bun, fretting the cuticle of her thumb as she tried to calculate how much trouble I was creating for her.

“What? What is it?”

“Finch is sniffing around the Fairfield account.”

“Of course he is.” It was a huge client. I’d worked my ass off to sign them, but they did require a ton of handholding. If they decided to jump ship to him because I was off for a week, then so be it. I wasn’t going to sit here and stress over my accounts being poached. I had enough on my plate.

Janine lowered her voice. “I heard he’s taking Sterling out for drinks.”

Terrance Sterling was the head of marketing for Fairfield Global.

“If they would be more comfortable with him, then he should be their agent.”

The disapproval of my attitude was blaringly evident in Janine’s silence. I was just about to say that I’d talk to her later when she asked, “Hey, has Peter called you? He stopped by the office earlier today.”

I gritted my teeth, feeling every one of them buzz like an electric fence as my entire body tensed. “He did?”

“Yeah, he was trying to charm me into telling him where you were.”

Dawson glanced over at me, reading my face with the same uncanny skill he’d always had, even when we were kids and I thought I had a poker face, he could tell if I was upset. I ignored his stare, pretending nothing was wrong.

“Thanks for the heads-up.” I tried to nip the conversation in the bud.

“Do you want me to run interference? I can tell him in no uncertain terms to back off.”

Janine was a pit bull, she was a true ride-or-die, she was the sort of assistant that went to bat for you even when you told her it wasn’t her game to play and she should just sit in the stands drinking a beer and eating a hot dog.

But I didn’t need her to fight this battle for me. “No, let’s not escalate it. I’ll handle it.”

Janine made an “mmm” noise that implied she did not have faith in my ability to “handle it,” but she would let it go for now. “Okay. Call if you change your mind about Finch or Peter. I’ll burn this place to the ground if it comes to that.”

I couldn’t help but grin at her blind and unwavering loyalty and enthusiasm. “I don’t think it will, but thanks, Janine. Bye.”

The call disconnected as Dawson pulled to a stop, the tires eating up the gravel.

I glanced around and realized that besides the farmhouse, the structures on Buddy’s property were a collection of random outbuildings, fences, and ancient, weathered decks stitched together by the kind of improvisational carpentry that only octogenarian men or possum colonies could fully appreciate. The front yard was a tangle of blackberry brambles and dandelions in full Jurassic bloom, and the porch roof listing so heavily to one side it looked ready to give up and topple into the dirt. As we got out, I saw that the blue trim I’d always loved had faded to the color of a bruise.

Both of us paused before heading to the porch. I caught Dawson staring at the house in disbelief, and for a moment, I saw him as a stranger, a big, broad-shouldered man with nothing in common with the boy I’d loved, except for a certain stubborn set to his jaw. Then he turned, and the boy was there again, looking at me with a silent apology.

“Has it… How long has it been this bad?” I asked. My voice came out small, almost childlike.

He shook his head. “Last time I was out here, it was messy, but it wasn’t…” He trailed off, gesturing helplessly at the mess.

We mounted the steps, which flexed and creaked ominously under our combined weight. I remembered the key was always under a pot shaped like a frog, and sure enough, it was still there, camouflaged by a decade’s worth of moss. I turned it in the lock, and the door swung open on a gasp of stale air that made my nose wrinkle.

Inside, the place was a time capsule. On every surface, stacks of old newspapers and half-completed crossword books waged a silent war for territory. The kitchen I remembered as bright and clean was now a disaster zone: empty beer cans, crusted plates, and a sink so full of something black and tarry that I was instantly guilt-ridden for living across the country and not being close enough to provide Buddy with home-cooked meals.

The living room wasn’t any better. The bookshelves, once obsessively organized, had collapsed in on themselves, volumes spilling onto the floor in a paper avalanche. A blanket, stained and threadbare, lay crumpled on the sagging couch, and on the wall, a portrait of my grandmother and mom stared down with an expression of withering disappointment.

Dawson stepped carefully over a stack of National Geographics and opened the fridge, immediately recoiling. “There’s… nothing in here,” he said. “Nothing edible, anyway.” He prodded a carton of milk, which sloshed like a water balloon. “I should have checked on him more.”

“I need to find his books,” I reminded myself, trying not to get overwhelmed by the state of disarray Buddy had been living in. My heart broke and tears sprang to my eyes.

Dawson drifted through the house, opening doors, his footsteps heavy. “I had no idea it was this bad… I knew he was alone out here, but I figured he liked it that way. He always said he didn’t need anyone around.”

Thankfully, despite the mess, his ledgers were exactly where they’d always been in his rolltop desk. I grabbed them and went looking for a bag I could shove them in. I found a tote hanging in the broom closet.

Once I’d secured what I’d come there for, we stood in the kitchen, surrounded by the evidence of Buddy’s neglect, and I felt an ache so sharp it bordered on physical pain. I’d spent years blaming the old man for every slight, every childhood humiliation, every time he chose a drink or a crossword over me, but now, looking at the state of his life, I realized I had left him here to rot. I’d walked away, and whatever small tether existed between us had frayed and snapped.

Dawson opened a kitchen cabinet, rooting for something he didn’t find, then closed it with a little more force than necessary. “I should have made time to come out here and check on him,” he reiterated, his hazel eyes dark and deeply sad.

“No, don’t do that. This isn’t your responsibility.” I felt my throat tighten. “I had no clue it was this bad. I just… I thought he was fine. He said he was fine. But I should have known better, he always acted fine, even when things were falling apart.”

The last month my mom was on hospice care, Buddy went about his business as if nothing was going on. He didn’t even take off work the day after she passed. He was up at dawn out in the field harvesting. He only took a half day for her memorial service. Apparently, it was the same for my Gigi Rose. I was too young to remember when my grandma died, I was only two at the time, but I remember my mom telling me about it a little bit before she died. I think she was trying to prepare me for his behavior. It didn’t. I was still shocked at how he just seemed to go on with his life as if nothing had happened. As if the entire world hadn’t just lost the greatest soul on the planet. I never understood that.

A silence stretched between Dawson and me as I scanned the kitchen and stopped on the fridge. There was a magnet on it of a photo of me from high school graduation, arm in arm with Buddy, both of us smiling at the camera. He appeared so robust, so larger than life, so healthy. A wave of guilt crashed over me. How could I have let him deteriorate so much in just a little over ten years? How could I have been so blind?

I had no clue what or how I could make this right, but I did know one thing, I would. I would do whatever it took to get Buddy back on his feet, up and running again. Even if it was pulling teeth to do it.

8

MEASURE TWICE, PINE FOREVER

Dawson

There are three things you should never have to do before seven in the morning: drink bad coffee, make a decision that matters, or sit in a hospital parking lot next to the girl you let walk out of your life.

I killed the engine and watched Sadie’s hands move against her thighs like she was trying to press something down that wouldn’t stay. The hospital rose pale and blank against the early morning sky, the kind of building that didn’t bother pretending it held anything good. The sun was cresting the roof, and the fluorescent lights inside were already burning cold and blue, visible even from the loading zone. I knew every chair in that waiting room, every waxy floor tile, every flicker of the fluorescent lights overhead. My brothers had practically kept this place in business growing up—burst appendixes, broken bones, the usual catalogue of farm-boy disasters. But for Sadie it was different. For Sadie, hospitals were where you went to lose someone slowly, and she’d already lost enough.

I wanted to tell her I’d go in with her. That I’d sit in those miserable chairs that smelled like lemon disinfectant and old regrets, that I’d hold her hand. I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to walk through those doors alone.

The problem was, somewhere between loving her and losing her, I’d burned that particular bridge to the ground.

And now I was the idiot sitting in the ashes, wishing I’d brought a fire extinguisher.

She inhaled, shallow and deliberate, and said, “Well, thank you⁠—”

At the same time as I blurted, “Text me when you—” and the overlap made both of us start laughing.

Hers was the old, barely-above-a-whisper laugh, the one that made my chest ache back before I even had a driver’s license. I dipped my chin, indicating for her to go first, because that’s how we used to do it—her leading, me following, always.

She straightened a little, tugging at her shirt. “I just wanted to say thank you for the ride to Buddy’s and then here. And for, you know, not making it…weird.”

“Of course. Anytime,” I assured her. “I was just saying, when you’re done here, you can text me for a ride, and I’ll come get you. Or if you need to talk or want to get a coffee or something.”

She gave a tight little smile, but her eyes did the thing where they darted to my mouth and then away, like she was weighing whether to say yes or call an Uber. “I think I’ll be good, but thanks.”

Shit. Uber won.

She reached down and found her purse, rooting around in it for her phone, and the movement sent a shiver of vanilla and something citrusy—tangerine?—into the air. The scent hit me with a wave of memory so intense I thought I might actually pass out. Sadie, seventeen, hair flowing loose, singing along to the radio with the windows down. Every cell in my body knew that scent, the way it knew how to breathe.

Hoping to disguise my mini-walk down memory lane and the effect it was having on me, I hopped out and rounded the hood. The wind was picking up, and the chill off the ocean made my eyes water. I pulled open her door, and she looked up at me, startled like she’d forgotten people still did that. She rushed to get out, fumbling with her tote bag and nearly dropping it. I grabbed it before it hit the ground. As she stepped down, her balance wavered and I put my hand out to steady her. She took it, not as a precaution, but as an anchor. Her fingers grasped mine, warm and familiar as a memory foam groove, and she squeezed.

The contact was innocuous enough for anyone walking by, but my body read it as a threat level red. All the air in my lungs reversed course and came out as heat and panic, which I’m pretty sure she felt, because she smiled at me in that way she used to when I managed to surprise her.

“I missed that smile,” I admitted aloud.

I wasn’t supposed to say things like that anymore. I didn’t have the right. I told myself, silently, as the words floated on the cold air between us.

Trying to recover, I messed up again. “I’m really glad you’re back.” I heard how bad it sounded the moment it came out of my mouth. There was no good way to recover from that faux pas, so I just tried to clarify, to backtrack, but only made it worse. “I mean, not glad about Buddy, obviously, but…” The rest of it fell away.

I wasn’t glad Buddy was ill, that was the understatement of the year, but I couldn’t help the honest relief in seeing Sadie in the flesh, real and alive and not relegated to memories or what-ifs.

She gave me a look—half-caution, half amusement—that said she was used to my inability to handle real-time feelings. There was a time when I could say anything to her, and she’d parse out the truth no matter how stupidly I delivered it. She must have remembered that, too, because her mouth twitched with a hint of a smile. “Thanks,” she said, and her voice sounded less like the hard-edged, lawyer-in-training version she’d been at my brother’s wedding and more like the girl I’d known my whole life. “It’s… good to see you, too.”

The words shot straight to my heart, and I absorbed them. It wasn’t a declaration of love, but it was a far cry from I hate you. She started to walk away, but I stopped her. “Hold on.” I grabbed a hoodie from behind my seat and handed it to her.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“You’ll get cold in there.” She always froze in the hospital and never remembered to bring a sweatshirt.

She looked down at it as if it were a bomb, and she was scared to touch it.

“Take it. I know where you’re staying, so it’s not like you can steal it,” I lied. She could steal anything from me and I’d gladly give it to her.

She smiled, and her eyes lifted to me as she accepted the hoodie. “Thank you.”

I nodded.

She tucked the hoodie into the tote, squared her shoulders, glanced up at the hospital’s looming entrance, and walked off, never once looking back.

As she stepped past me it took every ounce of self-control I possessed to not reach out and pull her into my arms. It shouldn’t feel like the most natural thing in the world to do. She wasn’t my Sadie anymore. I wasn’t the person who was supposed to comfort her.

I stood there for a second, watching her go, then realized it looked weird and stalkerish, so I jumped back into my truck. I sat behind the wheel for a long moment, palms pressed flat against the steering wheel, trying to get my heart to stop acting like a caged animal. Then I started the engine, shifted into drive, and told myself that was that.

But, of course, it wasn’t.

I should have gone straight to the ranch. I had work to do, a whole day of it. Instead, I missed the turnoff and kept driving. My brain wasn’t even aware I’d done it until I was already halfway down the road toward Shepard’s Farm. By the time I pulled into Buddy’s gravel drive, I’d made up a whole mental list of things that needed fixing, just from memory and the five minutes I’d spent inside. One of them was Herbie, Buddy’s scarlet/white two-tone 1990 Ford F150. I noticed cobwebs by the wheels, which meant Buddy hadn’t had access to a vehicle in a while.

I parked, ignoring the crunch of the undercarriage as I navigated the potholes. The porch didn’t look any better than it had an hour ago—if anything, it looked worse now that it was in direct sunlight and not shade. The whole place looked like it was waiting for permission to fall over. I got out, grabbed a tape measure and a legal pad from behind my seat, and trudged up the sagging steps. I wasn’t sure how long Buddy would be admitted, but the last thing he needed was to come home to a death trap.

When I opened the front door, the same smell that hit me when I was there earlier slapped me in the face once again. There was the usual old-person funk—dust, mothballs, the sweet rotten tang of oranges gone bad—but underneath it, there was something sharper, almost chemical. Maybe cleaning fluid, maybe something leaking from under the sink. In the living room, a patchwork of blankets covered the old recliner, flanked by a walker and two canes. The walker had two tennis balls on the back legs, the canes had rolls of duct tape holding the handles together.

I shouldered my way through the house, peering into each room. The bathroom door hung on a single hinge. The kitchen floor had a soft patch that felt like walking on a wet sponge. Every horizontal surface was stacked with mail, takeout containers, and pill bottles. Twice I found another taped-up leak, the kind of band-aid solution only an ex-rancher would be proud of.

After opening all the first-floor windows to air out the house, I walked back outside onto the porch and started my list. I wrote down everything, even the things I had zero intention of tackling today: new porch footings, stair balusters, railing. Replace the kitchen linoleum. Check for mold. Add a handrail to the bathroom. Fix the front door so it latches instead of needing a kick to shut. I lost track of time, totally absorbed, only stopping when the familiar vibration of my phone pulled my head up.

It was Damon, calling for the third time this morning. I let it go to voicemail, but he tried again immediately, so I answered, “Yeah.”

“Hey, Loverboy.”

I ignored the moniker. “What’s up?”

“You bailed on your ten-thirty ride,” he stated, slow and deliberate, like he was talking to a problem child.

Shit. I totally blanked on the family I had scheduled to take out that morning. That was so unlike me. I never missed a ride.

My brother continued, “Mom said you were at the hospital, but Fernando said Angie called the stables when she couldn’t get a hold of you, so unless you were playing hide-and-seek at the E.R.”

“Damon—”

He steamrolled right over me. “Don’t worry, I covered. But if you want to keep your job, or you know, the family business, maybe set an alarm or something?”

I almost laughed. All my life, Damon had been the one who needed reminders and wake-up calls, always running late or spacing on details. The fact that he was now the organized one would have been funny if it didn’t make me feel like I was losing my mind. I tried to keep my voice even. “There’s nothing to cover. We stopped by Buddy’s. Sadie needed to get him some things.”

There was a beat of silence on the other end, like he was parsing my tone for blood in the water. “Right. So where are you now, then?”

I glanced around, feeling sick to my stomach at the state of disrepair the place was in. “I’m back at Buddy’s.”

“What are you doing there?”

It was none of my brother’s business. I lived my life on a need-to-know basis, and most people didn’t need to know shit. “I’ll be back in time for my 4:00 p.m.”

I hung up before he could say anything else and stood up to head inside to get to work. I had a lot to get done in the next few hours. When I did, I heard a faint whining sound. I glanced around, and that’s when I saw a ball of orange fur next to my boot. It wasn’t until it opened its mouth, trying to cry or meow, that my brain computed it was a kitten. It continued opening its mouth, but barely any sound was coming out.

“Hey there?” I bent down and ran my hand over the kitten’s back. It was basically fur and bones. The tiny thing was shivering either from the temperature or fear. I picked it up and did a sex check. It was a girl.

She opened her mouth once more, either in protest or appreciation for being picked up, but again, no sound came out.

“Okay, come on, let’s get you inside.” As I walked back in, I checked her body and didn’t see any signs of fleas or ticks. From what I saw, there were none. Her gums looked good, very pink, so that pretty much ruled out anemia, internal bleeding, and dehydration. Still, to be on the safe side, I’d get her in to see the vet at the Ranch.

I finished examining my new friend, who lifted her head and tried once again to say her piece, but only a tiny squeak sounded.

“You’re like a little mouse. Aren’t you? Let’s get you something to eat and drink, Minnie Mouse.”

I headed back inside with Minnie in my hand, she fit in my palm. I filled a bowl of water and found a can of tuna and set them both on the kitchen floor. Her paws had barely hit the tile before she was devouring the food. Poor thing was probably starving. I sat with her while she ate, then rinsed out her bowls. Once she had a full belly, I made her a little bed with a blanket in a patch of sunlight and told her, “Stay there. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Her response was to lift her back leg and begin to bathe herself. I grinned as I turned to face the project at hand. I set my phone on the counter and took a slow lap through the house, inspecting the stuff I’d missed the first time—broken baseboards, cracked windowpanes, a leak under the bathroom sink that might have been older than I was. It was the kind of damage that happened slowly, in increments too small to notice until the whole thing was ready to collapse. It made me think of Buddy, the Buddy who I always saw as a superhero who chewed tobacco, lying on the floor helpless for hours, days, until they found him. It broke my heart.

I found a box of garbage bags under the sink and pulled my work gloves out of my back pocket. I was half a room deep into clearing out the living room—sorting mail, tossing out food containers, stacking the pill bottles by expiration date—when I heard the crunch of tires in the gravel, then the familiar heavy slam of a door. A shadow passed along the porch, blocking the thin rays of sun that managed to make it through the cloudy glass window.

After removing my gloves, I wiped my hands on my jeans and stepped out onto the porch, squinting against the glare. Damon stood at the bottom of the steps, his looming shadow more solid than the rotting wood under his boots. He took it in with a long, slow sweep of his gaze: the peeling paint, the splintered railing, the sad little line of dead succulents in cracked pots. Then he lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the midmorning sun.

“Holy shit. When’s the last time you’ve been out here?” he asked.

I shrugged, feeling the weight of the house behind me. “Years.”

He didn’t say anything for a second, sizing up the situation. Then, without further comment, he reached behind his back and yanked out his own pair of gloves. The same battered Carhartt pair he’d had since high school. Damon was a lot of things, but he didn’t go anywhere unprepared.

“What are you doing?” I wiped my brow.

He held up the gloves like Exhibit: A. “What’s it look like? Gettin’ to work.”

I wanted to argue, to tell him I could handle it, that I didn’t need anyone’s help, least of all his. But one look at the sagging porch, the knee-high grass, and the black mold creeping up the siding, and I knew I was full of shit. This was more than a one-man job. I let him climb the stairs without another word.

Damon reached the top step, tested it with a little bounce, and whistled. “This thing’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.” He glanced at me sideways. “You got a plan or are we just playing it by ear?”

“I made a list.” It sounded stupid as soon as I said it.

He smiled with amusement. “Of course you did.” He jerked his chin toward the inside. “Let’s see it.”

I handed over the legal pad with my scrawl, every repair, every hazard, even stuff I knew it’d take weeks to fix. He scanned it, nodding as if I’d just presented him with the blueprints for a bank heist. “All right. I’ll take the bathroom and anything involving power tools. You do the kitchen, less chance of you losing a finger.”

He was being a dick, acting as if he was better equipped to handle tools when he was the one who had to be rushed to the hospital thanks to tool-related injuries. But since he was helping, I kept my mouth shut.

As we headed inside, I heard a tiny mouse squeak. Damon and I both looked down, and Minnie was staring up at me with her huge Disney eyes.

“Who’s this?”

“Minnie,” I stated.

“Minnie?” he repeated.

“She was squeaking like a mouse. So…”

“I like it.” Damon bent over to pet Minnie, and she hid behind my legs.

“I didn’t know Buddy had a cat?” he commented as he stood back up.

“He doesn’t.”

“Where’d you find her?”

“I didn’t. I was sitting on the porch, and she found me.”

Damon shook his head and squeezed my shoulder. “Wow, pussy literally shows up on your doorstep. How do you do it, bro? What is your secret?”

I shook my head, ignoring my brother, again, because he was doing manual labor for free.

We got to work. There wasn’t much talking, just the rhythm of tools and trash bags and the occasional grunt of frustration. Minnie was my shadow. She followed me from room to room, to outside, back into the house, never more than a few feet away from me. She kept her distance from my brother as he tore down the house to rebuild it. Damon was the only guy I knew who could demolish a bathroom vanity with a crowbar and still look like he was on vacation. At some point, he found Buddy’s stash of whiskey and held it up with a questioning eyebrow. I shook my head. “Later,” I said, and he put it back without comment.

The hours ran together. We moved through the house as a unit, like we always did when it came to work, me on the projects that needed finesse and skill, Damon on brute force. There was something weirdly comforting about it, like being in the old barn again, shoeing horses before sunrise or fixing fence posts in the rain. We didn’t have to talk to be on the same page, it had always been that way.

By mid-afternoon, we’d cleared out most of the garbage, replaced the worst of the floorboards, got Herbie up and running, and set up a temporary brace for the porch railing. Damon was needed back at the ranch, so he packed up his tools and wiped his hands on a rag, looking more satisfied than tired.

Minnie hopped onto the counter beside me and then kneaded my arm, signaling she wanted to be picked up. For a tiny thing, she was bossy. I scooped her up, and she curled into a ball in the crook of my arm.

“Not bad.” My brother surveyed the cleaned-up living room. “It still smells like someone died in here, but at least no one’s gonna break a hip on the way to the bathroom.” He gave me a little nod, like we’d just won a game of backyard football.

I looked around, let myself feel a tiny bit of pride at what we’d pulled off. “Thanks,” I said. I meant it more than I could say.

“No thanks necessary, now you owe me.” Damon winked, more comfortable with sarcasm than gratitude, and gave Minnie a quick rub behind her ears.

He headed out to his truck, leaving the door open behind him.

I stood on the porch for a minute, breathing in the fresh, crisp air, holding Minnie in one arm. Damon was already backing out of the drive, one hand on the wheel, the other out the window, giving me an exaggerated salute. I flipped him off and watched him disappear down the road, the dust cloud trailing after him like he was leading a cavalry charge.

When the silence settled again, it didn’t feel so heavy.

There was still another hour before I had to be at the ranch, so Minnie and I went back inside and started a fresh pot of coffee with the canister I’d found behind the microwave. While it brewed, I finished resetting the bathroom door, wiped down the counters, reorganized the pill bottles, and went back over the list of everything we’d fixed, making notes on what still needed repairs.

When it was time to go, I gathered up Minnie, locked up, and walked out to my truck. I got in, and Minnie curled up on my lap and went to sleep. It had been a big day for her. I sat there for a long time with my head against the headrest, eyes closed. I thought about Sadie, about the way she’d smiled at me this morning—the real smile, the one that cracked open my heart. I thought about what it would be like to see her every day, to be someone she could count on again.

For years, I wondered if I’d built up what we shared, what my feelings for her were. Now I knew the truth, I hadn’t. If anything, my mind had deluded my feelings in an attempt to protect me. She was the only girl I’d ever loved, and I was more certain than ever the only girl I ever would love.

9

OF COURSE SHE HAS GREAT NAIL BEDS

Sadie

The elevator doors groaned open like they had somewhere better to be, and I stepped out carrying a gift shop bouquet and approximately thirty years of unresolved daddy issues.

I forced my shoulders back, squared up, and stepped out into the bland, medicinal corridor of the hospital’s third floor. Every surface—walls, floors, even the benches—seemed designed for easy cleaning and maximum psychological discomfort. Not a splash of color except for the out-of-season paper heart taped to the nurses’ station glass. I made my way past them, ignoring the cloying scent of antiseptic and the distant, cyclical wail of someone else’s heartbreak.

He doesn’t want to see you. The thought ambushed me somewhere between radiology and the vending machine alcove, the same alcove where a younger, healthier version of Buddy had once pressed a crumpled dollar into my eight-year-old hand and whispered, “Go on, get the good stuff.” Back when he’d been invincible. Back when I’d believed he was indestructible.

Buddy’s room was near the end of the hallway, the exact one Mom lay in bed fighting whatever landed her in ICU over Christmas break when I was eight. I’ll never forget, that year Buddy snuck in a Christmas tree from our lot, despite not getting clearance from the hospital. No one dared stop him from bringing his baby girl a little holiday cheer.

I didn’t blame the staff for not confronting my grandpa, he was large in stature and presence. His stride had always been brisk, the sort of purposeful, sprawling gait that made you believe he could conquer anything, scale a tall building, or maybe tear it down, if the mood struck. He was my hero, a literal tree-felling, deer-dragging, get-up-before-sunrise-to-fix-the-water-pump kind of man. I’d grown up believing his hands could mend anything, even the things that weren’t meant to be fixed, and that his voice—booming and full of banter—could drown out any sorrow.

Today, my shoes made no sound on the waxed linoleum as I neared his door. The silence was oppressive, a vacuum that threatened to collapse my lungs. I paused outside his room, bracing myself. I tried to conjure the memory of his laugh, irrepressible and contagious, but what came was the image of him I’d walked in on yesterday: hooked to machines, face drained of color, eyes lost in some distant, unspeakable ache. I pressed my palm to the cold metal of the door frame and tried to slow my breathing, but it wasn’t enough.

Inside, the room was dim. Shades drawn against the sunny glare, so the only light came from the heart monitor’s green sinewaves and the little flat-screen TV, muted, showing a rerun of some old game show. Buddy was asleep, mouth open, his chest rising and falling in shallow increments. The expanse of his shoulders was still there, but he looked shrunken inside the hospital gown, the blue fabric barely restraining a latticework of IV lines and adhesive sensors. The man who’d once lifted me one-armed onto the hood of his pickup, who’d made a sport out of arm-wrestling drunken loggers at Cupid’s Arrow, now looked breakable as a sparrow’s leg.

I wanted to retreat, to leave before I had to see him open his eyes and measure the distance between the man I remembered and what was left of him. But I owed him more than that…I mean, I owed him everything. So I slid into the upholstered chair in the corner, the one that converted into a cot for overnight visitors, and tried to become as unobtrusive as possible. I set my tote on the floor and pulled out the three black ledgers he’d asked for. They were heavy with decades of notes, receipts, and what he claimed were “the secret blueprints to the Shepard family empire.” The familiar sight of his slanted handwriting—always in blue ink, always all caps—made my chest pinch with nostalgia and something like dread.

He stirred, a small noise escaping him, and I froze. Then, as if summoned by the smell of paper and bad hospital coffee, he cracked one eyelid and glared at me. “You’re still here?” he croaked. Even drained of volume, the words carried the same old stubbornness. “Told ya, I’m fine. Get on back to the city.”

I tried to smile, but my lips wobbled. “You asked me to bring you your books, remember?” I set them on the rolling table, careful not to disturb the tray of untouched Jell-O and the melting cup of ice chips.

“Yeah, well, you dropped them off. No reason to hang around,” Buddy insisted, waving a hand in a feeble arc, as if shooing a misbehaving animal. “Go on back home.”

I looked at him, really looked, and saw the tremor in his fingers, the way he kept glancing at the monitors as if checking his own stats. The impulse to obey him—to play the good, self-sufficient granddaughter and vanish as instructed—clashed with the fact that he was not, in fact, fine. He was dying, or if not dying, then certainly breaking apart in slow, inexorable increments.

“Buddy, I think⁠—”

The knock was a polite warning, but the nurse stepped in, cutting me off, a small, forceful woman with the militant efficiency of someone who’s administered more sponge baths and morphine drips than she could count. Her neon-green scrubs announced her presence even before the scent of latex and baby powder did. She scanned the room, clocked me and the three binders, then zeroed in on Buddy’s chart at the end of his bed.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Shepard,” she said in a voice trained to soothe or command, depending on the patient’s stubbornness.

Buddy blinked, squinting at her like she’d interrupted a private conversation with his subconscious. “Afternoon, Nurse Mary,” he grunted.

She didn’t correct him, although her name tag clearly read ‘Jackie,’ and instead launched into the ritual: temperature, blood pressure, pulse ox. Buddy offered up his arm with a theatrical sigh, then seized the opportunity to complain about the finger clamp being “invented by sadists.” She grinned, the kind of retail smile that was all upturned lips and no teeth, and threatened, “You keep eating the pudding instead of the protein, and maybe I’ll have to try the rectal thermometer next time.”

He barked a laugh that collapsed into a cough, and at the same time, I felt my own face flush. Jackie scribbled something in the chart, then turned to me.

“Have you had a chance to go over his dietary options?” She gestured to the sticky binder of laminated hospital menus, which I could tell had never been opened. “He’s not a fan of the chicken, but the meatloaf is decent,” she added with a wink.

She handed Buddy a cup of pills and a teetering paper cup of water. “I better not come back here and find these under the pillow,” she warned, voice flat.

“Ahh,” he grunted dismissively.

Nurse Jackie started to leave but stopped. “You’re Rosie’s girl, right? Rosie Shepard.”

Rosie was my mom. She was named after her mom, Rose. I was given the middle name.

“I am, yeah.”

Jackie smiled from ear to ear. “I went to high school with your mom, but moved away after graduation. I just came back a few years ago. Wow, you are the spitting image of her. I was so sorry to hear about her passing.”

I never knew what to say when people told me that. “Thank you.”

“She was a real special lady, your mama. Always made sure everybody felt included.”

A warmth filled my chest. She wasn’t the first person who told me that. So many of her friends and just people who knew her in town shared what a kind, empathetic soul she was. That’s how I remembered her. I forgot how nice it was to talk about her with people who knew her.

I felt Buddy’s energy shift, and my entire body tensed. This was what I was worried about. This was me rubbing salt in his open wound. Had Jackie not realized that yes, Rosie was my mom, but she was Buddy’s daughter?

“I’ll be back soon, behave yourself,” Nurse Jackie gave Buddy one final warning and disappeared, shoes squeaking on the floor, leaving behind the faint ozone of her brisk authority. I waited for Buddy to take his medicine, then make a joke about how the pills were probably sugar, but he just stared at the tiny paper souffle cup until the silence grew awkward again.

I thought about saying sorry, sorry that Jackie had brought up my mom, but I knew he’d just sweep it under the rug like he always did. Instead, I thought the best use of our time would be to talk about next steps. Make a concrete plan.

After taking a deep breath, I suggested, “We should talk about the farm.”

He jerked his head toward the ledgers. “Ain’t much to say. Timber’s all but gone, and the new exit bypasses us, so the produce stand doesn’t get any drive-by or foot traffic.” He said it flat, like reading from a spreadsheet, but I caught the way his left hand twisted the bedsheet, the way his voice clipped off at the ends of sentences.

Shepard Farms had two main sources of income: the Christmas tree farm and our produce stand. If the timber was gone and no one was coming to the stand, that was an issue.

“You could sell,” I offered then instantly regretted it. We’d had this conversation a hundred times, but I’d never been so close to admitting out loud that it might actually be time.

He cut me a glare. “No one’s selling. Place’ll be there long after we’re both in the dirt.” His tone dared me to keep arguing. I didn’t.

The monitors blipped and pinged in a steady, robotic lullaby. I turned away, tracing the paths of tape and tubing along his arm, focusing hard so I wouldn’t have to look at his face.

He softened his tone, maybe catching the tremor in my hands. “Don’t you got better things to do than sit around and listen to an old man complain? I’m not going anywhere, kiddo.”

Except you are. The words swelled in my chest, so dense I thought I’d suffocate.

“Now, put on my shows.” He motioned to the television.

“Your shows?” I turned the channel until it landed on Judge Judy.

He watched the courtroom drama until he let himself drift back into sleep. His jaw slackened, his breaths coming in shallow, watery pulses. The hospital room faded to a cocoon of white noise and filtered sunlight, and I allowed myself one minute—one full minute—to stare at him and mourn the loss that was already happening but hadn’t yet occurred.

I sat with him until the air grew stale and the nerves in my legs started to fizz. Then, quietly, I slipped out and padded down the hall, passing the same nurses’ station and the wall of get-well cards taped above the coffee machine. I didn’t stop walking until I found a patch of sunlight in the main lobby, pressed my forehead to the glass, and closed my eyes.

It didn’t help. The ache just moved from my lungs to my scalp, throbbing behind my temples like a migraine. I tried to summon a shred of gratitude—he was alive, he was still here, wasn’t he—but the panic lurked just under the surface, ready to explode at the smallest provocation.

I checked my phone to see if I’d heard anything back from Uncle Ronnie. I’d left him messages about what was going on, but I had no clue if he’d gotten them. He was on a cruise with Lorenzo, so he didn’t have cell service. My heart sank when I saw that there were no missed calls or texts from him. I let my head fall back against the wall, and tears filled my eyes.

That’s where Gio found me. He’d swapped his button-down for navy blue scrubs, his name badge crooked on the V-neck like a badge of irony. He’d always looked like he belonged in a beer commercial—not a hospital—but the uniform suited him, made him seem more substantial. He tapped the glass next to my head, then offered me a latte, steaming through the lid.

“You look like you could use this,” he said.

I took it. “Thanks. Is it real, or decaf?”

“Double shot, no mercy.” He winked. “How’s Buddy?”

I shrugged, and the motion nearly sloshed the coffee onto my wrist. “He’s Buddy. Insulting the staff, pretending to be immortal, refusing to admit he’s in pain.”

“It’s what old men do,” Gio stated gently. “Want to sit? There’s a bench outside.”

The idea of fresh air was almost as intoxicating as the coffee. We walked into a garden area, onto a little patio decked in drought-resistant succulents and painted benches. The hospital had tried to make the courtyard cheerful, but the only thing standing between us and the parking lot was a three-foot hedge and a few wind-tossed daffodils.

“How’s your residency?” I asked, still having a tough time reconciling Gio Russo, the guy who surfed on top of Calvin Hawkins’ van, Teen Wolf-style being a physician.

Gio rolled his eyes. “They’re trying to kill me, but little do they know I’m immortal,” he teased, then, after a beat, asked, “You want to get a drink after my shift?”

I almost laughed. “Like, a drink, drink?”

“Yes, liquid in a cup that you bring to your mouth and ingest.” He grinned. “Cupid’s Arrow.”

Dawson had always maintained that Gio had a thing for me, but I’d never believed him. Surely, he was just asking as a friend. Either way, it probably wasn’t the best idea. I had enough going on in my life and didn’t need any more complications.

I opened my mouth to invent an excuse, but my brain sabotaged me. “Yeah,” I agreed. “I could use some alcohol and greasy food.”

“Great. I’m off at eight. I’ll text you.” His pager beeped and he stood as he checked it. “You want me to walk you back up?”

“No, I’m good. Thanks for the coffee, G.”

He gave me a nod and disappeared back inside, leaving me in the sunlight with a caffeine spike and a weird, buoyant sensation that felt suspiciously like something close to hope.

I lingered outside until the wind picked up and the chill crept past the hoodie Dawson had given me, then headed back in. I didn’t want to think about the fact that he remembered how cold I always got, or that I never remembered to bring a sweater. My heart didn’t have the bandwidth to process that information. Those were the things that mattered to me. Not flowers. Not jewelry. Not fancy restaurants. A hoodie because you know I get cold and always forget to bring a sweatshirt after not being with me for twelve years—that’s romantic. Which is why I was absolutely not going to dwell on it.

It shouldn’t surprise me. Dawson’s love language is acts of service. Which, again, I wasn’t going to dwell on, because he doesn’t love me. He cheated on me a dozen years ago, only someone delusional would think that he still had feelings.

Right? Yeah. Right.

The automatic doors whooshed open and I headed back inside. The lobby was busier now, a couple of little kids zoomed past the nurses’ station, one on crutches, chased by a mother who looked two seconds from tears. The world spun on, no matter what.

I stepped into the elevator with a woman pressed into the corner, scrolling through her phone. She wore scrubs, but unlike Nurse Jackie, these looked tailored and expensive, like she’d ordered them in six different colors from some boutique in LA. I recognized her instantly, although it took my brain a beat to connect her to something non-hospital related.

It was the woman from the wedding. The one who’d danced with Dawson, all shiny-haired, honeyed limbs, and endless smile. She pushed off from the wall and began to walk out, but when she saw me, she retreated back into the corner and stayed on.

“Hi,” I said, mostly because I couldn’t not, as I pressed the third-floor button. I didn’t do well in awkward situations. I’d been known to get hives, which Dawson used to tease me about, saying I was literally allergic to being uncomfortable.

“Hey,” she replied. Her voice was deeper than I’d expected, rich and musical. “You’re Buddy’s granddaughter, right?”

“I am, yes.” I nodded. “Sadie.”

“Dr. Chang.” She offered a hand. Her fingers were so slim and delicate, and her nails were perfectly manicured with a gloss finish. She had really great nail beds, which was an odd thing to be jealous of, but I’d always wished I had better nail beds. “You can call me Angie. I’m the attending in the ER. I was on the night your grandfather was admitted.”

“Oh, wow, okay, that’s…” I stumbled over my words because as a side effect of my allergy to awkward situations, small talk had never been a survival skill of mine. “Um, yeah, thank you.”

She smiled, but there was something inscrutable at the corners of her mouth, a tension that I couldn’t quite place. She turned her attention back to her phone. “He’s tough. I just moved here, but everyone says he’s somewhat of a legend in Valentine Bay.”

“Yeah, that’s what he tells me,” I joked with a grin.

Just moved here? I wondered if she and Dawson were serious. Had she moved to Valentine Bay for Dawson? I checked her left hand for a ring but didn’t see one. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. A lot of engaged people, especially in fields where they would have to take their jewelry off and on, opted not to wear their wedding or engagement rings.

Was Dawson engaged? I was kicking myself for not asking him more questions. No, not more questions, any questions about his personal life.

We fell into silence as the elevator climbed. Above the faint hum of the machinery, I could feel Angie watching me, not unkindly, but with a species of curiosity that bordered on appraisal. I wondered what she’d heard about me, if anything. Had Dawson mentioned our history? If he hadn’t, had someone else?

Despite not living in Valentine Bay for over a decade, I was pretty sure the majority of people still knew about me, about us, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe I’d just frozen our relationship in time because I left, and everyone else, Dawson included, has moved on.

“So are you staying out at Lockhart Ranch while you’re in town?” she asked, not looking up from her phone as she scrolled.

“Um, for now⁠—”

The elevator doors opened on my floor as the intercom paged Dr. Chang to the E.R.

I lifted my hand in an awkward wave as I stepped off. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around.”

She was already pressing the down button, not paying me any attention. The doors closed without another word, leaving an odd taste in my mouth for the entire interaction. I walked back to Buddy’s’ room and wondered if Angie had remained on the elevator just to ride it with her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend.

I was so tempted to text Dawson and ask him about her, but I knew it was none of my business. Still, I wanted to know, was it serious? She was a drop-dead gorgeous doctor, he’d be an idiot if it weren’t serious.

And I still cared about him, I wanted him to be happy and she had a lot going for her. So why did I feel jealous? Why did the thought of her going home to him make me want to stab my heart?

Yeah, I definitely needed a drink. Cupid’s Arrow at 8:00 p.m. could not come soon enough.

10

PAGING DR. STEAL-MY-EX

Dawson

There’s a specific kind of stupid that only hits you in the shower, when you’re alone with nothing but hot water and the truth. Standing in a cloud of steam with eight different aches competing for my attention forced me to take a fearless inventory.

Today hadn’t gone the way I’d expected it to go. For as long as I could remember, I’d functioned best alone, convinced that was what the ranch needed from me, that I was the only one who could handle the weight. But there was no denying that with Damon, the work hadn’t just got done faster, it got done better. He had an energy I’d lost, a way of turning even shit jobs into something like a party. I hated to admit it, but with him around, I felt lighter. Not quite happy, but something adjacent to it.

I was pretty sure that had more to do with the project we’d worked on than with my brother. I was feeling those things because I was doing something to take care of Sadie, the person I loved the most in the world. It had killed me that for so long I hadn’t been able to do anything for her. Now, today, I’d been able to help in a tangible way. In doing so, I’m afraid that the heart that I’d tried to keep guarded was compromised.

The problem with feelings, I’d learned, was that they didn’t negotiate. They didn’t care about your schedule, your plans, or the very reasonable walls you’d spent years building. They just showed up—all of them, all at once—and waited to see what you’d do.

I got out of the shower and ran a towel over my hair, doing my best to dry it but just managing to make it stand on end. My shoulders screamed as I lifted my arms, which was par for the course after a day like this. I’d spent most of my life working double shifts, managing cattle, wrangling horses, and doing the jobs of three grown men before I was even old enough to vote. If there was one thing I was good at, it was physical punishment. That and, apparently, ignoring my emotional life until it came back to bite me in the ass.

Without even consciously doing so, I checked my phone. Nothing from Sadie, just the two messages from Angie earlier. One was a TikTok of unlikely animal friendships, the other was a message asking what I was doing later.

Angie typically didn’t text me when she was on call, which I knew she was. I wondered if her reaching out had anything to do with Sadie being in town. She’d asked me about her at the wedding, I told her the truth. She seemed to take it well at the time, but she’d definitely been in more contact with me for the past twenty-four hours than she ever had before.

I messaged back that I wasn’t sure what my plans were. It was the truth. I was waiting to hear from Sadie. I knew that visiting hours were over, but I seriously doubted anyone at the hospital would give her a hard time if she wanted to stay a little longer.

As I waited, I checked the live feed camera at the vets we used for the ranch. They were keeping Minnie overnight for me because she had a parasite and was also dehydrated. I would hopefully be able to pick her up tomorrow once they got some antibiotics and fluids in her. My mom was trying to convince me she needed to live on the ranch with Banjo, but I was still debating where she should live. It would ultimately come down to what she wanted to do. Some animals loved the ranch life, for others it overwhelmed them.

After seeing Minnie was sleeping soundly in her crate at the vet’s, I clicked out of the vet app and I stared at my phone, willing it to light up with a message from Sadie. When it didn’t, I debated just driving over to the hospital. Sadie might not want to see me, but I worried she hadn’t eaten all day. She always forgot to eat when she was stressed, a fact I’d filed away from our teenage years, when she’d study for hours and refuse to leave her desk, surviving on nothing but coffee and stubbornness.

With that decision made, I grabbed my keys, hopped in my truck, and headed to Main Street Eats. It was a small thing, but sometimes that’s all you had to offer someone, the memory that you paid attention. Even if it was just with a sandwich and a look that said, I haven’t forgotten who you are.

Would she want her old favorite pulled pork sandwich or maybe the chicken soup that was always her go-to whenever she was feeling sick. Of course she wasn’t the one who was ill, that was Buddy. But spending all day in the hospital couldn’t have been good for her, she hated being there.

I’d just got into town when my phone rang, startling me. I glanced down and saw it was Damon. I sent it straight to voicemail, figuring he was just giving me shit about helping me out today.

But the Lockhart genes were persistent, and less than a minute later, my phone lit up again with his number. I ignored it, and focused on the road, but when I came to a red light, I saw he’d left me a text and my curiosity got the better of me. I glanced at the screen. It was a photo of Sadie, bent over a pool table in the middle of a shot, with Gio standing just behind her, pointing to the balls on the felt.

My brother’s text read:

Damon

Tbh, I didn’t think Gio had the balls

I knew Damon was trying to bait me. He’d been a professional shit-stirrer since birth. There was something about seeing Gio with Sadie, though, that had my blood boiling. My best friend and ex had always gotten along. She’d been one of the only people who could keep up with his weird jokes and barrage of trivia. I’d always suspected Gio had feelings for her. I never confronted him about it because when we were together, Sadie never gave me any reason to think I had anything to worry about…but now. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this is not a story I want to read.

As much as I wanted to go down to the bar and find out exactly what the fuck was going on, I wasn’t sure that was the best move. The thing about small towns is they don’t leave room for ambiguity. Everyone knows what you’re doing, who you’re doing it with, and how long you’ve been doing it for. If you walk into a bar to confront your ex and your best friend, half the town is going to be watching, and the other half will know about it before morning.

I pictured Sadie, laughing at something Gio said, her guard down in the way it never was with me anymore. I pictured the other guys in that bar, guys who probably remembered her from high school, or from volunteering at the community center, or from that one time she did the Heimlich on a tourist who was choking on a crab cake during the Fourth of July fireworks. I pictured all of the guys who had always wanted a shot with her and never got a chance because we’d been together since she was twelve and then she left, and it was enough to make me punch the gas and head straight for the bar.

The drive was only a few minutes, but my brain managed to spiral through every possible scenario. Maybe I’d just show up, have one drink, and leave. Maybe I’d show up, find Gio, and give his face some knuckle-based feedback. Or maybe I’d show up, grab a beer, post up, and observe, keeping my hands and opinions to myself. Maybe Sadie would look relieved to see me, or maybe she’d be upset that I was there. The only thing I was certain about was that I couldn’t keep pretending I didn’t care. Not after today. Not after the way she looked at me when I handed her my hoodie.

The parking lot at Cupid’s Arrow was packed. A couple of lifted trucks, half a dozen SUVs, one bright red Vespa that looked like it belonged in a European art film. I parked out back, near the dumpsters, and took a second to pull myself together. I checked my reflection in the side mirror, wiped my fingers through my five o’clock shadow that was rapidly turning into a midnight beard, and adjusted the flannel I’d thrown on over my white tee.

I walked up to the entrance, my pulse racing twice as fast as usual. The sounds of the bar—laughter, music, the occasional shout over a lost bet—spilled out onto the street. The neon sign above the door flickered, casting pink and blue shadows over the people loitering outside, half of whom were locals. They gave me a once-over, and I gave it right back. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sadie’s appearance at the bar wasn’t on the town Facebook page already.

Cupid’s Arrow was a staple in Valentine Bay. If you grew up in the small town, the location was programmed into your muscle memory with the instinctive surety of a salmon finding its way back upstream. The bar had been here since the Gold Rush, allegedly, though every square foot had been remodeled and repainted a hundred times, each new generation eager to leave its mark. There was a stubborn layer of smoke in the air that refused to budge no matter how many “No Smoking” signs got posted behind the bar, a persistent ghost of a thousand lost arguments and bad decisions. The tables were mismatched, the chairs uneven, and the lighting was dimmed.

The place reeked of realness—grease, stale hops, and the perfume of kitchen fryer oil that clung to your skin and hair for days. The front entrance led to a vestibule lined with framed Little League team photos and town landmarks. Two pool tables took up the middle of the floor, one was perpetually broken and used as a makeshift buffet for the weekly dart league, but tonight both were in action. A battered jukebox in the corner cycled through a playlist that had changed about as much as the décor in the last twenty years.

Behind the long warped bar, someone had strung up a dozen pink string lights and a cardboard Cupid with a half-deflated heart. The bartender tonight was Callie. She stood barely five foot tall with a tattoo of a squid wrapping around her entire arm. She pulled pints with the kind of precision that came from years of serving regulars who tipped in scratch-off tickets and polite threats.

My eyes automatically scanned the crowd. It was a reflex, a rancher’s habit, or maybe just an old animal instinct to clock the room. Over by the pool table, I spotted Sadie right away. She was bent forward, lining up a tricky shot, and her hair spilled across her cheek as she squinted down the cue. Just like the photo Damon sent me, Gio hovered behind her, offering enthusiastic advice about angles and spin, his hands pantomiming geometry in the air.

The first thing I noted was that Sadie’s laughter came quick and easy. She laughed with her whole body, and when Gio said something, she let her head tip back, exposing that delicate line of her throat I used to love pressing my lips against. I knew I shouldn’t be jealous, but I was. Jealous of the way she let herself be happy with none of the walls up she had around me.

My feet were cemented in place as I watched my ex and best friend, feeling something ugly and restless twist in my chest. I could turn around, leave before anyone noticed I was there. I could get back in my truck and pretend like I didn’t care who she went home with tonight. But that wasn’t true, and I didn’t want to be the kind of guy who lied to himself, not anymore.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been standing there when Damon materialized at my side and thrust a bottle of beer into my hand. My younger brother had a built-in radar for dramatic tension, and he wore his delight like a badge of honor. He took a healthy swig of Heineken, then leaned in close, lowering his voice with a conspiratorial smile.

“Three minutes, bro,” he said. “You break a land speed record on the way over?”

“I was already in town.” I tried to sound offhand, but Damon’s shit-eating grin told me he didn’t buy it, despite it being the truth.

He raised his eyebrows, watching me watch Sadie, then shook his head. “I can see it’s killing you. You plan on doing anything about that?”

I hated how transparent I was. I took a drink and made a point of looking anywhere but Sadie. “It’s fine. He’s harmless.”

“Harmless?” Damon nearly snorted beer out of his nose. “I realize Gio isn’t officially a ‘heartbreaker’ but he’s a doctor, he’s hot, and you know he went viral for his bedside manner. You ever read his DMs?”

I had, once, and it was a mistake I still regretted. “I’m not worried about Gio,” I lied.

Damon cocked his head at me. “Yeah, I can see you are the poster child of calm, cool, and collected.”

I ignored him as I headed toward the pool table. I didn’t give myself time to overthink it, just wove through the crowd, catching the familiar smells and snippets of conversation.

The closer I got, the more I noticed how Sadie’s presence changed the shape of the room. I didn’t mean that in a poetic sense, I meant that people literally rearranged themselves around her. Even the regulars at the bar kept glancing over, as if they expected her to start telling stories or solving their problems.

Sadie was chalking her cue, her focus laser-tight on the shot in front of her. Gio hovered just to the side, offering color commentary and smiling with that over-keen intensity of someone who has finally gotten an audience with the girl he’s been half in love with for decades.

I cleared my throat.

Sadie’s head snapped up. It wasn’t just surprise in her eyes, something raw flashed across her face before she composed herself. “Dawson, hi. I—I didn’t know you were coming,” she said, her voice not quite steady.

Gio just grinned, as if he’d expected me all along.

“Hey.” I lifted my chin. Part of me wanted to tell her that I’d been waiting for her call, but there was no point. I searched for something—anything—neutral, and my mouth took over before my brain could catch up. “How’s Buddy?” I asked, directing the question at Sadie, but she immediately looked to Gio to answer.

Gio, in full doctor mode, lined up his shot and reported, “He’s stable, considering. He’s responding to the TPA and his numbers look better each day.” He sank the seven-ball and reached for his beer. “Still in the ICU, but the plan is to move him to step-down in the next couple days if the trend holds.”

“That’s good,” I said, and I meant it, but it came out with a gravelly edge that made Gio tilt his head.

Damon returned with a round of drinks so quickly, it was like he’d made a deal with Callie to get to the front of the line, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had. He set down a pint in front of me, then handed a cocktail that looked like it belonged at a tiki bar to Sadie, and a whiskey neat for Gio. “Hydration,” he said, eyes ping-ponging between us, “is the key to good sportsmanship.”

The two of us gathered at the rail near the pool tables, drinks in hand, as Gio and Sadie wrapped up the last few shots of their game. Gio, ever the crowd-pleaser, put on a show of calling his pocket with an exaggerated point of his cue, then proceeded to miss entirely, which made Sadie laugh so hard she nearly knocked over her drink. I could see the way she looked at him, fond, familiar, easy. It burned, but I did my best to mask it with a sip of beer.

Damon leaned in, voice low. “You know, if you wanted to challenge him, now’s your chance. He’s too invested in impressing her to play defense.”

I shot him a look, but the truth was, I didn’t hate the idea. There was something gladiatorial about the way Gio tried to show off for her, as if the winner of the pool table earned some claim. I didn’t want to compete for Sadie, but I didn’t want to lose her without a fight, either.

Gio missed another shot, and Sadie swept in to clean up the table. “You’re getting rusty,” she teased, nudging his shoulder as she lined up her next move. The casual touch sent a ripple through my chest.

Damon wasted no time racking the balls for the next game. He had the setup down to an art, his hands moving fast and sure, and when he finished, he gestured toward Sadie with a flourish. “You’re up, champ.”

Sadie hesitated, then took the cue from Gio and moved to break. It was a messy break, but she managed to scatter the balls well enough, and the two of them launched into a debate about whether or not the eight-ball had “phantom spun” into the side. I let the noise of the bar fill my ears, trying not to hone in on the way Gio kept making her laugh, or the way Sadie’s guard seemed to melt whenever she looked at him.

Before the game ended, the Valentine brothers showed up, Donovan first, ducking under the door frame, followed by his wife Ella, then Gavin and his wife Gen, who was Gio’s cousin. Gavin’s twin Jett and his wife Abby. The whole group was a burst of energy. Abby squealed when she spotted Sadie. Ella and Gen hugged her with so much force I thought the trio was going to end up on the floor. Gavin hit me with a nod, then pulled Gio into a one-armed bro-hug.

“Didn’t expect to see you out on a weeknight,” Donovan commented, but I could tell he already knew why I was here. Gossip traveled faster than light in this town.

“Needed a drink.” I lifted my beer. “Or three.”

“How are you holding up?” he inquired quietly, glancing at Sadie and then back at me. “It’s got to be weird, with her back.”

If anyone knew what I was feeling, it was Donovan. He’d returned to town after being basically AWOL for a decade when he discovered that the marriage he and Ella thought was fake in Vegas when they were eighteen was actually real, thanks to them using their real licenses instead of their fake IDs. He ended up staying in town after discovering the unrequited feelings he had for his best friend were very much requited and they were now happily married.

Unfortunately, not everyone got that sort of rom-com HEA ending. And I hadn’t accidentally married my best friend one drunken night in Vegas. I accidentally cheated on the love of my life after giving her a promise ring.

I took a calming breath. “It’s fine,” I lied, maybe less convincingly than I’d hoped. “I’m more worried about Buddy than anything.”

Donovan nodded. “He’s tough. He’ll pull through.”

That should have been the end of it. But guys like Donovan could sense when a wound was still bleeding, and he didn’t let it drop. “If you need to talk,” he said, softer this time, “I’m around. Or just get drunk and punch the ocean. Whatever works.”

I tried to laugh, but it stuck in my throat.

The next hour blurred by in a carousel of small-town rituals: pool games, darts, a round of shots for old times’ sake. Even when I wasn’t watching them directly, I could feel Sadie and Gio circling just a little too close, like two magnets finally getting their chance. Sadie was different than she’d been in high school—her edges were sharper, her sense of humor dry as a bone—but I saw flashes of old warmth, it just wasn’t directed at me.

Maybe that’s what cut the deepest. I kept waiting for her to catch my eye, to share an old private joke or even just a look that said she remembered what we used to be. It never came.

When the last game wrapped and the Valentine crew and Damon headed to the bar to grab more drinks, Sadie announced she was calling it a night.

I caught Sadie as she reached for her bag. “Hey, you want a ride?” I tried to sound casual, like I offered people rides all the time, like it wasn’t my nerves talking.

She smiled, polite but distracted. “Thanks, I’m actually set. Gio’s going to take me.” She tilted her head, like she hoped it wouldn’t sting.

Gio appeared beside her, keys already in hand, his smile a little too wide to be innocent. “You still need a ride?”

Say no, I thought to myself. She nodded.

“See you guys later.” I lifted my hand in an awkward wave.

I watched them leave together, Gio’s hand at the small of her back like he belonged there. She turned once, catching my eye, and for a second, I thought she might come back, might say something. She didn’t. The moment slammed shut just like the door.

I stood in the hollow that followed, acutely aware of how much I didn’t fit here. My brother and friends were ordering shots, and I had zero desire to be out. The only reason I’d been here was gone. So, after waiting about ten minutes, I left.

The damp air outside hit me like a slap in the face as I walked to my truck in a fog, the weight of everything I hadn’t said pressing down on my chest. When I fired up the engine, I watched the bar’s neon sign flicker in the rearview, the words Cupid’s Arrow blinking out one letter at a time.

I drove home with the taste of jealousy in my mouth, and the image of Sadie and Gio burned behind my eyes.

11

A HUNDRED MILE DATING RADIUS

Sadie

The drive home from Cupid’s Arrow was longer than I remembered. Maybe because Gio seemed in no hurry, he let the car idle at every turn, as if he was determined to wring every minute from the night.

After what felt like an hour, but was only about ten minutes, Gio’s Audi rumbled down the private road to Lockhart Ranch. The radio played something low and bluesy, and every so often Gio would hum along, off-key and unbothered. It was almost midnight, the air still thick with the misty cold that never quite left the Oregon coast. I rolled the window down a few inches, letting the wind whip my hair against my face and sting my eyes, desperate for a little shock to the system.

Gio had kept the conversation light, like he always did. He’d told me a story about a patient who ordered a sex worker to his hospital room, the nurse caught them in the act, and the woman insisted that she get paid despite the interruption. Another patient ordered UberEats to his surgical suite, he was convinced he was going to die under the knife and wanted steak to be his last meal. I laughed at all the right places, Gio had always been entertaining, but my mind was still stuck on Dawson.

My skin prickled with the memory of Dawson’s hand on my wrist, the way his voice had dropped when he said my name and asked if I needed a ride. I told myself that was just the alcohol talking, but the truth was, Dawson Lockhart had a magnetism that bent everything in my life around him, even after all these years.

If I were being honest with myself, I wanted it to be Dawson’s truck I climbed into, wanted to see him gripping the steering wheel like it might snap in half. But I was terrified of what I’d do if that actually happened. It wasn’t just the old ache of wanting him, it was the new, dangerous certainty that I’d say or do something reckless. I watched the way he looked at me all night in the bar, the tension in his jaw, the heat in his eyes. There were things between us that had never been resolved, only buried under long silences and awkward avoidance.

I kept my gaze fixed out the window, watching the fog roll in thick sheets along the pastures. Sometimes I imagined Dawson was the fog, everywhere at once and impossible to escape, even when you tried your hardest.

“Was it nice catching up with everyone tonight?” Gio asked.

“Yeah, I can’t believe that Gen and Gavin are together,” I said, half-laughing, half-incredulous, my words cutting through the pop music playing from the speakers.

To be honest, I couldn’t believe Gio’s cousin Gen was with anyone. I never in a million years thought she’d settle down. She always talked about marriage and commitment like it was a death sentence.

“Apparently they’ve been hooking up since high school.” He glanced at me sidelong and drummed a rhythm on the steering wheel with his left hand.

“Really?” I shot him a look, the kind you give when you’re not sure if you’re being played. In the dark, his eyes were just reflections in the dash lights, but I could see the gleam of mischief.

“Yep,” he confirmed. “Gen told me they used to sneak out behind the boathouse after football games. At first, I thought she was just fucking with me.” He shrugged, his smile morphing into something more wistful. “But Gavin corroborated her story. I can’t believe they managed to keep it a secret for so long.”

“Same, that’s actually pretty impressive,” I agreed.

Valentine Bay had always felt like a petri dish, a place where every secret, every rumor, every mistake, was dissected under a microscope and grew into something larger than life.

We lapsed into an easy, companionable silence, one that I was grateful for. I focused on the way the headlights sliced through the fog, illuminating the white fencing and manicured hedges that marked the entrance to the ranch. Everything about Lockhart Ranch was exaggerated, almost cartoonish in its perfection—the glowing lanterns, the stone pillars, the rows of lavender marching up the drive. I knew that Dawson didn’t live here anymore, but I still felt like he did. I pictured him inside the house, waiting to ask why I had chosen Gio over him. Or maybe he was out in the barn, pretending to be too busy to care.

About halfway up the mile-long drive, Gio turned and cleared his throat. “How is it being back?” he asked, his tone careful.

I shrugged, then realized I hadn’t answered aloud. “Good, weird, but good.” I inhaled deeply and tried to expound on my response. “It’s like nothing’s changed and everything’s changed.”

The Audi’s headlights picked out the glint of the vineyard’s wire trellises, the endless rows of dormant vines as he turned toward the cabins. I could see the memory of a younger version of myself running those rows, chasing after a boy who never once slowed down to let me catch him.

Silence again, but not the comfortable kind this time. Gio’s gaze flicked to me, lingered for a beat. “Why’d you stay away so long? Is there a body buried somewhere you were running from?” He phrased it as a joke, but there was something raw underneath.

I hesitated as my mind considered my responses. I could feed him a platitude, tell him I was busy. I could tell him the truth, that I’d stayed away out of respect for Buddy because every single time he looked at me I knew it was like rubbing salt in the wounds of losing his Rosie and Rosebud. Or that I’d always known Dawson was my kryptonite, and if I came back and he asked me to stay, I would, so I hadn’t come back. But I didn’t say any of those things.

“I think I just needed space to figure out who I was without…” The rest trailed off. Without the ghost of my mom or this town telling me who I was, I thought, but didn’t say.

“Without Dawson?” Gio’s voice was gentle, but the question cut all the same.

I felt my cheeks burn, even in the dark. “No,” I shot back, but realized as I did that, I was lying, because there was some truth to that. I hadn’t known who I was without being Dawson and Sadie, Sadie and Dawson. “I just…I couldn’t breathe here. You know?”

Gio nodded, but didn’t push. That was his gift: knowing when to press and when to back off. He let the car coast to a stop outside the cabin Selma had moved me to after the Hope Falls guests had checked out, the engine idling quietly.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and reached for the door handle, but Gio touched my arm, feather-light. “Is it weird, me asking you to hang out while you’re here?”

“No.” I stopped, my hand hovering inches from the latch. “It wasn’t weird. I’ve known you my whole life.”

He took a steadying breath. “Would you maybe want to get dinner? Just the two of us. No Lockharts. No Valentines. No pressure.”

The question hung between us, heavier than I expected. For a wild second, I wanted to say yes. I’d liked the way Dawson had looked tonight, like he wanted to go to war over me. But there was no way I was going to use Gio as a pawn to make his best friend jealous. I wish I didn’t care what Dawson thought, or what he felt, but I couldn’t help it. Dawson was a living, breathing magnetic force that pulled every molecule of me in his direction, even when all my logic screamed to steer clear.

I shook my head, slow, regretful. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Gio gave a small, lopsided smile, but I could tell it stung. “Because of Dawson?”

I didn’t answer at first. I thought about all the ways I could lie—tell him it was work, or exhaustion, or Buddy, or the million other tiny obligations that never seemed to leave me alone. But I was so tired of pretending, so tired of holding my breath every time I thought about the past.

I nodded. “Yeah. It’s because of him.”

“So there is still something between you two?”

“I can’t speak for him,” I responded as diplomatically as I could.

Gio exhaled as a tiny grin appeared on his face. For the first time in my life, he seemed to be at a loss for words. The silence was clean, and sharp, and not as awful as I’d imagined.

“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it for everything—for the ride, for the friendship, for showing interest but still being respectful.

He smiled again, softer this time, then reached over to open my door from the inside, just like he used to do in high school before the world got complicated and we all learned to lock ourselves in. The dome light snapped on, painting his face in stark white.

“Thanks again.” I stepped out into the chilly night, the damp air immediately curling around my ankles, and closed the door with a gentle click. I glanced back once, and saw Gio’s silhouette in the driver’s seat, his head bowed in what I would assume was disappointment, although it looked like he was saying a prayer.

I took a deep breath and climbed the steps to the little guest cabin. I opened the door and paused at the threshold. When I looked back down the long drive, I saw Gio’s taillights turn at the main gate. I couldn’t help but notice the illumination of the main house, windows blazing against the inky black night sky like a beacon of golden light, a living diorama of the perfect family I’d never quite belonged to. It looked like some kind of fairytale—one I was only allowed to visit as a guest, never a resident. That’s how I’d always felt at the Lockhart Ranch, no matter how much Selma, Chuck, and Dawson’s brothers had tried to make me feel like family.

All my life I felt like an outsider looking in. Even at Buddy’s, I never felt like I really belonged, especially after my mom got sick and then was gone. I felt like an inconvenience more than anything else. I do have some memories of being close to my mom, but when she was sick, which was a lot of the time, I just needed to let her rest and stay away from her.

The only time I ever felt truly accepted was with Dawson. When I was with him, I never felt out of place or on the edges of things. It was one of the biggest things that had attracted me to him. His roots. His stability. He was my anchor in every storm, until he was the storm that is.

Trying to shake off those thoughts, I turned my attention to my surroundings to try and ground myself in the present. The cabin smelled like cedar and fresh linens. This was the cabin that I’d lost my virginity in. I wasn’t sure if Dawson had arranged for me to stay in it in hopes that I’d remember, or if it was just a coincidence. The place had definitely been upgraded since I’d been there as a teen when the ranch had more of a rustic vibe, now it was luxury. A king bed with one of those fake-fur throws, a stone fireplace that flickered on with a wall switch, even a little sitting area with an espresso machine.

After kicking off my shoes, the silence pressed in on me, a little too full after an evening of loud voices and clattering glasses at Cupid’s Arrow. I wandered from room to room, aimless and restless, picking at stray threads on the plush towels and reading the labels on the spa-sized shampoo bottles. I had this stupid nervous energy twisting through me, as if I’d just run a marathon instead of sitting in a bar all night actively avoiding speaking to the one person I actually wanted to talk to.

I checked my phone—two new messages, neither from Dawson. One was Abby Baxter saying it was good to see me, and the other was from Peter.

Out of all my friends growing up, I’d have to say I was probably closest to Abby. We’d bonded over the fact that we both lost our moms at a young age. She told me tonight that it felt like we’d Freaky Friday’d our lives.

Growing up, she’d always talked about wanting to move to New York, and I always talked about wanting to stay in Valentine Bay, run my family farm, get married, and settle down. She stayed in our hometown, was running her own business, and was engaged to be married. I moved to New York and had no prospects of settling down any time soon.

Case in point, Peter. I’d dated him for nearly a year and was in the process of breaking things off. He wasn’t taking it well. Or at least not giving up easily. I found that happened a lot with men who were used to getting their way, or who weren’t accustomed to rejection. I’d told him in no uncertain terms it was over, but it was like his brain couldn’t compute that someone would no longer be interested in him.

I set my phone down and tried to clear my mind and meditate. Lorenzo, my Uncle Ronnie’s partner used to do guided meditation, and whenever I felt over-stimulated or stressed, I did my best to follow his lead. Unfortunately, I sucked at it. My mind wandered to the girl talk I’d indulged in at the bar tonight.

The conversation at Cupid’s Arrow replayed in my mind, warped out of proportion by the silence of the guest cabin. I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled my knees up, hugging them tight, trying to squeeze some sense or comfort out of myself. Still, the words kept coming back to me—what Abby, Gen, and Ella had said, not in a single unguarded confession but in the little half-truths and loaded glances that women use when they’re protecting a friend. Growing up, I used to think the Lockhart brothers were more myth than men, like they were genetically engineered by the gods and set loose on the world to break hearts and then just keep walking, even in elementary school.

Dawson most of all. The oldest, the one who always knew the rules and how to bend them. The first to ride the wildest colt, the first to jump the highest fence, and—according to legend—the first to claim more than a few small-town girls’ first kisses under those old-growth oaks at the edge of the ranch’s horse pastures. In middle school, I’d been flattered when he picked me to be his girlfriend. I’d felt special every day, right up until the day it all fell apart.

But apparently, I wasn’t the last girl he made feel that way, or even the last in a very long, meticulously curated line. According to everything I’d heard tonight, he’d more than lived up to the “heartbreaker” moniker stamped on his letterman jacket at seventeen as a joke, but was apparently a warning label. Since I left, he’d apparently dated every single age-appropriate woman within a hundred-mile radius, including, but not limited to, Ella herself. They dated briefly five years prior. The way Gen had said it—“you’d think he was working the census”—made everyone laugh, but there was a nervousness beneath it too, like they were all waiting for me to react, to confirm that I wasn’t as destroyed by it as I maybe should have been.

I tried to imagine it: all those first dates at the Doyle’s Crab Shack, the slow dances at Harvest Festival, the inevitable parade of heartbreak and awkward run-ins at the grocery store, the lingering eye contact at the farmer’s market when Dawson strode in with his dog and his unshakable confidence and acted like nothing had ever gone wrong in his entire life. I pictured him with Ella, with her effortless beauty and easy laugh, and I could almost see it. I could see how simple it might have been for him to slip into someone else’s arms and build a new story from scratch, just like he’d built fences and barns and a future out of the unforgiving land.

But then I thought about the way he’d looked at me tonight—like he was starving, but also like he was angry at himself for still being hungry—and I wondered if he’d ever really let himself feel anything at all. Maybe all those dates were just more distractions, more proof that even after all this time, he was running from the same storm I was.

The thought made me feel special, in a way that was both pathetic and thrilling. I’d never wanted to be the girl who pined away for someone who didn’t pine back, but I also didn’t want to be the kind of person who pretended she was numb when really she was just bruised all the way through. I remembered the last time I saw Dawson before I left, the sick tension in his jaw, the way he’d refused to look me in the eye. Back then, I’d convinced myself it was guilt, but maybe it had just been self-preservation for both of us. Maybe we were just two people who didn’t know how to stop wanting each other, and so we did the only thing we could: we burned everything down and ran away from the ashes.

I wondered if he ever thought about me at all, or if I was just one more ghost haunting the ranch, a memory he’d boxed up and put away in the attic with all the other artifacts he accumulated in his life. I wondered if, when he ran his fingers over the smooth grain of a new fence post or surveyed the land from the back of a horse, he remembered the way we used to ride out together in the blue gold light of late summer, racing each other down the vineyards until our legs shook with the effort. I wondered if he ever stood at the edge of the creek and thought about the time we jumped in fully clothed, on a dare from Damon, and laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe. Or if he’d buried it all in the same place he’d buried whatever it was that kept him from calling me, from apologizing, from trying.

It was a dangerous line of thinking, but I couldn’t stop. I let my head drop back onto the pillow and stared up at the darkened ceiling, feeling the old familiar ache set in. I told myself I didn’t care about his dating history, that it didn’t matter if he’d moved on or not, that I was only here for a few days and then I’d be gone again, back to New York and my real life, where I was no one’s ghost and no one’s heartbreak. But every time I tried to let it go, it stuck in my mind like a splinter: the idea of him with someone else, the idea of him not being haunted at all. It was like there was a version of the story where the pain had all been mine alone, and I had never once considered the possibility that the scale might tip the other way.

My phone vibrated with a message, and my heart jumped into my throat. I grabbed it and saw another message from Peter telling me he needed to speak to me face-to-face.

I didn’t know why I expected Dawson to be texting me. Even when we were together, he wasn’t a texter. He was never the guy who poured his guts out in words. Maybe part of me was grasping at straws for proof that tonight had happened the way I experienced it. If he messaged me, then I would know I wasn’t delusional, and the charge between us was real and not just something I’d conjured out of nostalgia and cheap whiskey.

Gio’s text he’d sent letting me know he was off work was the third down on my screen, a silent reminder of what I could have chosen: comfort, history, simple friendship. But I could never do that to Dawson. Even though his actions had caused our breakup and he’d clearly moved on, I could never date his best friend. That would just be too weird. I put the phone back down and I flipped on the fireplace for ambiance, plugged the phone into my charger on the nightstand, and flopped onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling beams and fan, counting blade’s rotation hoping it would calm me.

The longer I lay there, the more it felt like the walls were closing in, so I got up and started pacing. Once, twice, then a dozen times from the window to the tiny kitchenette. I pulled open the fridge, found it crammed with sparkling water and those tiny cartons of half-and-half, and smiled to myself. Selma probably stocked it herself—she was always making sure everyone else was taken care of. I grabbed a can, popped the tab, took a single sip, then left it sweating on the counter. Nothing could touch the thirst I had tonight.

I wandered to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face, trying to study my own reflection. My skin was flushed, eyes a little glassy. I looked like a shell of myself, the girl who used to live in this town, drive these backroads, sneak kisses with Dawson behind the barn after chores. I didn’t recognize her, and I didn’t know if I missed her or not.

I unzipped my jeans and peeled them off, feeling the fatigue in every muscle as I pulled my shirt over my head. My clothes smelled like bar smoke and citrus, like the inside of a teenage dream gone sour. I tossed them into the hamper and stepped into the shower stall, turning the handle as far hot as it would allow. The water hammered down, steaming up the glass, the mirrors and my lungs. I stood there for a long time, arms wrapped around myself, forehead pressed to the cool tile, letting the spray raise goosebumps all along my arms and legs. I scrubbed my skin until it tingled, I washed my hair twice, stubbornly, as if I could rinse out everything I’d ever done wrong by sheer repetition.

But nothing washed away the way Dawson’s voice still echoed in my ears, the way his knuckles had grazed my wrist at the bar, or the way he’d looked at me across the heads of his brother and best friend—a look that felt like falling, like every rational bone in my body dissolving into want. It didn’t matter how many times I tried to convince myself otherwise: I was still that girl, the one who would have done anything for him, and maybe still would.

When I finally turned off the water, the silence was immediate, absolute. I toweled off, rubbing a little too hard, as if I could sandpaper myself into something new. I twisted my hair into a knot and shrugged into sweats and an old NYU t-shirt—one I’d snagged from Uncle Ronnie in New York before he moved to Florida. It still smelled faintly of the detergent my uncle used, all lavender and lemon, and the scent was so familiar it stung.

The little cabin was quieter than I remembered. The logs that made the walls were so thick they muffled every outside noise, turning the world into a soft, padded cocoon. I wandered from room to room, opening cabinets, touching the spines of the stacked books on the built-in shelves, smoothing my thumb over the worn leather of the armchair. There were touches of Selma everywhere—extra throw pillows, a half-melted pillar candle, a basket of magazines tied with twine. Even the fridge was full: a pitcher of cucumber water, mason jars of pre-cooked oats, and a tray of chocolate-dipped strawberries. The kindness of it made my chest ache.

I paced, restless, as if the cabin were a cage and I was trapped within it, unable to settle. I checked my phone again, as if by some trick of will I could conjure a message from him, a sign, anything. There was nothing new—just Peter’s increasingly desperate texts and a text from Janine that she’d email me in the morning.

I set the phone on the nightstand, screen down, and tried to focus on breathing, on letting my mind go blank. But the memories didn’t stop pressing in. I heard the echoes of laughter from the bar, the clink of glasses, the way Gen and Ella had eyed me sideways when Dawson’s name came up. I thought about how many women he’d been with since our last night together, and tried not to care, but the knowledge stung like a mouthful of salt.

That’s when I heard it: the knock.

It was soft, hesitant. The sound sent a jolt right through me, and for a brief moment I considered hiding, pretending I’d gone to sleep. But instead, I moved toward the door, my heart beating so hard I could feel it in my teeth.

I opened it, and standing on the porch, looking more handsome than should be legal was the man I’d spent the entire night avoiding, Dawson Lockhart, my personal heartbreaker.

12

CONFESSIONS OF A RECOVERING IDIOT

Dawson

“Hi.” Sadie’s voice registered a full octave higher than usual, and her eyes went wide, like she wasn’t sure if I was real or a hallucination conjured by the night. She was clearly surprised to see me. I didn’t blame her. I was surprised that I was here.

I’d tried to go home, to not think about Gio giving Sadie a ride home or whether or not she’d invited him in to hang out, but it had proved to be impossible. I only made it about ten minutes pacing in my house. The next thing I knew, I was in my truck heading over.

On the short drive, I’d half-convinced myself to turn back at every stop sign, every fork in the road. I had to admit I’d been relieved that Gio’s SUV wasn’t parked outside when I pulled up.

“Can I come in?” I asked, my voice barely audible over the distant crash of the surf.

She hesitated just a nanosecond—a blink, a catch of her breath—before stepping aside, pulling the door open enough for me to edge past. Her eyes tracked me the whole way, and I could feel the tension winding tighter with every step.

“Sure,” she said, “yeah, come on in.” Her tone was breezy, but there was an undercurrent to it. I tried not to read into it, but I read into everything. Always had.

The inside of the cabin was a thousand times nicer than it was pre-renovations. My mom had made serious upgrades, she couldn’t stand anything that looked lived-in for more than six months. There were fresh-cut flowers in a vase on the table, a new rug, scented candles flickering on the mantle. I could even smell something baking in the air—cinnamon? Cardamom? It felt less like a vacation rental and more like a spread from a home-and-garden magazine.

“Sorry for just showing up,” I apologized, my voice thick and raw with the magnitude of what I was doing. “I know it’s rude at this time of night.”

Sadie’s half-laugh slipped out before she could catch it, and for a split second we were sixteen again, sneaking out after curfew and thinking we were untouchable. “I think we crossed that line about fifteen years ago.” Her attempt at levity was so familiar it hurt.

I nodded, smiling along with her, though there was no humor in my chest, just a sort of trembling anticipation. I tried to act casual, glancing around the cabin, running a knuckle along the slick banister that led to the sleeping loft, pretending I wasn’t hyperaware of everything in this space. My mother’s decorating assault was almost a comfort, it was easier to focus on the new blue velvet couch, the cluster of plants on the coffee table, than the fact that I was now in a room alone with Sadie for the first time in years.

There was a silence, heavy and unyielding, like the kind at the end of a funeral—where you don’t know if you’re supposed to say something or just let it settle. I tried to fill it by clearing my throat. “I haven’t been in here in years,” I said, gesturing around as if it were a neutral topic.

“It’s beautiful,” she observed, looking around.

“Yeah, my mom’s a menace with Wayfair.”

That got a real laugh out of her, which relaxed my shoulders just enough for me to unstick my feet from the floor. I took a step deeper into the room, and my eyes drifted, almost inevitably, toward the big four-poster bed in the far corner. The bed was new—white linen, mountain of pillows, half the size of a trampoline—but the bones of the room were the same. The memory of the old mattress, the creak of the headboard…

Sadie caught me looking. Or maybe she was already looking, and we’d just met eyes at the same moment, both following the same thread of memory. Her cheeks flared red, so fast and so deep it made her freckles stand out even more. “Wait… is this the room… the room that we—” I started, then stopped. The words were too much, too direct, but they were out there anyway.

She had the grace to finish the sentence, eyes fixed on the rug. “Yeah. It is,” she said, and the words heavy as a lead blanket.

She drew a breath that seemed to hurt on the way in and glanced up at me through lashes so long they threw shadows on her cheekbones. The air between us shifted, all the oxygen turning to something bright and dangerous. For a second, the years between us just—evaporated. All I could see was us, back then: two people who didn’t know they could ever lose each other.

When people say a room is charged, I don’t think they know what it’s like to stand in a place where someone you loved once stripped you down to your bones. Where the walls themselves remember, even if you try to forget. The bed wasn’t the same, but the energy was. My heart was pounding so hard it felt like my ribs were going to crack right through my chest. It was like the air had gone from fog-chilled to white lightning, and all I could smell was the ghost of Sadie’s skin from that night years ago.

“I thought you—so, wait, you didn’t…” Her voice trailed off, like she was embarrassed to ask.

“No, I had nothing to do with putting you in here,” I said. “That was all my mom.” I tried to sound casual, but every word was a test of willpower. “I swear, I didn’t plan this. But, uh… she always liked having you close by.”

“You don’t think she knows, does she?” Her face was so red now I thought she might actually faint.

“No, there’s no way.” Our first time was a secret. My parents had been at a wine growers’ conference in Napa, my younger brothers were at baseball camp, Dean was at a computer camp, and I’d managed to convince Sadie to tell Buddy she was staying at Abby’s. I’d set up the whole place with candles and cheap wine from the main house, thinking I was the world’s most romantic guy. I’d never felt more alive or more certain about anything in my life.

Thinking about it now, I wanted to crawl into the floorboards and dissolve. But also, there was a part of me—buried deep, under all the layers of pain and regret—that just wanted to rewind to that night and do it all again. Only better. Only with a future.

“Listen, I just wanted to—” I started, trying to steer this somewhere, anywhere.

“Can I get you something to—” she said at the same time.

We both froze, then laughed, the sound overlapping so perfectly it felt rehearsed.

“I was just asking if you wanted something to drink,” she said, her voice a little steadier now, though her hand was still trembling on the countertop. She was trying so hard to act normal, but I could see the effort it cost her, the way her shoulders hunched just a little more every time we were in the same room.

I shook my head, smiling in spite of myself. “I’m good, but thanks.” I took a deep breath. “I just wanted to come by because, well, first, to give you this.” I pulled out the keys to Herbie.

Sadie’s hand hovered over the key ring for a moment, her fingers twitching before she finally pinched it between thumb and forefinger. She stared at them as if I’d handed her some rare, radioactive element, something she wasn’t sure she was allowed to touch.

“Why are you giving me these?” she asked, and there was a wrinkle between her brows that hadn’t been there a second before, not even when she’d opened the door and found me on her porch.

I waited, letting the silence stretch, then said, “I got him running again. Well, Damon and I did.” I managed a sheepish smile. “I can take you to pick him up tomorrow. If you want.”

For a second I thought she might cry, which would’ve been a disaster, because I had no idea what to do with Sadie’s tears except to try to make them stop, and that was the last thing in the world I’d ever been able to do. Instead, she just blinked at me, her eyes searching my face for some angle or catch, like this was a test I was planning to spring on her.

“You did?” The words sounded like they’d been ground down and sharpened before leaving her throat.

I nodded.

Her gaze didn’t budge. “Why? Why would you do that?” She was holding the keys so tightly now that the skin on her knuckles shone. “How much do I owe you?”

“Because it needed to be fixed.” I shrugged, trying not to let my voice go soft. “And nothing. You don’t owe me anything.”

This seemed to short-circuit her a little. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. I could sense her mental calculation, the way she tracked every gesture, every word, weighing it against the years we’d lost. I wondered if she suspected an ulterior motive, or if she simply couldn’t understand a favor without a price attached. The way she looked at me, I realized she genuinely wasn’t expecting kindness, not from me, not after everything.

It amazed me that Sadie seemed so shocked by my actions. Was she actually that clueless about how I felt? How could she be? We hadn’t spoken face to face, but I’d poured out my heart to her in those letters.

Her phone vibrated on the edge of the table, screen lighting up with an incoming call. She glanced down at it, her hand curling reflexively around the device. I didn’t even have to ask. My mind immediately wondered if it was my “best friend” calling. The urge to blurt out the question I had in my mind was a live wire in my mouth, but I bit down on it before it could spark.

Whoever it was, she thumbed the call away without even reading the name, and the phone went dark. The air between us thickened, as if we’d both inhaled at the same time and were waiting to see who exhaled first.

“Can I sit?” I asked, nodding at the two armchairs that flanked the fireplace, which was flickering with life. They were upholstered in the same blue velvet as the love seat, the kind that left trails when you ran your hand over it.

She bit her lip, and I braced myself for the answer to be a hard no. Instead, she nodded, almost imperceptibly, then crossed the room ahead of me and folded herself into one of the two chairs. I sat opposite, perching on the very edge.

There we were, staring at the hearth.

The silence felt engineered, like we were both afraid to disturb it. I realized I was clenching and unclenching my fists in my lap and stopped. Sadie tucked her legs underneath her, tensed and wary, like a deer ready to bolt.

I wanted to say something, anything, but my thoughts felt slippery and unsafe. I’d rehearsed a hundred speeches in my head on the way over, but being here, none of them seemed right. I thought about the first time I’d ever seen Sadie cry: we were eleven, and a kid threw her backpack in the trash after gym class. She’d tried to play it off, to laugh with everyone else, but when I found her behind the bleachers, she’d been quietly tearing notebook paper into little squares and stacking them into a neat pile on the blacktop. It was the saddest thing I’d ever seen, and the most beautiful. She wasn’t crying, but when I walked up and asked if she was okay, tears began to stream down her face. I found out later it was really because her mom was so sick. I’d told her it was going to be okay, and from that moment on, I’d appointed myself as her unofficial protector.

I was failing miserably at that now.

“What happened after graduation—” she began, her voice surprisingly even, as if she’d been rehearsing this confrontation for years. Maybe she had.

“We don’t have to talk—” I said, jumping in at the same instant. The words collided awkwardly in the space between us, a microcosm of every stupid, failed attempt I’d made to fix things with Sadie.

She inhaled a slow steadying breath. “You go first.”

I exhaled, bracing myself. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, and I’m sure you’re tired of hearing me apologize.”

Her brow crinkled in the way it always did when she was trying to add up a sum that refused to come out even. I’d watched her make that same face a hundred times, over algebra homework or when she was folding her laundry and couldn’t find her matching socks. I almost smiled, but then the reality of the conversation yanked me back.

“I just wanted you to know that everything I said in the letters was true. I—I don’t know what happened that night. I was drinking, and then I woke up next to Vicki.” I watched her face for a flicker of an unnamed emotion, but she was a study in deliberate composure.

She stared at me like I’d started speaking a different language. “Wait, what letters?”

I blinked. For a second I was sure she was screwing with me, like this was a setup. “What do you mean, what letters?”

She lifted her arms, holding her hands upward in explanation. If she was talking with her hands, this was getting serious. “I mean, what letters? I never got any letters from you. You sent me letters?”

I hesitated, my mind flipping back through years of half-remembered nights, unsent envelopes, the feeling of my words going out into the void with nowhere to land.

My heart sank to the floor. “No, I didn’t send them to you. I had no way of knowing where you were. I gave them to Buddy, who told me he’d get them to you.”

“When? When did you give him letters?”

“I wrote you for years after you left.”

All the color drained from her face. “Years?”

“You blocked me on everything,” I said, hearing the defensiveness in my voice and hating it. “It was the only way I could communicate with you. Buddy really didn’t send you the letters?”

Sadie shook her head again, and this time it was nearly imperceptible.

The implications of it hit me like a physical force. Buddy loved me, or at least he always said he did. Why would he lie? Why would he keep my letters from her? Unless—unless he thought he was protecting her. Maybe the version of me he’d wanted to believe in didn’t exist, and he’d decided it was better to let Sadie hate me from a distance than to risk her ever coming back.

I had to sit with that for a second, because the image of Buddy as the villain in my story didn’t make sense. He was the guy who taught me how to drive stick and who stood up for me in the middle of the supermarket when Mrs. Hershel accused me of shoplifting. That just didn’t make any sense to me. Buddy loved me, or at least he always said he did. “Why would Buddy tell me he was sending them to you, if he wasn’t?”

“You really wrote to me?” Sadie asked again, as if she were trying to force the pieces into place.

“Yes.” The word was so simple, but it felt like an exhale after a year underwater.

She pressed her lips together, the muscles in her jaw flexing as she processed it. “What did the letters say?”

It was hard even to pick a place to start. How could I summarize what I’d written in those letters, hundreds of pages, poured over late at night, sometimes in despair, sometimes in ache, always with this weird hope that she’d somehow read them and call me, or show up at my door and say she understood?

“There were a lot of them.” I sighed, rubbing my thumb over my palm like I could read the words there. “I said a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

I wanted to tell her the truth, but it was ugly and raw, and I was afraid it would only make things worse. But she deserved the truth, and I owed her more than the thousand half-truths I’d leaned on for years.

I wasn’t sure what I saw in her eyes. Was it hope, or maybe that was just me projecting onto her.

“I said I loved you. That I always would. That I was sorry.” I paused, searching her face for any sign that I’d crossed a line. “I told you that I honestly didn’t remember anything that happened. I was drinking with Donovan and Gio, and then I woke up in bed with Vicki. I know that doesn’t excuse what happened, but it is the truth. I was so sure you’d never want to hear from me again, but I wrote anyway.”

“Wait…What do you mean you didn’t remember anything that happened? You were that drunk?” Her voice was a mixture of accusation and concern, and even now, she was still trying to figure out how to rescue me from myself.

I shook my head, the memory rushing back: the taste of cheap beer, the music pounding so loud I could feel it in my teeth, the blur of faces at the party. “No, I didn’t even drink that much. I only had a few beers. I don’t know how it happened. It was like…I blacked out after just a couple drinks. It never happened to me before or since, not like that.”

She pulled her knees up to her chest in the chair. “Why didn’t you tell me that? At the time, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. I guess…I didn’t think it mattered,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “I was so out of it when I woke up, and then I went to see you, and I guess I just didn’t think it would change anything. And then you were gone. Does it? Does it change anything?”

We sat in suspended silence. It was like the whole cabin was holding its breath. The fire in the hearth snapped, but otherwise the world felt perfectly, unbearably still.

I could see the battle going on in Sadie’s eyes. She was always too smart for her own good, and I knew she was doing the math, adding up all the possibilities, all the whys and maybes and what-ifs. She’d always believed in facts, in logic, in evidence. I’d never been able to give her that. All I had were feelings, and even those I’d botched up beyond recognition.

Normally, I wouldn’t push her on the subject, but right now, I had to know.

“Does it change anything?” I repeated the question, unable to contain the desperation in my voice.

She looked at me for a long time, her eyes skating over my face, searching for the cracks where the truth might leak through. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “But it makes more sense, I guess. All this time, I thought you just cheated on me and then didn’t care. Like I was disposable.”

“No, never. That was never true,” I blurted, the urge to reach out and take her hand nearly overwhelming. “You were the only thing I ever wanted.”

She laughed, but it was a fragile sound. “You have a real talent for saying the exact thing I want to hear like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, when it’s anything but.”

“It’s a gift,” I deadpanned, hoping to lighten the mood.

It worked. A smile spread on her face as she shook her head back and forth, and I knew in that moment that I would do whatever it took, make whatever sacrifice needed to be made, to be the man who had the privilege of making Sadie Rose Shepard smile every day for the rest of her life.

13

DEAR SELF-CONTROL, WE HAD A GOOD RUN

Sadie

The information that I’d just heard was a lot. He wrote letters. He had no memory of what happened that night. He only wanted me.

I was so overwhelmed. Had the past twelve years of my life been based on a lie? If he didn’t remember sleeping with Vicki, did that mean it didn’t happen?

A part of me, a large part consisting of my heart and hormones, wanted to believe him. I wanted that more than anything. But another part, my head, was saying that it didn’t matter. We both had our own lives now. Lives that we would both be returning to as soon as Buddy was better. I couldn’t get my heart broken all over again.

Out of sheer self-preservation, I cleared my throat and stood, Dawson followed my lead. I took a deep breath and said, “It’s, um…getting late. I think you should go.”

He made no attempt to move, just kept standing there, hands hanging loose at his sides, like he was waiting for me to say something more, but I thought I’d been pretty clear.

The room felt small, like the heat from the fireplace had swelled up and filled all the extra air with atmospheric charge. I didn’t trust myself to say another word, not after the way my chest had caved and then expanded with an emotion too terrifying to name when he told me he had no memory of the night he cheated on me. That he’d written to me for years. That he only wanted me and still did. Each word had chipped away another layer of the armor I’d spent over a decade assembling, leaving me too raw, too vulnerable, too full of all the feelings I’d tried to drown.

I waited for him to leave, but he just kept standing there, and then he said it, “I never stopped loving you, Sadie. Not even for a second.”

It came out battered and delicate at the same time, like he’d been practicing it all these years and was still afraid it would break in the air between us. He took a step closer, let his palm hover by my cheek but didn’t dare touch me. My insides screamed at me to run. Instead, I tilted my chin up and stared at him with all the bravado I could summon.

He bent his head down, slow—so slow I could have stopped him if I wanted to. I didn’t. His mouth crashed onto mine, and it was like being hit by a tidal wave. The years didn’t just melt away, they caught fire, ignited by the scrape of his stubble and the taste of whiskey and the utter devastation in the way he kissed me. He pulled me in so tight that I could barely breathe, but I didn’t care, I just wrapped my arms under his and clawed at the broad muscles of his back, like maybe if I dug hard enough, I could excavate the boy I used to love from the man who was holding me.

The kiss started soft, chaste even, but there was a desperation to it, a need that neither of us had bothered hiding. His tongue swept into my mouth and all at once my body remembered everything, how his hands used to span my waist, how he’d laugh into my neck after sneaking into my bedroom window, how he’d pull my knees over his shoulders as he devoured me whole. I melted, shameless, into the press of his chest. He made a sound in the back of his throat, something almost like pain, and I heard myself whimper in response.

He backed us up toward the bed, never breaking the kiss, his hands digging into my hips and lifting me like I weighed absolutely nothing. My ass hit the mattress, and he peeled himself away just long enough to strip off my T-shirt, his knuckles brushing the undersides of my breasts and making me shudder. I reached for him and tried to tug his shirt over his head, but it was tight on his shoulders, and he had to help me, yanking it off and tossing it somewhere behind him. In the firelight, his skin looked even darker, slicked with sweat. I ran my hands over his chest and felt the wild drumbeat of his heart.

He pushed me back on the bed and knelt between my legs, his fingers finding the tie of my sweatpants and jerking hard until it gave. I chuckled, but he didn’t—he just stared at me, every muscle in his jaw working like he was holding back from saying something dangerous. He slid the pants down my legs, along with my underwear, until I was naked. He didn’t waste time with it, just nuzzled his mouth around my nipple, sucking so hard I could have sworn it might bruise.

My whole body jerked like a live wire. His hands gripped my thighs, spreading them open with the easy force of someone who knew every inch of me.

I let my head flop back and dug my fingers into his hair, surprised at how familiar it was—the exact texture, the way it curled behind his ears, the way I could twist it in my fists, and he would grunt in pleasure. He licked, sucked, and nipped at my breasts, taking his time, like he was memorizing me all over again. It was almost too much and not enough, all at once.

When he finally hovered above me, staring down into my face, I saw everything. The grief, the guilt, the anger, the aching, the relentless love. It was like drowning and being rescued at the same time. I reached up and pulled him down to me, rolling my hips against the hard length of him through his jeans. He groaned, low and guttural, as I raked my nails down his back.

For a heartbeat, I froze, just blinking up at him, stunned at how easily I’d let him strip me bare, at how much I wanted him to. Then instinct surged up, and I was all hands, fumbling at the thick buckle of his belt, popping it free, tugging at the metal teeth of his zipper until it groaned its surrender. He had to help me shove his jeans down his legs, then he kicked them off with a grunt that sent a shockwave straight through me. For maybe a second, we just stared at each other, naked and lit up by the glow of the fire, every scar and freckle and memory laid out between us.

He sucked in a shaky breath and rasped, “Fuck, Sadie.” The words were barely words, more like a prayer or a warning. He traced the slope of my waist with both hands, like he was mapping out all the places he’d missed, then lowered his head and caught my nipple between his lips once again.

My entire body went rigid, then molten, as he licked and sucked, switched to the other side, and grazed it gently with his teeth. He made these little sounds—growling, almost—each one vibrating through my ribs and down my spine. My hands clamped onto his hair, and I dragged him closer, like if I didn’t, I’d float away.

He crawled back up my body, every inch of him deliciously hard and hot. He flicked his tongue along my jaw and murmured my name like it was an apology. I could feel his cock, hot and heavy, sliding against my thigh. The friction sent a bolt of electricity through my core, and I arched my back, desperate for more. He rocked against me, teasing, his shaft rubbing against my slick heat but never quite entering.

I gasped, and he grinned into my skin, the edge of his stubble scraping me raw. My legs wrapped around his waist, his steel-hard arousal pressed fully to my sex. I rocked my hips into the sensation, loving the feeling of him as his erection glided along my slick folds.

Desperation surged in me. I needed him to feel the urgency that was overwhelming me. He was too in control. Too contained. Needing to bring him closer to the brink, I spit on my palm, reached between us, and wrapped my fingers around his girth. I began to stroke him, slow at first, just to feel the pulse and heft of him. When his body tensed with pleasure, I tightened my grip and moved my hand faster, matching the rhythm of my heart. He hissed and bucked into my fist, but he didn’t let me have control instead, he continued peppering my body with open-mouth kisses, catching my bottom lip and biting it softly as he hovered over me. I wanted him inside me so badly it hurt, but he didn’t rush. He pressed his forehead to mine and breathed me in, like he needed to memorize every second of our encounter.

“I never wanted anyone but you,” he said, voice shredded and raw. “Not ever. No matter what you think, Sadie. No matter what happened.”

The words hit me harder than the act of sex ever could. I’d never cried during moments like this, but my eyes burned with unshed tears. I thought about all the time we’d lost, the years I’d spent hating him, hating myself for still wanting him. Blaming him and then myself for leaving and never coming back, how it had always been easier to build walls than to let him back in. But now he was here, the real him, solid and relentless and so, so gentle, and I knew I was about to break.

His right hand cupped the back of my head, held me steady, and kissed me again. This time it was slow, almost reverent, like he was making up for every second we’d been apart. His other hand slid down my body, fingers tracing the seam of my thigh, then dipping between my legs. He ran his thumb up my slit, lazy and unhurried, collecting the evidence of just how much I wanted him. Then he dipped two fingers inside, curling them in a way that made me see stars. I moaned into his mouth, not caring how desperate I sounded.

He worked me open, fingers pushing deeper, then retreating to circle my clit, then back inside. I was so wet it made a lewd sound every time he moved, but I didn’t care. He broke our kiss to watch my face. He studied every twitch and gasp, adjusting his rhythm until I was panting and clawing at his back, on the brink of losing control. I threw my head back and closed my eyes as the pleasure in my core built to nearly intolerable levels.

I continued stroking him as he kissed my eyelids, my temple, my jaw, and whispered, “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed how good you feel. How wet I make you.”

His words caused my body to clench around his fingers and his shaft to swell in my palm. I was so close it scared me. I rocked my hips up to meet his hand and bit down on his shoulder, needing something to ground myself. He pumped his fingers faster, then slowed down just to tease, taking me right to the edge and then backing off. I let go of his cock long enough to grab his wrist, trying to force him to touch me where I needed him most, but he just chuckled and shook his head.

“Not like this,” he murmured. “I want to taste you first.”

I was about to argue when he slid down my body and settled between my thighs, pressing them open, wider, until I felt like I was split apart.

He didn’t rush, just stared at me, eyes dark with lust, and whispered, “You’re perfect.” Then he kissed my inner thigh, dragged his tongue up the inside until he found my clit, and flicked it, gentle at first, then harder, then he covered my sex with his lips and sucked it into his mouth like he was starving.

I nearly came off the bed. I gasped and he moaned, a deep moan from his chest that vibrated through his tongue and lips making the sensation even better. He buried his face between my legs, licking and sucking and devouring me, never breaking eye contact when I dared to look down. He added his fingers back into the mix, thrusting them deep and curling them just so, and then I lost it.

My whole body seized up, every muscle locking tight as bliss shot from my core through every single limb as I called out his name. I felt like I was falling, like I’d jumped off a cliff and there was no way to stop myself. He didn’t let up, not even when I was shaking and twisting away, not until he’d wrung every last spasm from my body. Once my entire body went limp, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then crawled up to lie beside me, gathering me into his arms.

He kissed my forehead, then my cheek, then my mouth, and I could taste myself on his lips. “You okay?” he asked, the concern dripping from the words as if he’d just saved me from drowning, not given me the best climax of my life.

I managed to nod, and as I lay there floating in post-orgasmic bliss, the only thing I could think of was that this was not enough, I wanted more. More time. More intimacy. More Dawson.

14

WALK BACKWARD INTO HELL

Dawson

The room glowed with the warmth of the fireplace, every surface gilded gold, but none of it compared to the impossible heat of the woman in my arms. She curled against my side, her head tucked under my chin, and for the first time in years I was at peace—not the forced calm I wore for the world, but a shattering, soul-deep relief. I pressed my lips to the top of Sadie’s head, breathing in the unique floral scent of her hair, and for a suspended moment, I almost believed I deserved this.

Her hand moved idly, mapping the planes of my chest with slow, delicate sweeps, fingers catching in the scattering of hair near my sternum. I could count on one hand the number of people who’d ever touched me like this: not with want, not even with need, but with wonder. Like she’d never expected to find herself here, like “here” was the only place she’d wanted to be.

I tried to tell her she didn’t have to do anything she wasn’t ready for, that she owed me nothing. That this was enough, more than enough. But the words jammed up in my throat, all the things I’d rehearsed for years fracturing into fragments, and what came out was so gruff and halting that I almost winced at myself.

“Sadie,” I managed. “This is…you…we don’t have to⁠—”

She stilled instantly, her hand flattening over my heart. The rhythm under her palm wobbled, then steadied. She tipped her head up, catching my gaze with a quiet intensity. Her lashes made dramatic shadows on her cheekbones in the firelight. For a second, I thought I’d broken the spell, ruined it, just like I’d ruined everything else between us.

But instead of recoiling, she let out a slow, steadying breath, and her lips curled up in a knowing grin as if she’d been expecting my self-sabotage. “I know,” she said, voice low and calm. “I know we don’t have to.” Her thumb moved in a tight, soothing circle, right over the spot where my chest threatened to come apart under her touch. “But what if I want to?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. I’d spent so many years shoring up defenses against the idea that she could ever want me again that the possibility left me speechless. I was supposed to be in control here—the steady one, the protector, the guy who took her apart with just a look, a touch—but she’d always had the power to flip the script. Even now, when she was soft and vulnerable in my arms, she was the one holding the switch.

“Are you sure?” I asked, searching every angle of her face for any sign of hesitation. If there were even a flicker of doubt—if she wanted to stop, if she needed air, if she realized this wasn’t right—I’d leave. I would have walked backward into hell for her, just to keep her safe from another mistake, especially one she might regret in the morning.

The firelight illuminated her features, making it impossible to hide her feelings. She looked at me with an intensity that made my chest ache, lips twitching at the corners like she held a long-kept secret. She kept her gaze caged on mine, and then, so fluidly it might have been a dream, she shifted, rolling up and over me in one practiced, graceful move. Her thighs slid around my hips, and she perched above me, knees planted in the deep cradle of the down comforter, her hair a silken curtain that fell around us like the walls of some private tent. For a second, she just sat there, suspended above me, her eyes locked to mine, radiating so much certainty it felt like the world had righted itself. With a wicked deliberation that felt almost ceremonial, she traced my jaw with her knuckles, then lowered her mouth to mine—hard, claiming, no room for doubt or retreat.

“Yes,” she whispered, and nipped at my bottom lip, triggering a groan I didn’t even try to suppress. “I’m very sure.”

Her hands clutched my shoulders, featherlight, but there was nothing gentle about the way she kissed me. It was wild and fierce and hungry. She licked into my mouth, her tongue tangling with mine, and I opened to her, helpless against the onslaught. Her nails scraped down the hard slope of my chest, leaving trails that burned even after she moved on, and I gasped into her mouth. When she broke away, she hovered over me, chest heaving, lips parted and wet, and the look in her eyes,—holy hell, I could drown in it.

I reached up and cupped her hips. My fingers dug in as she rolled her body. Her eyes locked on mine. She shifted forward, and I saw the flush on her cheeks. I felt how desperately she wanted me. She lifted her hips, and the friction of her sex gliding against my cock made me see stars. I was already painfully hard, my engorged tip was throbbing. I could feel the heat radiating off her core. She rocked her hips again, slow and deliberate, watching me intently, the way my hands dug into her flesh and my jaw ticked. She was teasing me, re-learning me, and I fucking loved it.

With her hands braced on my chest, her breasts swayed, nipples pebbled and flushed. She reached between us and wrapped her fingers around my base. The contrast of her soft skin and my aching heat made me moan. She stroked me with slow, measured pulls, her eyes fixed on mine, like she was watching every second of my unraveling. I bucked up, desperate for more, but she just smiled, clearly enjoying the sensual torture she was inflicting on me.

Then, without warning, she rose up, holding me with one hand as she lined my crown to her opening. Her seam spasmed against my head. Her eyes stayed locked on mine as she took me inside her, inch by excruciating inch. I watched as she impaled herself on me in one greedy, perfect plunge. My shaft disappeared inside of her tight canal, her walls fluttered around my girth. The sensation knocked the air from my lungs. Her gasp became my groan, and I clutched her hips so hard my knuckles whitened.

After forcing herself all the way down, she stilled, allowing her body to adjust to my size. It had been so long since I’d had sex with no protection, my body was pinging with bliss. When we were together as teenagers she was on the pill, so we hadn’t used condoms, but as an adult in other relationships, I’d never taken the chance. But this was Sadie. The love of my life. My soulmate. The person I thought I was going to grow old with.

She moved on top of me, setting the rhythm that had her moans growing louder and her arousal coating my shaft. I watched as she pumped up and down, taking her own pleasure. I held her hip in place with one hand and the other I moved to her beautiful breast. I squeezed and kneaded her flesh, pinching and teasing her nipples exactly the way that used to drive her crazy.

When I did, her sex clamped down on me, which only heightened the experience. As she continued to ride me, her thighs began to shake and I sensed it wasn’t due to her being close to the edge, it was from her muscles being tired.

I pushed up to a seated position, threaded my arm around her lower back, and pulled her body close to me so her bare breasts were flush against my chest. Her legs automatically wrapped around my waist, and she rolled her hips, grinding into me.

Her hands gripped my shoulders, her nails digging into my flesh. She nuzzled her face into my neck. The heat of her breath fanned down my body, and somehow all the years that we’d been apart just disappeared. It was like no time had passed at all. We were together again, all the feelings I’d tried to suppress, tried to deny, tried to ignore were back in full force.

My hand spread over her ass cheek and I squeezed her plump flesh, guiding her movements as she ground her hips against me. As we moved together, I could feel her body beginning to build to her release. Her velvet tunnel clenched around me as her breaths came in shorter and shorter pants. Knowing exactly what she needed to get her up and over the edge.

I flipped her onto her back in one swift movement, her wild hair fanning across the pillow as I pinned her wrists above her head. Our breaths did battle, hers sharp and startled, mine a guttural rasp that burned the air between us. She didn’t struggle, she just looked up at me, eyes wide with equal parts hunger and trust. The way she surrendered to my strength sent a jolt of primal satisfaction through my veins. For a heartbeat I simply stared down at her, taking in the undiluted need on her face, memorizing the flush that painted her cheeks, the way her lips parted in anticipation.

Then I hooked my hand behind her knee and dragged her thigh up around my waist, opening her to me completely. I pressed myself against her slick heat, teasing her entrance with the swollen head of my cock. Her hips arched up, and she made a needy sound that threatened to shatter my self-control. But I was determined to make this last, to draw out every ounce of desperation that had lived between us for years.

I sank into her in a single, slow stroke, filling her completely. She clenched around me, her body eager and greedy, and the pleasure hit me so hard I nearly collapsed. Instead, I held her down, my palm flattening over the delicate bones of her wrists, and began to thrust. Not at a frantic pace, but a measured, relentless rhythm that made her whimper and gasp with every movement. I watched her face the whole time, reading every flicker of sensation, every bite of her lip, every fluttering eyelash. The firelight painted her skin in shifting golds and shadows, and I wanted to burn these images into my memory, to hoard them for the dark mornings I knew would come.

She tried to kiss me, but I wanted to watch her when she came, wanted to see the pleasure play out on her beautiful face. But I broke when she whispered my name as though it was an invocation. I rewarded her with a bruising kiss, tongue deep and possessive. I chased her moans with my mouth, swallowing every sound, feeling them reverberate down to my bones. Her legs wrapped tighter around me, ankles crossed at my lower back, and she rolled her hips in time with my pumps, meeting me stroke for stroke. We were locked together in a loop of friction and wet heat, lost to everything but the storm of want and the relief of finally, finally, being inside each other again.

Her breath started to hitch, her muscles trembling beneath my grip. I could feel her getting close, the way her walls fluttered and clamped, the flush creeping down her chest and the desperate arch of her back. I released her wrists and tangled my fingers in her hair, pulling her head back so I could watch her as she came apart. My other hand found her breast, thumb circling the tight peak, and the extra stimulation sent her spiraling.

I could feel her core tighten around me, and I know she’s close. “Come for me,” I whisper, voice raw. “Let go, Sadie. Right here with me.”

She cried out, nails digging into my shoulders as her climax tore through her. The sensation of her pulsing around me was too much, and I let myself go with a low, feral growl, thrusting hard as I emptied myself inside her, every muscle drawn tight in blinding ecstasy.

When the last aftershock subsided, I rolled onto my back, so I didn’t crush her, and we recovered together, panting, sweat slick on skin, the fire crackling beside our tangled limbs. I smoothed my hand down the length of her spine, tracing every vertebra, committing it to memory. She trembled, but I knew it wasn’t from cold, it was the same shock that still rattled through me.

I’d replayed our times together a thousand ways in my head, but the memory didn’t live up to the reality of the way her body fit with mine, how even in exhaustion her touch felt urgent, necessary. I was terrified to let her go, half-convinced that if I loosened my grip she’d disappear, fade back into the cruel reality where I woke up alone every morning.

The thought caused me to tighten my hold on her, crushing her against me, her head resting on my chest just below my chin. I kissed the crown of her head, inhaling the sweet, fruity aroma of her, losing myself in the simple miracle of holding her again.

We lay like that for a long time, the fire popping softly and casting shadows on the walls. I felt her breathing slow, her body relaxing by degrees as the adrenaline ebbed away. I almost said something, but the words jammed in my throat. What could I possibly say that wouldn’t ruin this? So I just held her, my hand splayed over her back, my lips moving against the crown of her head in a silent prayer of gratitude and regret.

Eventually, she shifted in my arms, lifting her head so she was looking up at me. Her eyes were lit by firelight, serious and soft all at once. I didn’t know if she was going to slap me or kiss me, but I would have taken either to be with her. She ran her fingers over my jaw, her touch featherlight but somehow searing.

“You still want me to go?” I whispered, the words scraping past the lump in my throat.

She shook her head and blinked once, slow, like she was seeing me for the first time. “Stay,” she whispered. “Just for tonight.”

I said nothing, just crushed her to me, desperate to keep her as close as physically possible, to let my body do the talking where words had always betrayed me. She tucked her face into my neck, her hair brushing my jaw, breathing me in. The ache in my chest morphed into something softer, almost sweet, like maybe the two of us could survive the world if we stayed right here, suspended in this little pocket of forever.

I pressed my lips to her forehead, her temple, her eyelids. “Anything you want,” I promised, and I meant it. I would do anything she wanted.

She made a small, content sound and curled herself into my side, her hand drifting over my chest in slow, lazy circles. Her touch was different now, less urgent, more like a benediction. She traced the lines of old scars, the bones under my skin, as if reacquainting herself with the map she used to know by heart. I kept my hand on her hip, anchoring her to me, refusing to let the moment slip away.

We lay in silence, letting the fire lull us into a kind of peace. It felt like the world outside had stopped, the storm paused at our door, the past and future waiting out in the hallway. There was only the soft click of embers and the cadence of her breath against my chest.

Eventually, her breathing evened out, her body melting into mine as she drifted toward sleep. I didn’t dare move. I watched the shadows crawl across the ceiling, listening to her tiny, unconscious noises, the way her fingers would clench and release against my skin. I thought about all the nights I’d spent alone, haunted by the ghost of her. All the women who’d tried to fill the Sadie-shaped hole in me, and how none of them ever stood a chance.

15

WEARING THIS MANURE

Dawson

Iwas up before the sun, boots on the packed-dirt floors of the main stables, pitchfork in hand. The horses had already started kicking up a fuss, high-strung, sensitive creatures that could sense the mood of a man from a mile off, and mine was scattered enough to have them all side-eyeing me as I mucked out the stalls. I worked fast, pushing through the brain fog and the aftertaste of a night that had knocked all sense from my head, trying not to think about Sadie still tucked between tangled sheets in the cabin a couple hundred yards away.

I’d peeled myself out of bed before four a.m., slipped from her arms before she could even roll over. I’d told myself it was decency, but the truth was, I couldn’t face the sunrise without first coming home, washing her scent off my skin, and pretending I was the kind of man who still had control over his own story. I couldn’t face her waking up and seeing any regret in her eyes.

The morning chores went by in a blur of muscle memory. I filled the troughs, hauled feed, and did my best to keep busy so I wouldn’t have to replay her voice in my head, soft and low in the dark, telling me things that made my heart stutter like a green colt. I was halfway through the second stall when Damon’s shadow fell across the doorway, blocking out the sharp light that had finally broken through the fog.

“You look like shit, bro,” he declared, arms folded, all faux concern and barely contained glee. “Late night?”

I stabbed the pitchfork into the straw and kept moving. “Chores don’t do themselves.”

Damon stepped inside, baseball cap tipped back just enough to show he was in full detective mode. “Word is you didn’t make it home last night.”

I gave him nothing. I’d had years of practice hiding my hand. When you grew up helping to raise three brothers who were constantly getting into bullshit and never got caught, it became second nature. “I went home after the bar.”

Damon snorted. “Did you stay there?”

I didn’t respond.

He leaned against the stall door, boots up on the lowest rail, scanning me with that lazy, shit-eating grin that made me want to knock his teeth out some days. “Because I have it on good authority that your truck was still missing in action at one a.m. Could’ve sworn you left the bar by midnight.”

I didn’t bother looking up. “You spying on me now?”

“Nope. That’s Mom’s job, apparently.”

He paused for dramatic effect, waiting for a reaction, refusing to give me the satisfaction of moving the conversation along until I admitted something.

“Just say what you want to say,” I growled, tossing a fresh bale of hay into the next stall with more force than necessary.

Damon gave me the look, the one that said he knew he was about to win, and he was going to enjoy every second of it. “Mom spied with her little eye you driving up to Sadie’s cabin after midnight. Said you parked behind her place and didn’t come out until the wee hours of the mornin’,” he ended the sentence with a really bad Irish accent.

I set down the pitchfork slowly, the clang echoing in the vaulted space, and finally met his eyes. “So Mom is actually spying on me and then reporting to you?”

“She was out with the dogs. You know how she gets when she’s restless, roaming the property, keeping tabs on all her little ducklings.” He ignored my accusation of collusion and was practically vibrating with the thrill of having caught me red-handed, but for once, I was too tired to rise to the bait.

I didn’t say anything else, and Damon let a beat drag so hard it could’ve pulled the oxygen out of the barn. The horses caught our energy shift, ears flicked, tails twitching, eyes rolling white, picking up whatever tension I was broadcasting. Damon was relentless, but he was also my brother, and all Lockharts had the same fatal flaw: he couldn’t leave well enough alone.

“Sooooo,” Damon stretched the word out, peering down the row of stalls like he was searching for inspiration. “You gonna tell me what happened with Sadie, or do I have to continue collecting evidence to present to you before you’ll come clean?”

I wiped the sweat from my brow with the hem of my shirt and kept my hands busy, but we both knew he’d already done the math. “Nothing happened,” I lied.

He shot me a look that was pure bullshit detector. “Nothing? You mean to tell me you spent all night with Sadie, alone, and nothing happened?” His voice rang off the rafters, high and needling, the same tone he used when we were kids and he caught me sneaking an extra cinnamon roll from the kitchen.

I ignored him, tossing flakes of alfalfa into the hay racks with more force than was strictly necessary. The horses didn’t care, they just started eating faster, heads down, grateful for the distraction. I wished I could shovel my feelings down the same way.

“Mom’s gonna be so disappointed. I think she was looking up open dates to host her next son’s wedding at the ranch.”

I grabbed the wheelbarrow and maneuvered it down the aisle, hoping he’d take the hint and leave. He didn’t. I should have known better.

He jogged a few steps to keep up, boots thudding in the packed dirt. “So, what’s the plan, big brother? You gonna pine for Sadie from afar for the next decade, or are you finally gonna grow a pair and tell her that you’re still in love with her?”

I did that already. Sort of. Last night.

“Drop it, Damon.”

He put up both hands in mock surrender, but his mouth was still running. “I’m just saying, if you don’t, someone else will. You’re not the only guy in town who’s noticed she’s back, you know.”

The burn in my chest flared, but I buried it. He wasn’t wrong. Hell, even my so-called “best friend” was halfway in love with her. He’d texted to let me know he asked her out, he wanted me to hear it from him. And if he didn’t have any loyalty, what would stop the rest of the town who had always wanted a shot at Sadie Shepard?

I kept my head down and kept moving, but Damon followed me all the way to the manure pile, leaning against the post like he was settling in for a long campfire story.

“You know what your problem is?” he asked but didn’t wait for a response. “You want everyone to think you’re this stoic cowboy, but underneath all that brooding, you, my big brother, are a hopeless romantic.”

“Keep pushing,” I warned, “and you’ll end up wearing this manure.”

He grinned, the kind of grin that made strangers trust him and women fall in love with him, as he lifted his hands in mock-surrender. “Don’t kill the messenger. I’m just here for the show.”

It was pointless to argue. He’d already decided on his version of the story, and nothing short of a signed affidavit from Sadie herself was going to change his mind. Not to mention, he was right on all counts, so it really was useless to try and defend. I dumped the wheelbarrow, wiped my hands on my jeans, and tried to walk past him, but he stepped in front of me, blocking the exit.

“Just talk to her, tell her how you feel,” he encouraged, tone suddenly serious. “Before it’s too late.”

That was fucking ominous.

Damon’s words hit me harder than I wanted to admit. The third Lockhart in the lineup didn’t get serious that often, but when he did, I paid attention. The truth was, I’d told Sadie how I felt right before we jumped back into bed, and I was scared that was a mistake. I worried I’d rushed things with her. But if I let myself think about it, obsess over it, I’d come undone in ways I couldn’t afford. Not with the whole damn town watching me like I was a prize bull about to get gelded.

I grabbed the wheelbarrow again and was about to tell my brother to kindly fuck off, when I heard the crunch of tires on gravel outside the barn. Damon’s head shot up, and not for the first time this morning, he looked utterly amused.

“Well, would you looky there.” He nodded toward the entrance to the stable. “Somebody’s got a visitor.”

When I glanced over my shoulder, a gleam of silver caught the corner of my eye as a low-slung Porsche Cayenne rolled to a stop beside the barn. The engine purred for a second, then shut off, and the silence that followed was so complete I could hear the horses chewing. I knew exactly who was behind the wheel.

“Oh, shit,” Damon whispered, then slapped me on the back so hard I nearly lost my footing. “Good luck, lover boy.”

He was already halfway out of the stables, flipping his baseball cap around and whistling like he hadn’t just spent ten minutes roasting me over an open fire before I even set down the wheelbarrow.

I wiped my hands and squared my shoulders as the driver’s door opened, and a pair of bare, toned legs swung out first, followed by the rest of Dr. Angela Chang in matching yoga biker shorts and sports bra with a Prada windbreaker that probably cost more than my first truck. She wore oversized sunglasses that hid half her face, but her mouth was set in a line that meant business.

She walked toward me with the determined stride of someone who’d never been told no in her life, holding a tray of what looked suspiciously like artisanal coffee in one hand and a bakery bag with a Cupid’s Cup logo in the other. The sun caught the highlights of auburn in her brunette hair as she crossed the barnyard, her Jimmy Choo tennis shoes leaving perfect little half-moons in the dew.

“Morning, Dawson,” she called, her voice bright and echoing off the corrugated metal walls.

“Morning,” I replied, trying to sound normal. My brain was still stuck on the sight of her, unexpected, so early, and bringing snacks, which was not part of our usual routine.

The first time she’d been to the ranch was the wedding. She’d never once stopped by unannounced. And she’d never, in all the time we’d seen each other, brought me any sort of gift, food, or otherwise.

She smiled, cool and professional. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

I glanced over her shoulder, half-expecting to see my mom and half the staff following behind her, but thankfully it was just Angie. Damon, blessedly, had made himself scarce. The horses watched her approach with the same wary fascination they reserved for thunderstorms and unfamiliar dogs.

“Nope. Just chores,” I replied.

She glanced at the hay in my hair and the dirt on my hands. “You always this hands-on?”

I shrugged, not sure what she was getting at. “’Fraid so.”

She held out the tray. “I brought coffee. And bagels. And some donuts, in case you haven’t eaten.” She hesitated, just enough for me to notice. “You haven’t eaten, have you?”

I shook my head, accepting the coffee. The cup was still warm, and I took a long sip before answering. “Thanks.”

She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, scanning the barn behind me like she was searching for someone. “I, um—” She stopped, recalibrated, and flashed the customer-service smile that usually meant she was about to deliver bad news. “I tried texting you last night. You didn’t answer.”

I blinked, caught off guard by the directness. “I was… busy.”

“With your phone off?”

I didn’t have an answer for that, and she didn’t wait for one.

“Well, anyway,” she said, smoothing her windbreaker. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.” She shot me a look I couldn’t read. “It’s not like you to just go dark.”

I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my phone. I’d been so distracted by the text from Gio I woke up to, I hadn’t paid attention to any other notifications. The screen was spattered with hay dust, battered like it had survived a tour in Afghanistan, and it took a few tries before my thumbprint even registered. Right at the top of my notifications, there it was: a text from Angie, timestamped at 1:13 a.m.

Angie

Just checking in. Let me know when you get home.

My stomach sank a little. I hadn’t seen the text because I’d been with Sadie. We weren’t exclusive, but I could already feel the guilt rising even before I looked up to meet her eyes.

She caught the shift in my face instantly. “Did you see my message?” she asked. Her voice was even, but I could tell she already knew the answer.

I swallowed. “I didn’t,” I admitted, holding up the phone as if the missed call log might serve as evidence. “I’m sorry.”

Something in her jaw unclenched, and for a second, her whole posture softened. I could almost see her wanting to excuse the behavior, but that wasn’t fair to either of us, and I knew it.

A wind kicked up outside, lifting the smell of hay and sweat and the distant brine of the ocean and funneling it through the open barn doors. I took another sip of coffee, trying to get my mind straight, but it tasted bitter now. I set the cup down on a fence post so I wouldn’t spill it.

“Angie,” I started, and then stopped, because this was a conversation that required something beyond my usual grunt and nod repertoire. I looked at her—really looked—and I saw the tiny lines around her mouth, the tension in her shoulders. She wore her sunglasses like armor, but nothing could hide the way she braced herself for what was coming next.

I owed her honesty. However, I didn’t feel comfortable disclosing what had happened with Sadie the night before. That was no one’s business but ours. Not my mom’s. Not Damon’s. And not Angie’s.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get your message,” I said again, slower this time, hoping it would land. “To be honest with you, I’m not in a place to continue this.”

Through the lenses of her glasses I saw she blinked, once, twice, and then she took them off completely, tucking them into the scoop neck of her sport’s bra. Her eyes were sharp, intelligent. In that moment, I remembered all over again why I’d started seeing her in the first place. She was fun, and beautiful, and could run laps around most people in a conversation. But she wasn’t Sadie, and I think we’d both known that from the start.

“Is this because your ex is back in town?”

She asked it without a drop of bitterness, like she was confirming a clinical diagnosis. I almost laughed, because wasn’t that what she did for a living? Make things make sense, even if they hurt?

I nodded, voice rough. “Yeah. It is. I’m sorry, Angie.”

She looked down, fiddling with the bakery bag in her hand, and then back up at me, her eyes clear and steady. “You know, I’m not an idiot, Dawson. When I started seeing you, people told me about her. And I could tell something was going on with you when you saw her at the wedding. I just hoped because it had been so long that you’d gotten over her.”

“I’m sorry,” I apologized again.

She exhaled a slow breath, processing. For a second, neither of us said anything, the barn filled with nothing but the sound of horses flicking their tails and the low, distant hum of a riding mower somewhere on the other side of the property.

“Can I ask you something?” she finally said.

“Sure.”

She squared her chin, the way I’d seen her do in the E.R. when she was treating a patient. “Are you in love with her, or are you just in love with the idea of her?”

I didn’t answer right away, because the truth was, I’d spent years trying to hammer that difference into a shape I could live with. But standing there, with the dust motes hanging in the air and Angie’s question echoing in my skull, I realized the answer was as obvious as it was pathetic.

“I’ve been in love with her since the sixth grade,” I admitted. “I wish I could say it was just an idea, but it’s not. I love her.”

She absorbed my answer without flinching, her face a masterwork of composure. Then she nodded, once. “Well. At least you’re honest.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated once more, because it was the only thing left to say.

She smiled at that, a sad, elegant little curve of her lips. “Don’t be. I’d rather hear the truth now than drag this out for months and then find you making out with your ex in the alley behind the movie theater.” She referenced the latest town scandal that had included the married mayor and his assistant, twenty years his junior.

We both laughed, awkward and short, but the ice broke enough for me to breathe again. She reached out and squeezed my bicep, a gesture of affection so casual and so final it felt almost like a blessing.

“I hope you get what you want,” she said, and meant it.

I watched her walk back to the car, her stride as unhurried as it had been when she arrived. She collected herself with the precision of someone who’d spent a lifetime being observed, got in, and drove off without looking back. The horses in the barn resumed eating as if nothing had happened, but it felt like a chunk of the world had just shifted three inches to the left.

For the first time in months, or maybe years, I felt lighter and more optimistic than I had any right to, and it scared me.

16

HORSES DON’T MISS PEOPLE

Sadie

The truck rumbled beneath my hands as I drove Herbie home, the morning light thin and gray, and I told myself that the hollow ache cracking open somewhere behind my sternum was probably just gas.

It wasn’t gas.

Dawson Lockhart—the boy who had once hauled me, laughing and shrieking, into the ocean at two in the morning and then had the audacity to tell me he was going to marry me for the first time while my lips were turning blue—had slipped out of my cabin before dawn without so much as a sticky note. Not a text. Not a coffee left on the counter. Not even a single dark hair on the pillow to prove he’d existed at all. Just gone, the way a good dream dissolves the second your alarm goes off, leaving you grasping at something you can’t quite name.

I’d done what any reasonable woman does when the man she never stopped loving vanishes into thin air. I’d laced up my shoes and run until my lungs burned, past every landmark this stupid, beautiful, suffocating small town had conspired to tattoo into my memory. Each stride felt like a protest against the uncertainty. My path traced the old logging roads, past the turnoff that led to the upper meadows and the beach where we’d once snuck out in the middle of the night to swim under the stars. I remembered how he’d shivered in the cold, laughing as he pulled me in, and how I’d thought, even then, that there was nothing in the world more solid than Dawson Lockhart.

I ended up back at Buddy’s. I didn’t venture inside the farmhouse. It was too much for me to face that early in the morning. Instead, I hung out on the old tire swing hanging from the Oak tree. I wasn’t sure why, but I always felt close to my mom when I was by that tree. Maybe because she used to like to read under it while I swung and climbed its branches. I tried to connect with her, to feel her presence, I even spoke to her, but it felt like I was speaking to myself.

After half an hour of waiting for a sign from the universe that she was there and heard me, I gave up. I found Herbie parked under the maple tree, the hood dusted with seeds and sap. When I opened the door, I was instantly transported back in time, the truck smelled like Buddy. His cologne permeated the space. I turned the key in the ignition and the engine coughed, then roared to life. I let it idle for a minute before backing slowly down the gravel drive.

It felt strange to be behind the wheel of Buddy’s truck again. Almost like I’d stepped into someone else’s life, someone who hadn’t had her heart broken and duct-taped back together so much so that she couldn’t remember what it felt like to be whole. I couldn’t help but relive the last time I’d driven it, that morning, years ago, when everything fell apart.

The memory was as clear as if it were playing on a screen in front of me. I’d gone to the Bluewater Inn where everyone stayed for Grad Night. Everyone except me, thanks to Buddy’s strict regime. While I was under his roof, there were no overnights with the opposite sex. The only time I got away with it was when I lied and said I was staying at Abby’s or Ella’s. But there was no way he would fall for that when he knew the tradition that all seniors rented rooms and stayed at the Bluewater Inn, which was why my curfew was midnight.

I woke up early, got coffee and donuts, drove to the inn, walked up the sidewalk, and saw him through the open window, lying in bed with Vicki Blair. I dropped the coffees and donuts and must have made a noise because it woke him up.

My entire world imploded. I had only a vague memory of stumbling back to the truck and driving away. I do remember my hands were shaking on the steering wheel. I couldn’t get them to stop no matter how hard I gripped it as my heart shattered into a million tiny pieces. I also have a vivid memory of looking in in the rearview mirror and seeing Dawson burst out of the door wearing only his boxer-briefs chasing after me. I remembered the taste of salt in the air, the sick feeling in my stomach, and the ache in my chest that felt like it would never leave.

Dawson showed up on my doorstep a couple of hours later and apologized. He didn’t deny it. He didn’t make excuses. He did say he was drinking, but that was his only explanation. By ten p.m. I was on a flight to New York. I showed up at my Uncle Ronnie’s, asked if I could stay the summer, and never looked back.

But even after everything, I never stopped wondering what happened that night. He told me he’d been drinking. For years, I tried to convince myself that was enough—that alcohol could be the blame—but doubt lingered like smoke, curling into every scenario I tried to play out in my head that would make his behavior acceptable.

Now, as I drove Herbie along the coastline that led back to the ranch, I realized I’d never bothered to ask myself what I really wanted. I’d spent so long running from pain that I’d forgotten how to move toward something better.

Could I forgive Dawson for his transgression? We were young, but I had no suspicion that he was unhappy or that he had any sort of wandering eye. That was why it was so blindsiding. He never gave me any reason to suspect him. It was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

I’d had no idea he was capable of that, so what else was he capable of? That was what had truly devastated me, even more than the cheating itself.

The silence in the cab was comforting, a buffer between me and the questions I wasn’t ready to answer. I took the long way home, windows down despite the chill, letting the wind sting my cheeks and clear my head. The sun was starting to burn through the clouds, casting everything in a golden haze, and for a moment I felt weightless, as if the past had loosened its grip on me.

But the closer I got to the ranch, the tighter my chest became. I thought about Dawson, the haunted look on his face when he thought I wasn’t watching. Something wasn’t right. I replayed our conversation from last night, searching for clues in the pauses and the things left unsaid.

He’d mentioned that he’d written to me after I left. That there were letters. The more I turned it over in my mind, the more it didn’t add up. Buddy had always known where I was. If Dawson wrote to me, why hadn’t I received anything? I’d even asked Buddy about Dawson a few times, desperate for some scrap of news, and he’d never once mentioned the letters.

Would it have changed if I’d gotten them? Probably. No—absolutely. Even after all the years and all the hurt and all the reasons that had turned into bricks stacked up like a wall between us, the truth was that a single word from Dawson would have torn it all down. That was the reason I’d blocked him. Not because I hated him, or wanted to punish him, or because I was so noble that I could stay away on the strength of principle alone. It was the opposite. I knew that if I spoke to him, if I even heard his voice, I’d be too tempted to get the next flight back to Valentine Bay, and pretend that none of it—the heartbreak, the betrayal—had ever happened.

I needed to find out why Buddy had kept Dawson’s letters from me, but I didn’t want to risk destroying what little peace Buddy had managed to carve out for himself. I couldn’t bear the thought of forcing him to watch his granddaughter ricochet back into a broken relationship that everyone in town believed was already dead and buried. Even now, when I let myself go there, it felt like a selfishness I couldn’t justify.

As I pulled into the long, aggressively manicured drive of Lockhart Ranch, all those good intentions shriveled in the heat of jealousy. A Porsche Cayenne was idling at the gate, its pearl-white paint gleaming against the backdrop of the old-growth oaks. I watched, frozen behind Herbie’s windshield, as the driver’s window rolled down. The woman inside was beautiful in the way only people who went to med school and also had time for Pilates and highlights could be—manicured, toned, and impossibly perfect. Dr. Angie Chang gave me a quick glance that was both assessing and dismissive, then gunned the engine and sped off toward the main road.

I made my way to my cabin, Herbie’s engine ticking under my hands, and let the jealousy throb in my chest until it gave way to something even uglier: shame. Not just because of how much I cared, but because of what it revealed about me. I hated cheating. I despised the very idea of being the other woman. I’d spent my entire life making sure I didn’t become the kind of person who hurt people the way I’d been hurt—and yet, here I was, face burning, heart pounding, tempted beyond all reason by my ex-boyfriend and his stupid, perfect jawline.

After parking, I found myself trudging toward the stables, past the paddocks where the Lockharts’ longhorns grazed with the deliberate nonchalance of royalty. I told myself I was just getting some air, but the truth was that I needed to see Dawson in the daylight, to remind myself of how much distance there still was between us. I needed to prove to myself that I could look him in the eye and walk away unscathed.

On the way, I nearly tripped over Bandit, the Lockhart barn cat and unofficial king of the ranch. He was loitering in the shade of a wheelbarrow, tail twitching, eyes bright and feral. Bandit was infamous for his attitude—he’d once chased off a coyote twice his size, and rumor had it that he could open locked doors if he set his mind to it. He regarded me with the cool indifference of a creature who had seen too much and cared too little.

“Hey, Bandit.” I crouched down to scratch behind his ears. He immediately rolled onto his back, exposing his belly. I gave him a cautious rub, and he rewarded me with a brief, imperious headbutt before darting away toward the goat pen.

It was then, as I watched Bandit disappear between the rails of the fence, that I heard footsteps behind me. I turned to see Dawson standing in the stable’s shadow, arms crossed, a streak of early-morning sunlight catching on the highlight in his thick, chestnut colored hair.

My eyes scanned up his forearms, corded and steady, the lines of his body a familiar geometry I’d spent my entire adolescence memorizing.

I had no idea what to say to him, not after the rawness of last night. Not after who I’d just seen at the end of the driveway. Our eyes met, and the tension snapped into something else—something charged, direct, and almost unbearably intimate.

“Hey,” I said, my voice coming out more uncertain than I’d intended.

“You picked up Herbie,” he observed, voice low and rough with sleep or maybe something else.

I blinked, momentarily thrown, as I stood up. “Yeah, I went for a run and ended up at Buddy’s. Thanks again for getting him running.”

“Of course.”

I wanted to ask if he was okay after last night, if he meant what he’d said about not remembering, if he was as haunted by the past as I was. Instead, I hovered in the aisle like some lost specter.

“So,” I said, and then floundered in the silence. “I saw Angie on my way in.”

My statement filled the hush of the barn.

“Yeah,” he said, finally. “She stopped by with donuts and coffee.”

Donuts and coffee. That sounded familiar. It was the same thing I’d brought when I discovered Dawson and Vicki.

I nodded, pretending to be fascinated by a coil of lead ropes hanging on the wall. “Did she…does she know about…”

“Yes.”

My eyes lifted to his. “Was she… upset?”

He shook his head, lips pressed into a line. “No. Not really.”

I tried to process that, tried to believe it could be true. Dr. Chang was everything I wasn’t, practical, driven, beautiful in a way that required zero maintenance and even less self-doubt. She was also, apparently, disposable. Or maybe I was projecting.

Dawson must have caught the doubt in my expression, because he added, “It’s not what you think. It wasn’t serious.”

“That’s not what it looked like from the end of the driveway,” I said, immediately wishing I hadn’t.

He turned then, crossing his arms over his chest. “What did it look like?”

I shrugged, suddenly wishing for a black hole to swallow me up. “I don’t know. Like maybe she thought it was serious.”

He let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “She didn’t. We weren’t exclusive. She was seeing other people.”

“She’s beautiful,” I blurted out, I’m not sure why.

“So are you,” he said, and the way he said it—like it was the only fact that mattered—made something inside me start to fray at the edges. “We weren’t exclusive, but it doesn’t matter because I told her I’m not interested in seeing her anymore.”

“I hope you didn’t do that for me,” I lied. It shouldn’t make me happy thinking he called things off with Angie for me, but it did. It absolutely did. Which made zero sense.

Inevitably, I was going to leave again, once I got Buddy settled into whatever the next chapter of his life looked like. Dawson shouldn’t be making life decisions based on me, or what happened between us the night before.

“You didn’t, did you?” I followed up.

“What?” Dawson asked.

I couldn’t tell if he was truly clueless about what I was asking or if he was pretending to be for some reason that wasn’t immediately apparent to me.

“Break things off with her because of me,” I spelled it out.

He stared at me for a long moment. I found myself holding my breath in anticipation of his response. When he finally spoke, it took a second for my brain to catch up to what he’d said.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Sadie.” His voice was quieter now, but no less intense.

I wanted to say: I don’t know, either. I wanted to say: I need you to tell me that you didn’t just torch your whole life because of last night. Because of me.

I needed to know that I wasn’t the problem. Or, at the very least, that I wasn’t the only one.

He watched me for a long time, the silence ringing louder than any argument we’d ever had. Finally, he gave a little shake of his head, like he’d reached the end of himself.

“I ended it because it wasn’t going anywhere,” he sighed. “And because it wasn’t fair to keep seeing her when I couldn’t give her what she wanted.” He paused, then looked directly at me, his eyes so steady it was almost unbearable. “You know how that feels, right?”

I did. I absolutely did.

He looked down at the pile of alfalfa, then back at me, the mask slipping just for a second. “It’s not about you,” he assured me. “But it is, too. I can’t pretend she’s even in the same universe as you.”

I felt my cheeks heat, but inside, every nerve ending was on high alert. I didn’t want to care this much. I didn’t want the complicated tangle of relief and hope and guilt that twisted through me at the thought of him being single. But it was there.

There was a moment, then, when neither of us moved. The barn felt suddenly much too small, the air too thin. Out in the paddock, the cattle lowed, and through the open barn doors, I could see the wind stirring the wild grass.

“If you’re worried about Angie,” Dawson said, “don’t. She’ll be fine. She’s got half the county lining up to take her out.”

I knew from experience, it wouldn’t matter if the entire state, the entire country was lined up to take me out, none of them were Dawson Lockhart. He was one of a kind, and once you fell for him, getting over him was impossible. I was proof of that.

Of course, I wasn’t going to share that with him.

Instead, a weak smile tugged at the corner of my lips. “I guess that makes it easier, knowing she won’t be home crying into a pint of ice cream.”

He mirrored my grin. “If she were, she’d never admit it.”

We both stood, staring at one another smiling, softly, and something loosened between us. It wasn’t forgiveness, not exactly, but maybe the next best thing. Acceptance for the past and silent acknowledgement of what we meant to each other, which caused me to panic. It scared me. Keeping Dawson at a safe distance was my only shot of leaving this town with my already broken heart still somewhat functional. Every second I spent in his presence was threatening that possibility.

I took in a shaky breath, arms wrapped tight around myself. “I don’t know why I care so much. It’s none of my business.”

His expression softened, and for a second, he looked almost… sad?

“I do,” he said quietly. “You always cared more about other people than yourself.”

My eyes stung, but I blinked it away and tried to sound casual. “And you always pretended you didn’t care about anything, including yourself.”

He smiled, a real one this time. “I’m still pretending.”

I wanted to reach for him, but I didn’t trust myself. Not when my defenses were this thin.

“So,” I said, forcing my voice to steady, “what now?”

Dawson shrugged. “You tell me, Sadie. You’re the one who took off for New York and never looked back.”

That stung, but I didn’t flinch. “I did what I had to.” I pressed my lips together. “At least what I thought I did.”

He nodded at that, but his gaze dropped to the floor. My heart tripped over itself at the way his lashes made a dark, uncertain fan on his cheek. It was nothing and everything, that gesture—one I’d seen a thousand times. The way he could fold himself into silence and let it stretch out until I was the one who couldn’t stand it.

I had no intention of caving first.

He cleared his throat. “You want to go for a ride?” His voice was gruff, as if the offer itself was an apology for everything he wasn’t about to say.

That came out of the blue. “A ride?”

He lifted a brow, the corner of his mouth tugging upward like he already knew I’d say yes. “Out to the north slope. The fence line’s been acting up, and you always had a knack for repairs.”

A snort escaped me. “I think you’re confusing me with your mom.”

He shook his head, a slow, deliberate movement. “Maybe, but Penny misses you so you should still come for a ride.”

I felt my cheeks heat, the memory of my first time on horseback with the Lockharts overwhelming for a moment.

When my mom was in hospice, I was having a really hard time. I was depressed, anxious, overwhelmed, devastated. But then I started hanging out at the ranch and helping Dawson in the stables. Penny Lane, named after Kate Hudson’s character in Almost Famous, was a new addition to the stable at the time. I’d instantly bonded with her and was able to ride her. The open field, the salt wind in my hair, a sky so blue it made my eyes water. It was the first time in my grief that I’d felt, even for a second, the possibility of something like joy.

I bit my lip, trying to keep my face neutral. “Horses don’t miss people.”

He shrugged, but his eyes were warm. “You’d be surprised.”

I tried to sound casual. “I don’t even have boots, Dawson.”

It was a lame excuse, I’d ridden in tennis shoes, like I wore now, more times than I’d ever ridden in boots. It was my self-preservation was grabbing at straws to try and protect my heart.

He blinked once, then gestured at the row of mismatched rubber boots in the mudroom cubbies. “Pick a size. Or go barefoot, if you want. Up to you.”

I sighed and suppressed a smile, he was so infuriatingly himself. The same stubborn streak, the same refusal to acknowledge any obstacle as real. I was already halfway to the mudroom before I realized I’d agreed. When I did, I tried to say something clever, but the words wouldn’t stick. Instead, I found myself lingering for a second, to see if he’d fill the silence. He didn’t. He just watched me, face open and unguarded in a way that made my stomachache.

“I have to change,” I said at last, more abrupt than I meant to be.

He just nodded. “Ten minutes. I’ll tack up.”

I fled—there’s no better word for it—back to my cabin, the entire walk vibrating with the nervous energy of a first date, which was ridiculous. This wasn’t a date. It was a fence inspection and nothing more.

The cabin was chilly, the tang of woodsmoke still lingering from last night’s fire. I dug through my duffel, hands shaking as I tried to assemble something remotely ride-appropriate. I’d only packed for a three-day conference, luckily, I was a chronic over packer. Still, it’s not as if I’d known I was going to be coming back to my hometown for an open-ended stay. Jeans, a tank top, and bootlets, which were the closest thing to boots I owned. I splashed water on my face and stared down at my reflection in the tiny bathroom mirror.

You know this is a bad idea, I told her.

She stared back, unimpressed.

After I pulled my hair into a ponytail and stood in the middle of the room, letting the quiet build until I could hear my own pulse. Memories pressed in from all sides—me at fourteen Dawson’s sweatshirt slung over my shoulders, eating Pop-Tarts and watching the sunrise. Me, at sixteen, trying to memorize the shape of his hands. Me, at eighteen, trying to forget them.

I checked my Apple Watch. It was 6:34 a.m. Early for me, but not for ranch standards. Visiting hours for Buddy didn’t start until nine. My entire reason for being here had been reduced to a three-hour window each morning before the staff started bustling around with clipboards and “enrichment” exercises and tests and PT. It was my quality time with Buddy.

On the way back to the stables, I told myself that this would be platonic. A way to prove to myself I could be around him without wanting him. My internal voice kept screaming that last night clearly hadn’t meant anything to him since he’d left this morning without so much as a goodbye. Just because he was single now and claimed that the gorgeous doctor he was seeing wasn’t in the same universe as me, didn’t mean anything. Just like him telling me that he didn’t remember anything from the night he cheated on me didn’t change things…

Or maybe it changed everything.

17

THE PENMANSHIP OF A SERIAL KILLER

Dawson

Ilet Sadie set the pace, Penny, an American Quarter horse, nosed ahead of Rooster, an Appaloosa, as we followed the old fire road north, through a thicket of madrona and manzanita. She sat the saddle like she was born to it, back straight, hair in a ponytail that made me want to reach over and tug it. She’d always had a way with horses, from the very first time she got on the back of one. When her mom was in the hospital, that last time, she’d come over and go straight to the stables. I’d find her in the tack room, brushing out tangles and feeding sugar cubes to Penny.

Now, years later, it was like nothing had changed and everything had changed. I kept sneaking glances at her as we rode, but she caught me every time.

“You’re staring again,” she observed, without even turning around.

“Checking your form.”

“My form is perfect.”

It was. That was the problem. And I wasn’t talking about her riding.

We fell into a natural rhythm to the ride, the clop of hooves, the salt tang of the ocean drifting in on the wind, and the comfortable silence that fell between us. When we reached the branch that had fallen on the fence line, causing it to sag, I swung down, dug the wire nippers from my saddlebag, and got to work on the tangled mess. Sadie followed, dropping easily from Penny’s back, and together we dragged the deadfall free.

She held the post steady while I pulled the new wire taut. Our gloved hands brushed, and something primitive inside me kicked at my ribcage, same as it used to when we were teenagers and every accidental touch felt like an electrical charge. Sadie looked up at me from across the broken wire, cheeks flushed, and smiled like I was the only joke she’d ever needed to finish.

I was in serious trouble.

“Do you get to ride much in the city?” I asked, because I needed to keep my mouth busy or I was going to say something I couldn’t take back.

“No.” She shook her head, eyes sharp and soft at once. “I miss it. I miss this.”

My throat got tight, and I turned back to the fence, twisting the wire, trying to focus on the job. The truth was, I’d never stopped missing her, not for a single second. But I’d screwed up too badly to say it out loud.

We finished the repair in silence. My hands shook, just a little, as I put the tools away.

When we climbed back in the saddle, she fell in line behind me, and we let the horses walk slowly beneath the mottled shade. I wanted to reach back for her hand, to see if it would still fit in mine like it used to. Instead, I kept riding straight, trying not to look back.

Halfway down the trail, I reined Rooster to a stop. “You remember this spot?” I asked.

Sadie blinked, then looked around, taking in the twisted old oak on the bluff. She smiled, slow and sly. “The tree?”

I slid off my horse and ran my palm over the patch of bark, worn smooth by years of sun. There, just above eye level, a shaky heart was carved, with D.L. + S.S. in uneven letters.

She slid down beside me and traced her finger over the old heart on the trunk, and for a second it felt like the whole world shrank to just the two of us, standing there in the long shadow of the tree. The sun painted her face gold, highlighting the exact line where her mouth twisted up in that impossibly sexy way.

I remembered the day I’d carved it, mid-July, the kind of afternoon where the air felt alive with sun and aimless, sticky heat. She’d brought a pack of grape Bubble Yum and chewed through half of it before even reaching the trail. I showed off by pulling out the Swiss Army Knife I’d “borrowed” from my dad’s drawer. After I finished carving, I told her I loved her for the first time, and she said it back. We were only thirteen, it was the summer before our freshman year.

Now, all these years later, she ran her nail over the crooked “S” and shook her head, grinning. “You had the penmanship of a serial killer,” she teased.

I shrugged. “Could be worse. Could’ve used a branding iron.”

She smiled a smile that stole my breath. “Wouldn’t have put it past you.”

I wanted to say something—some line about how I’d have done anything to impress her, or how I’d always meant to come back and fix it—but the words caught in my throat. I watched her instead, the way she squinted up at the leaves, the exact set of her shoulders that meant she was either about to run or about to tell me something that mattered. I took the gamble.

“I meant it, you know,” I said. “Back then. Every word.”

She didn’t look at me right away. She pressed her palm flat to the worn spot, like she could feel the old summer heat through the wood.

“We were kids,” she spoke softly. “Everything feels real when you’re a kid.”

“Not everything changes just because you get older,” I reasoned. The words came out rougher than I meant, like I’d been holding them in and they’d rusted at the hinge.

She laughed, except it wasn’t really a laugh. “Some things do, though.”

“But not that. I still love you, Sadie. I never stopped. I’ve been trying to shake it all these years, but it’s still there, stubborn as hell.”

I wanted her. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to take her face in my hands and make her believe it, to close the distance and kiss her stupid, the way I’d dreamed about for a decade—the way I had last night. But I could see in her eyes that it wasn’t that simple. Maybe it never had been.

She pulled her hand away from the tree and wrapped both arms around herself, like she was cold even though the sun was still hanging hot above the bluffs. I knew that look—half defense, half retreat.

I’d told her how I felt last night, in the cabin, but this was different. This was in the light of day.

“You don’t have to say anything,” I said, because the ache on her face was more than I could stand. “I just wanted you to know. That’s all.”

She shook her head, quick and sharp, like she was shaking off an argument with herself. “It’s just—” She broke off, pressing her lips together before lifting her eyes to meet mine. “This town is like a fishbowl, Dawson. I hear things. I hear a lot of things.”

My ears burned. “If you mean the gossip, most of it is bullshit. You know how people talk around here.”

She shrugged, and her eyes went back to the hearth. “Some of it’s more than gossip. There’s a lot of stories about you and half the eligible women in the county. You Lockharts are heartbreakers. You have a reputation, and I hear you’ve been living up to it.”

I winced at the nickname and reputation I’d only ever “lived up to” because she was gone. I remembered every failed attempt at numbing myself, every mistake I’d made trying to fill the black hole she left behind. If only she knew how little any of it meant, how hollow it felt waking up next to someone else and wishing it was her. But I also knew it sounded like the oldest excuse in the book—the dog ate my homework, my heart’s really somewhere else, I’m not ready for a relationship. I hated that I’d become the villain in her story.

I wanted to tell her that none of it meant anything, that I’d been trying to outrun the ache and failing spectacularly. But I’d done this to us. I couldn’t blame her for being skeptical. I’d torched every bit of trust we had.

“I tried to move on,” I admitted, quietly. “But every time I thought maybe I could let you go, I’d see a place we’d been, or hear a song, or just close my eyes and you’d be there, and it just…I couldn’t. You were always there. It’s always been you.”

She chewed the inside of her cheek, staring off at the horizon. “You make it sound like I’m some kind of curse.”

“I don’t believe in curses,” I said. “I just believe in you. In what I feel for you, in what we had. Yes, we were young, but it was real. I loved you, I still love you, I never stopped.”

She stared at the carved heart, eyes tracing the lines over and over. I could almost see the gears turning as she weighed her next words. What I wanted, more than anything, was for her to believe me. To see that the stupid, impulsive kid who broke her heart had finally grown up, even if it was too late to matter.

But just as she opened her mouth, her phone started ringing, the chorus of “Material Girl” cutting through the moment like a bad joke. She fumbled it out of her back pocket and glanced at the screen. “It’s Janine, my assistant. I—I have to take this. I’m sorry.”

I nodded, and she walked away toward the edge of the clearing, talking in a fast, clipped voice. I leaned against the old oak and listened to the distant sound of her laughter, rougher and less certain than I remembered. The horses snuffled at the wild grass and the wind picked up, but I just stood there rooted to the spot like nothing had changed and nothing ever would.

Sadie clicked off her phone and slid it back into her pocket with a practiced flick, her mouth set in a line that could have been determination or just the effort of swallowing down whatever she didn’t want to say to me.

“I have to get some work done before I head to the hospital,” she relayed, her voice returning to its professional, clipped timbre, no evidence that three minutes earlier I’d cracked my ribcage open and set the contents on display between us.

The trail back to the stables felt shorter, the wind more expectant, like even the weather was waiting to see who’d speak first. She let Penny set the pace, giving me a good five yards of space, and I didn’t press it. We rode in parallel, not tandem—two stories with divergent endings.

She didn’t look my way, not even when Rooster stubbornly tried to sidle up to her horse at the last bend before the paddocks. I wondered if she was replaying what I’d said, or if she was already mentally drafting a checklist for the next meeting.

At the stables, she dismounted in a single easy motion, looking every bit the girl who’d grown up on a working farm, who’d learned to throw her own hay bales and drive a tractor by age ten. I got down slowly, my legs stiff from the ride and the nerves. She led Penny toward the gate, pausing just long enough to glance my direction.

“Thanks for the ride,” she said, plain and polite, like it was an Uber drop-off instead of an hour-long trip down memory lane. Her eyes lingered on me, but only for a heartbeat, and all the things she wasn’t saying hung in the space between us like fog.

I wanted to ask her if she’d heard me, if she remembered being thirteen and thinking love was simple and forever, but I bit it back. Maybe it was enough that I said it again, even if she never answered.

She led Penny into the barn and back into her stable in one efficient gesture. I trailed after, unsaddling Rooster and stowing the tack in its usual place. When I stepped out into the stable aisle, she was already halfway across the yard, her stride purposeful and her ponytail bouncing against her back. For a second, I thought she might turn around and say something, anything, but she just kept walking, head down, shoulders squared against whatever storm she was carrying inside.

I watched her go, my hand still on the stall door, and wondered if I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life telling her how I felt. But the thing was, after years of pretending otherwise, I wasn’t sure there was anything left to lose.

18

THE CASE OF THE FLIRTY SUCCULENT

Sadie

“He had a bad night, but he was still transferred out of ICU.”

That’s the voicemail that I had on my phone from Gio when I got off my work call this morning. I wasn’t sure what Buddy’s “bad night” entailed, just that it hadn’t stopped him from getting to move down to the second floor.

By the time I made it to the hospital, Buddy was sitting up in bed, wires and tubes trailing from under his gown like he was being held together with duct tape and spite. You’d think a man who had been that close to meeting his maker might come out the other side with a little gratitude. A little softness. Instead, he’d apparently spent the morning tossing off his blanket and pitching his applesauce at the wall.

“Thought I was done with chrysanthemums and hospital beds after your mama passed,” he rasped as I walked through the door, scowling at the flowers crowding the room as if they’d personally offended him.

Chrysanthemums were my mom’s favorite flower, and because they were and so many people got them for her when she was sick, Buddy didn’t like them because that’s what they represented to him.

“I can clear these out for you if⁠—”

“Looks like a damn funeral in here.” He waved a hand trailing an IV line, dismissing both me and the flowers in one efficient gesture.

I started moving the arrangements behind the curtain without another word—three identical bouquets, one from the VA, one from the ladies of St. Anthony’s, one from the police department. Half the town had shown up in flowers.

Then I got to the final potted gift, which was not a flower. It was a stubby succulent with a Post-it that read: STAY ALIVE, OLD MAN! Signed with a looping cursive T and a cheerful XO.

“Leave that one!” Buddy ordered gruffly.

I looked at him. Then at the plant. Then back at him.

“Who is this from?” The ‘XO’ certainly snagged my attention.

“Just um…a friend.”

The way he said friend—like the word had a locked door inside it—made my jaw drop straight to the linoleum.

Was Buddy seeing someone?

Who was T?

Why was she giving him hugs and kisses?

My mind was flipping through the directory of people I knew in town who had a name starting with T. Tammy Porter worked at the post office. She was a widow in her late sixties, but I think she would be too young for him. Tina Jacobson, the middle school librarian. Never married in her mid-seventies. I suppose the age would be doable, he was only a few years older than her. She was so quiet though, and how would they have even connected? Tonya Wallace, the eighty-year-old long haul trucker turned dairy farmer. I could see the two of them having a lot in common, I just couldn’t imagine them having any chemistry. From what I remember, Tonya had a four pack a day habit and Buddy couldn’t stand cigarette smoke, now tobacco chew, he was all about, but smoking it, that was a hard no.

But maybe she’s changed. I didn’t know, but what I did know was that this mystery was going to drive me crazy until I discovered who “T” was.

“You see the doc out there?” he asked, shifting in his bed restlessly. “He needs to spring me outta here.”

“I heard you had a rough night,” I prompted, hoping he’d fill me in on what happened.

He shooed away the comment like a fly circling his dinner. “Ahh.”

Okay, maybe not.

I crossed to his bed to try and help him settle in when Ida Blanchart breezed into the room with a wide smile on her face. I remembered her from my mom’s many hospital stays. I had no idea she was still nursing.

Buddy barked, “You here to bust me out or just jab me with something? I swear half you nurses can’t find a vein to save your life, or mine, in this case.”

Ida took his statement in stride, not personal at all, and went about doing what she needed to do, which included taking his vitals and administering his medication.

Once Ida left, there was a steady stream of visitors in and out all afternoon. Now that Buddy wasn’t in the ICU, visitation had been opened to non-family members. It turned into an episode of This is Your Life. It was a parade of characters from my childhood—ladies in pastel windbreakers who used to pinch my cheeks at potluck suppers, men who worked for Buddy back when we still ran cattle, health workers who cared for my mom. No one showed up empty-handed. They had everything from pies wrapped in picnic towels, casseroles in disposable tins, to cards with a cartoon horse on the front. All of them had the same sequence of comments when they saw me: first, how long it had been since they’d seen me; next, that I was the spitting image of Rosie and/or Rosebud, my mother and grandmother. Some even saying it was like seeing a ghost. Last, they would all say that they were glad I’d come to my senses and finally moved home where I belonged, or some version of that statement.

Buddy never missed the opportunity to correct people, letting them know this was only a visit and that if it were up to him, I’d be on the first flight back to the East Coast. My living arrangements weren’t the only thing that got a reaction out of him. Every time my appearance was mentioned, I felt Buddy stiffen in his bed beside me. Sometimes he’d give a grunt, sometimes he’d stop talking altogether, and sometimes he’d change the subject so abruptly that the visitor would blink in confusion. I was proof that it was tough for him to see my grandma and mom in me and validated the reason I’d stayed away so long.

The parade of visitors slowed down around dinner time, and the floor quieted except for the beeping monitors and the shift-change gossip of the nurses in the hallway. I sat at the foot of Buddy’s bed, picking at the edge of a Jell-O cup, and thought about the phone calls I’d been ignoring all day. Besides Janine and Peter, I’d also ignored calls from the head of acquisitions, most likely wanting to know what I planned on doing with my clients—all of whom had asked for updates, all wanted to know when I’d be back. I ignored the calls because I couldn’t answer them. My entire future was on hold, out of my hands, pinned in limbo by the white-banded wrist of the man in the hospital bed.

Buddy caught me looking at his IV. “Stop staring like I’ve already kicked it,” he gruffly commanded.

“What do you expect,” I shot back, “when you keep trying to pull out your own tubes?”

He’d attempted to check himself out of the hospital three times so far and pulled out his I.V. each time. I wasn’t sure how long they’d be able to keep him in this place.

He made a face at me. “Hospitals are for people who don’t have better things to do. I’ve got three thousand acres of fence to ride and crops to look after.”

The sick pit of worry in my stomach grew as the world outside the hospital room walls began to close in on me. The farm. The land. The legacy. The longer Buddy’s recovery took, the more impossible it seemed that he’d ever go back to running things the way he always had.

“You know you’re not invincible, right?” I stated, flipping through yesterday’s local newspaper someone had left behind, scanning the obits as if they might have featured his name.

Buddy snorted. “Says who?”

I ignored him and kept going. “I mean it. The doctor says you need to be off your feet for weeks, maybe months. You can’t run a farm from a hospital bed.”

“I’ve seen men run empires from worse places than this,” he sneered.

“Empires have staff, Buddy. You don’t even have a foreman anymore. Word is, you fired the last two.”

Apparently, Buddy had become quite curmudgeonly since Randy, his foreman of forty-plus years, retired to Arizona. Rumor has it he was impossible to please and lost his temper at the drop of a hat. It reminded me a lot of his demeanor immediately after my mom passed. He never raised his voice at me, he barely spoke to me, but I heard him with his workers, Randy, Jasper, Kevin, Freddy, and the others. He’d been short with them. They put up with it because they loved him.

He tried to sit up and failed, settling for a slow-motion glare. “I didn’t fire them. They quit. Millennial work ethic is shit.”

I wasn’t going to bite even though he was clearly baiting me. His hands looked small against the white sheet, which felt like a trick of the light because nothing about Buddy Lockhart was ever small. “You need help.”

He softened just a fraction, or maybe the morphine was starting to win. “Don’t worry your pretty little head,” he said, but it didn’t have the old bite.

“It’s already too late for that,” I muttered.

He pretended not to hear me and closed his eyes, but I could tell by the way his fingers flexed that the conversation wasn’t over. Not for him, and definitely not for me.

I had hoped for a quiet evening, but more visitors arrived after dinner, just as predictable as the sunrise. First it was Mrs. Lindahl from down the road, who brought a sack of homegrown pears and told me three times in five minutes that I looked just like my mother did at my age. She lingered in the doorway, eyes darting between Buddy and me like she was watching a television drama, and when she finally left, I caught the faint scent of her rose perfume. That was followed by two men from the feed store with matching ball caps and matching stories about how Buddy once ran a calf auction while running a hundred-and-two fever. They shook my hand, patted Buddy’s arm, and marveled at how “the old dog still has all his teeth.”

The cycle repeated every thirty minutes, like someone in town had set up a sign-up sheet for hospital visits. I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually had. The theme was always the same: they’d start by telling Buddy how tough he was, most would make a joke about him needing to get his strength up so he could be ready for the annual bachelor auction which happened at the summer festival in ten days’ time, that always got a laugh out of him, and then, almost as an afterthought, they’d turn to me and say, “You’re her spitting image, you know that?”

After the third or tenth round of this, Buddy started to look worn out. His color dulled, and his voice lost some of its snap. Once the room was finally empty, he let out a sigh so deep it rattled the ice cubes in his remaining cup of ginger ale. I thought he might finally let the walls down, but instead, he turned on the TV and pretended to care about a golf tournament.

That left me with my phone, which I’d kept on silent but checked compulsively, scrolling through increasingly terse emails from my office in Manhattan and a half dozen missed calls from Peter. I let them pile up because every time I pictured Peter’s voice on the other end of the line, I felt like I was being gently smothered with a hotel pillow.

I’d already ended things over text, a call, and voicemail. The guy was just not giving up. I could be wrong, but I was starting to suspect I was the only person who had ever broken up with him before and it was just not computing.

Luckily, to counterbalance those stressful messages, Dawson had been sending me updates on a cat he’d rescued sometime yesterday named Minnie. He picked her up from the vet this afternoon, and I was receiving photos every few hours throughout the day. He sent one of her curled up on his shoulder while he was doing paperwork. One meeting the horses. Another meeting, Banjo.

He had this way about him that animals, kids, and babies just responded to. They loved him. Seeing the evidence of that again through Minnie, the kitten, was just another reminder of the man I’d loved, the man I’d thought I was going to spend my life with.

I still wasn’t sure what to make of what he’d told me. If he really didn’t remember what happened between him and Vicki, did it change things? Should I ask Vicki? Did it even matter at this point?

My mind was contemplating those questions as I scrolled through the photos of Minnie and Dawson when Ida came in to change out Buddy’s I.V. As she finished up, she glanced over at me, mischief dancing in her eyes. “Heard you were at Cupid’s Arrow with Gio last night,” she said. “That boy is trouble with a capital T.”

“Good thing I’m not lookin’ for trouble,” I said, keeping my tone casual.

She gave me a wink and disappeared, but not before refilling Buddy’s water and jotting something on his chart. Buddy watched her leave, then turned to me with a speculative look.

“You seeing that Russo boy?” Buddy grumbled. “Just because he got doctor in front of his name doesn’t mean he’s a good man.”

“He’s just a friend, Buddy,” I explained, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. “Nothing more.”

Now, Dawson, that was a different story. He was more than a friend and someone I definitely wanted to talk about. The impulse to ask about the letters Dawson wrote and find out why he hadn’t given them to me, was intense, but I resisted. Not only was Buddy’s complexion pale, his skin was so thin it looked translucent, and he appeared exhausted. The last thing he needed was an interrogation.

My phone lit up, and I glanced down to see that it was Peter calling. Again. It was strange, when we were actually seeing one another, he was never this attentive. Now that I’d called things off, he was all about me.

“You gonna answer that thing? That boy keeps callin’ you.”

I wasn’t sure how Buddy knew that Peter was calling. I wanted to check the room for hidden cameras, but his eyes weren’t even that good.

I didn’t respond, and he didn’t press, but the silence between us felt loaded, like the pause before a bull charges the chute. I realized from the uncertainty in his stare that he was waiting for me to tell him something. Communication had never been his strong suit, but I didn’t think it was about Peter or Gio. If I had to guess, I would say it was what I was planning to do—about the farm, about him, about my life—and that I didn’t actually have a plan at all. For the second time in twelve hours, I felt completely untethered.

Since he’d shut me down the first time I’d brought it up, I figured round two might be better. “I can hire some temp staff. Maybe a farmhand or two, just to keep things running until⁠—”

“There’s nothing wrong with the way things are now,” he cut me off, sharp as a cattle prod. “You don’t need to go sticking your nose into it.”

I tried not to flinch. “Buddy, you’re in a hospital bed. You can’t do it all yourself.”

“Don’t you worry about me,” he said, and this time the old iron was back in his voice. “I’ll be home in a week, and things will be exactly the way I left them.”

That’s what I was worried about. I wanted to do as he asked and stay out of it, but I couldn’t, not in good conscience. I could see it in his face and in the way the doctors hovered near his chart that there was almost no chance he’d be back at full strength anytime soon. Maybe never.

I sat at the foot of his bed and watched him drift into a shallow, restless sleep, arms folded over his chest, as if even in unconsciousness he was bracing for a fight. My phone chimed again, it was my assistant, and I silenced it with a flick of my thumb.

If Buddy wouldn’t tell me what was really going on with the farm, I was going to have to go back to the house and find out for myself.

19

THE SLEEPOVER SURVEILLANCE COMMITTEE

Dawson

Lockhart family dinners were a weekly ritual of smoking meat, laughter, and my brothers’ shit-talking one-upmanship. It was just the six of us this week—Mom, Dad, and my three younger brothers, no strays my mom had hired and therefore adopted into our family. Well, no human strays. Minnie was there, curled up in my mom’s lap, sound asleep. As soon as the vet told me Minnie would need to be bottle-fed every two to three hours, I knew Mom was going to ‘volunteer’ to help out, and I would have no choice but to surrender the kitten. Mom’s maternal instinct was too strong, especially when bottles were involved. But hey, if it got her off my back from talking about grandkids, then it was worth it. Rex, Ranger, Duchess, and Lady were all in their normal begging spots, at Mom’s feet. They were getting extra bites since she had Minnie on her lap. Banjo was on his perch on the top of the bookshelf with his catnip.

The dining room smelled like barbecue coals and unfinished business, and the old trestle table, refinished so many times it had practically lived a dozen lives, felt smaller than usual.

Dean was beside me. Damon and Dylan sat across from us. Dad was at one end already deep into his second bourbon, Mom at the other working through an iced tea that held more lemon than the produce section at Fred Meyer. We tore into our steaks with the hunger of men who’d spent eight hours wrangling animals and hauling fence posts, which was fine by me. Chewing gave me something to do besides talk.

Conversation bounced around the table with the usual chaos, Damon and Dylan conducting their own running commentary in a coded language of insults and comebacks. Dean fired off sports trivia in the hope that someone would finally admit he was right about the 1995 Rose Bowl, and I tried to disappear into my food. Dad’s phone buzzed on the table, he excused himself to take the call and no one batted an eye. Chuck Lockhart was all business all the time. His idea of work-life balance was that he lived to work. Within a few minutes, he was back and focused entirely on slicing his steak into perfectly symmetrical cubes.

It was Mom who finally steered the ship into rougher water. She fixed her gaze on me with those intense mossy green eyes, the ones you couldn’t look away from without feeling like you’d failed a test you didn’t know existed. “Dawson, honey, have you heard anything more about Buddy?”

I swallowed hard, the hunk of ribeye momentarily stuck in my throat. “Yeah. He’s been moved out of ICU. They’ve got him in a regular room now.”

Mom let out a little sigh, relief laced with skepticism. “That’s good. Really good. So you’ve been to see him then?”

The question hovered over the table like a wasp. I felt everyone’s attention shift in my direction, even Damon and Dylan, whose mouths were stuffed with potatoes.

I cleared my throat. “He just got moved out of ICU so he can see visitors today.” I emphasized the timeline, as if that had contributed to me not going to see him. It hadn’t.

She pursed her lips with a look I’d seen a thousand times, the one that meant she wanted to believe me but suspected there was more to the story. “Good, so you can go see him tomorrow. You two always had a special bond.”

I nodded, keeping my eyes on the plate. “I’ll try to stop by next week.”

I lied. Nobody called me on it, not even Dad, who was usually the first to call bullshit on his sons. His phone buzzed again. Standing abruptly, he excused himself, muttering something about a call he’d been waiting for. He left his bourbon behind this time, which told me the call was either important or unwelcome.

The truth of why I wasn’t going to visit Buddy was a tangled mess, the kind you could chase down a hundred different backroads and still not ever find your way clear. I’d avoided visiting him in the hospital for several reasons. One, because I couldn’t stand the idea of seeing him laid up and helpless, tubes and beeping machines replacing his old cackling laugh and the smell of Copenhagen chew and bacon grease that always seemed to cling to him. I’d grown up with the myth of Buddy Shepard, the guy who could outshoot, outdrink, and outwork any man in three counties. But seeing your hero immortalized in a hospital gown, with their spitfire dimmed to a flicker, was not a thing I was built for.

Of course, that wasn’t the only reason. There was the matter of the letters. Buddy had always been a larger-than-life instigator, but I never expected him to play God with someone else’s life—especially not mine and his granddaughter’s. I still remember the day I’d gone to the farm to beg him to tell me where she was. It was only a week after she left. He told me to write to her, and he’d make sure that she got the letters.

But he never did. The betrayal stung like a hornet’s nest upended in your lap. The knowledge that she’d spent years thinking I’d just shut her out, that I’d ghosted her without a word, killed me.

So no, I hadn’t visited Buddy. I was scared of what I would say if I did. I knew it didn’t matter what he’d done. I could tell myself I wouldn’t bring it up, but he knew me well, and I had no poker face to speak of, which was a recipe for disaster. So, I was keeping my distance. For now.

“Sadie’s got everything under control,” I told my mom, picking up my fork and nudging a chunk of potato through the gravy like it was some piece on a chessboard. “She’s always been better at wrangling him than I ever was.”

Dean arched an eyebrow. “She get him to eat that protein mush they’re feeding him? Last I heard, he was chucking applesauce at the wall and threatening to take the whole staff hostage unless they smuggled in a cheeseburger.”

Dad, who’d just settled back into his chair with a fresh pour of bourbon, barked a laugh. “That old bastard’s not going soft yet. Give it another week, he’ll have the whole cardiac wing eating out of his hand.”

Mom looked at me, skeptical and hopeful in that way she did when she was trying to will good news into existence. “Even still, you need to go see him. He didn’t have a son, and he was always fond of you.”

Was he? I would say his actions said otherwise, not that I would bring that up here. I nodded, but the wordless agreement was nothing more than a truce, a promise to consider her request. I changed the topic the only way I knew how, by tossing the conversational grenade over to Dean. “Hey, you hear from Gen about that bachelor auction?”

Dean nodded, I could see he was about as happy to be paraded as a piece of meat as I was. “Yeah, since the Valentine brothers are all married or engaged, it seems we are now the most eligible men of Valentine Bay.”

“Please, we always were,” Damon said, rolling his eyes in his trademark slow-motion way that was half ironic, half deadly serious. “Gen’s already asked me to be the headliner. She knows I’ll be the obvious crowd favorite.”

“Obvious to who?” Dylan chimed in, snorting into his iced tea. “Only thing you’re headlining is the Most Arrests at a Small-Town fundraiser. You’re only famous because every sheriff’s deputy in three counties knows your cell number.”

“Jealousy isn’t a good look on you, Dyl. Besides, it was one time. I got arrested one time at a fundraiser.” Damon held his pointer finger in the air, demonstrating the number one. “The charges were dropped and I was a minor so it’s not on my record.”

Damon got arrested by Deputy Miller for underage drinking when he caught him with a wine cooler. But what he really got in trouble for was getting caught messing around with Alexa Miller, Deputy Miller’s daughter.

“And if I remembered correctly, the last date you had brought her Mommy and Daddy for backup,” Damon shot back referring to last year when Dylan was talked into going on a blind date and ended up on a double date with a girl and her parents at a $1000 a plate charity gala.

The youngest Lockhart brothers’ one-upmanship could power a small city for a week, but tonight it worked as a kind of white-noise distraction that kept the focus off me. I took another bite, chewed slowly, and let the background bantering work its magic.

Mom cut in, her voice soft but insistent. “Speaking of dates, Dawson, how’s things with Angie?”

I sighed, the question landing with the weight of a sandbag. “We’re not seeing each other anymore.” I tried to keep my tone neutral, but there was an undercurrent of relief I couldn’t hide.

Mom’s whole face lit up. “Really? Oh, honey, that’s—well, I’m just glad you’re focusing on yourself a little. You deserve someone who puts you first.”

Dad grunted. “Himself? Hasn’t he been shacking up with Sadie again? That’s what you said, Sel.”

A fork clattered to the table as every head swiveled in my direction. Mom reached over and smacked Dad on the shoulder. “Chuck!”

He winced, rubbing his arm. “What? Just this mornin’, you came in hollerin’ that he came over after midnight and didn’t leave until four in the mornin’. Hell, even Grace at Main Street Eats mentioned it when I saw her while I was picking up lunch.”

Shit. Valentine Bay gossip pipeline was faster than fiber optic. If Grace knew, then that meant at least half of Valentine Bay did. I didn’t care for myself, but I was worried it would make Sadie take a step back, I was trying not to put pressure on her since I didn’t have a leg to stand on.

I wanted to believe that folks would mind their own business, but if my mom’s reaction was anything to go by, that would not be the case. She looked almost giddy, like she’d been rooting for this since the day Sadie left town. I didn’t want her to get ahead of herself.

“You and Sadie, is it serious?” she asked, patting a slumbering Minnie on her tiny backside.

I didn’t know what to say. I barely knew what it was myself. The only thing I did know was that every time I saw her, it was like waking up from a coma and remembering your own name. “We’re figuring it out,” I said, my voice quieter than I meant it to be.

Dean smirked. “She’s definitely putting you through your paces. Saw her driving Herbie. Damon said you got it running for her again after you spent hours fixing up Buddy’s place.”

“She got Herbie?” Damon questioned. “I thought I saw her running this morning.”

I shrugged. “She ran to the farm and drove it back.”

Damon grinned. “You left before sunrise, and she had enough energy to go for a run.” He shook his head slowly and tsked three times. “You are giving the Lockhart men a bad name, if I spent the night with he⁠—”

“Do not finish that sentence.” I shot him a death glare.

And just like that, the conversation pivoted. Damon was a shit stirrer, but he didn’t have a death wish. He hopped on the auction topic, still trying to wind me up but not to the point that I was homicidal. “Do you think Angie will bid on me? You know, now that she got the warm-up brother out of the way, she’ll be ready for the main event.”

Dean, the more serious of the brothers, shook his head. “I think she’s dating that guy from the Chamber of Commerce. The one with the gelled hair who wears vests and rides a Harley.”

She was. We weren’t exclusive.

“I think she’ll bid just to mess with Dawson’s head,” Dylan predicted, his tone conspiratorial. “And then she’ll make you carry her purse for the rest of the night.”

“Joke’s on her,” I said, deadpan. “He can’t even carry his own wallet, much less a purse.”

Dad set down his glass with a clink, shooting me a look of rough sympathy. He was always a few beats behind in any conversation we were having. Usually, one to two topic lag time. “You know, it takes guts to admit you’re wrong. Or to admit you got your heart stomped. But it takes real guts to get back up and try again, son.”

Right, so he was still talking about Sadie despite us moving on.

There was a pause, the kind that might have turned sentimental or confrontational if not for Damon, who never let a moment go un-heckled. “So are you going to ask Sadie to marry you on the auction stage or at the closing fireworks for the biggest crowd?”

I wanted to marry Sadie, and I would do anything to make that happen, but asking her in front of the entire town when she hated any attention being drawn to her was the absolute worst idea in the world.

I glared at him. “I’d rather eat a live rattlesnake.”

Damon grinned. “I’m sure she can have that arranged, you know, for your penance.”

Even Mom laughed at that, her emerald eyes crinkling at the corners. It was the sound of home, the kind of laughter that made every other misery seem small. I wished I could bottle it for the days when everything felt like a fight.

As the plates emptied and the stories grew taller—Damon’s latest rodeo mishap, Dylan’s failed attempt to build a trebuchet out of scrap metal, Dean’s newest coaching disaster at the high school—the rough edges of the day started to smooth out. We were a noisy bunch, sometimes too loud for our own good, but it was better than the silence that waited outside these walls.

We started to clear the table when Damon asked, “Okay, so just to save Mom having to live tweet with updates are you having another sleepover with Sadie tonight or taking the night off?”

Muffled and scattered laughter came from Dylan and Dean as I firmly stated, “This family needs to set some healthy boundaries.”

There was a three second pause before my brothers dissolved into fits of laughter. I wasn’t joking, but that fact only made them laugh harder.

20

EMOTIONAL SUPPORT DISH TOWEL

Sadie

It was late. The hospital’s hallways were sapped of energy, and every fluorescent bulb had begun to hum in exhaustion, their light buzzing faintly beneath the soft snores and coughs of the sleeping patients. Visiting hours had ended an hour ago, but no nurse in this town would chase me out while Buddy was still restless and putting up a fuss, drifting in and out of consciousness with his medication. I was a buffer to curb his orneriness.

He looked so small in that wide bed, the loose hospital gown bunching around his ribs, the old tattoos on his forearms faded to blue-grey smudges. I waited until the night nurse changed his IV and he finally dozed, the gruff lines around his mouth softening, before I leaned over, kissed his forehead and made my way out of the room.

The world outside the hospital doors was flat and black, the lights in the parking lot painting everything sickly orange. The sky was already bruising purple, and the wind had that unsettled, high-pitched edge that meant a storm was rolling in off the ocean. I sat in Herbie for a minute, watching the trees in the median sway and shiver, and wondered if it would be a big one or just a quick burst to rattle the windows and clear the air. The bay always seemed to save its most dramatic weather for the moments when I needed clarity least.

On the drive home, past the industrial stretch of town and the old marina, I felt the first drops tap the windshield. Each one made a sound like a tiny pebble, and the wipers stuttered against the glass as if in protest. The Lockhart Ranch turnoff glinted in my headlights, and I was so exhausted, I was tempted to take it. But I needed to have a plan for Buddy’s future, and the only way to get that was to have a better handle on what was going on with the farm. The records I’d collected had given me somewhat of a financial overview, but I needed to figure out what the projections were for viable crops and harvest. So I kept going, the tires hissing over wet pavement, until I pulled up in front of the farm.

The house looked exactly as it had every night of my childhood, weathervane perched on top of the roof, porch swing swaying in the breeze, the front door’s chipped paint catching the beam of the headlights. I got out and shivered as I rushed to the door, which I noticed opened smoothly without resistance. When I stepped inside, I froze in shock at what I saw. Everything was wrong. Not in the catastrophic way I’d found it after Buddy’s fall—no shattered picture frames, no crusted-over dishes and weeks-old takeout containers, no coffee stains bleeding into the floorboards. It was the opposite. Instead, it was as if someone had pressed rewind and restored the old place to a snapshot of how it used to be: neat, lived-in, the evidence of a gentle hand in every detail.

The living room was organized and deep cleaned. The hardwood floors appeared shiny and refinished. The stack of old magazines by Buddy’s chair was re-squared and anchored with a fresh empty mug. The credenza’s knobs, which had always been loose and prone to falling off when you tried to open the drawers, were now tight and perfectly lined up. The air even smelled different, not the sour old-man blend of sweat and liniment, but clean, almost floral, the faint undercurrent of lemon oil and soap.

I wandered into the kitchen, my shoes barely making a sound on the newly mopped linoleum and stopped dead. The faucet—chronically leaky and always a subject of Buddy’s bitter complaints—was silent. A new O-ring sat on the counter, a proper one, and every chrome surface shone. There were no dishes in the sink. No trash in sight. The fridge was humming at a low, healthy pitch. And there, on the counter, was a new coffee maker, toaster, and paper towel holder.

My chest hurt. There was no other word for it. The ache was raw and physical, like someone had reached in and wrung my heart out like a wet rag. I ran my fingers along the glistening clean countertops before lowering down in Buddy’s chair, staring at the tidy little kingdom that had been built up around him in my absence.

This was Dawson. It had to be. He loved Buddy, and this was how Dawson showed his love, with acts of service. He’d shown up and filled the empty spaces with his own kind of care. It was infuriating. It was unforgivable. It was all I’d wanted.

I let my head fall back against the ugly plaid cushion and thought about what it would mean to stay here. To stay, to call this place home again, to let myself fall back into the world of a man who would pour himself into acts of devotion and pretend it hadn’t cost him a thing. I could almost see it, the version of my life where I gave up the fight and let myself slip quietly back into Dawson’s dominion. But then I thought about Buddy. The look in his eyes every time he saw me. The wince of pain whenever people compared me to my mom, his Rosie, or my grandma, his Rosebud.

Coming back here would be a constant reminder of the women he’d lost. I was his constant reminder. But on the flipside, Buddy couldn’t be alone anymore, that much was true. I needed to figure out what I was going to do. If me coming home wasn’t an option, how would I care for him?

The rain picked up, drumming sharper on the roof. The windows rattled, and the lights flickered three times before settling into a dim, glow. A gust of wind knocked the screen door open causing it to bang against the frame.

It startled me, but I ignored it and walked to the desk in the corner, the one that always smelled faintly of pencil shavings and whiskey. Buddy had kept all of his important papers in the top left drawer, mixed in with grocery receipts and old birthday cards. Maybe there was something in there that would explain what was happening with the farm, why he’d let all of his employees go. I tugged open the drawer, then another. I found grocery, medicine, and feed receipts. I found birthday cards and bills. Nothing of note. Then in the bottom drawer, beneath stacks of paper, was a bundle of envelopes all addressed to “Sadie Rose Shepard,” each one in Dawson’s handwriting.

There were dozens of them, the envelopes a hodgepodge of colors and shapes, blue or black ink, all with stamps in the corner. All addressed in Dawson’s quick, forceful hand—Sadie Rose Shepard—penned across each one. I hesitated, thumbed the edge of the top one. The oldest was dated the week after I left, the next a week later, and then more and more, sometimes three in a seven day period. Some fat and crammed to bursting, others thin and light as a single page.

I sat there, the storm outside thrashing the branches against the window, and slit open the first. The words inside were exactly as I remembered Dawson’s voice: abrupt, unpracticed, but so naked that it hurt. He apologized for everything—grad night, the drinking, his own stupidity. He told me that he’d never stop loving me, and that he could never forgive himself for what had happened, what he’d done. And then he pivoted, like he always did, to talking about the animals on the ranch, about his family, about the weather and the way the bay always looked different depending on the season. Every letter was like that: a raw, bleeding wound of regret and longing, covered over with a bandage of daily life.

I read through them hungrily, one after the other, barely stopping to breathe. Each one was worse than the last, as if he’d been pouring everything out onto paper and then sealing it up before it could even begin to heal. The letters themselves were time capsules: twelve, eleven, ten, nine years ago. All the years I’d spent running from the past, and here it was, lined up in chronological order, stuffed in Buddy’s desk drawer. None of them had ever been mailed. Buddy always knew where I was. He could have easily sent them to me.

My imagination ran wild, Buddy accepting Dawson’s letters, promising he’d send them my way and then quietly pocketing them, unopened, unread. I could see him weighing them in his palm, deciding not to throw them out, but not to read them either. Maybe he was afraid I’d come back if I read them. And maybe that would have been just too painful for him. Maybe it was better with me across the country. I wasn’t a daily reminder of the two women he’d loved the most in this world that he’d lost.

The more I read, the more I felt myself coming apart at the seams. The rain was loud enough now that I could barely hear my own sniffles. My chest felt hollow and heavy at the same time, like the entire cavity had been scooped out and left to fill with dirty rainwater. I kept going, page after page, until I finally reached the last, written eight years ago. This one was short and simple, just a few succinct sentences.

I’m so sorry, Sadie. I love you. I’d do anything to have you back.

By then my hands were shaking, and I had to put the letter down. The room seemed to tilt, the furniture sliding in and out of focus. I stood up, bracing myself on the edge of the desk, and tried to breathe. The storm outside was biblical now, thunder rattling the windowpanes, lightning so close it turned the room white for a heartbeat, then plunged it back into coughing darkness. I heard the unmistakable sound of hail, stones the size of marbles pinging against the metal roof and rolling down the gutters.

The lights flickered once, then again, and then failed completely, leaving me in a darkness so total it felt like being submerged. I waited, heart thudding, for the generator to kick in, but the only sound was the relentless battering of water and hail. The silence was thick and dangerous. Even the refrigerator fell quiet, the sudden shutoff making the kitchen feel ancient, preserved in the last breath of cold air. I sat there, paralyzed, clutching the stack of letters as if they might anchor me to the floor. When I exhaled, I realized I’d been holding my breath.

Panic rose in my throat. I couldn’t stay in this house. I couldn’t stay in this moment, in this version of myself that was so raw and stripped down, so close to collapse that even a breeze could finish the job. I made it to the door on reflex, grabbing my keys and my phone, already planning to drive anywhere that wasn’t here—the gas station, Main Street Eats Diner, the edge of the world. I stepped onto the porch, and the rain battered me instantly, a cold slap that cut through my shirt and jeans in seconds. The wind swept my hair across my face, stung my cheeks, and I stumbled down the steps into the mud.

Herbie was parked under the lone maple. I yanked open the door, slid into the driver’s seat, and jammed the key into the ignition. The engine coughed, sputtered, and died. I tried again. And again. The dashboard flickered, the fuel gauge stubbornly at a quarter tank, the battery light a dull, angry red. I swore, punched the steering wheel, and closed my eyes. I didn’t have the right kind of luck for a heroic escape.

I fished my phone from my purse and saw that I had one bar, maybe half. The screen glowed blue-white against the dark storm, and my thumb hovered over the only number that made sense. The call failed before it even rang. I tried again, and this time it connected, barely, a tinny, staticky echo of Dawson’s voice on the other end.

“Hello?” His voice was tight.

“Dawson—” I almost said I need you, but the words sounded too infantile, too much a regression. “The power’s out and the truck’s dead. I⁠—”

“Where are—” The call broke, the syllables torn up and rearranged by the weather. “Sadie—storm—safe⁠—"

“I’m at the farm. I—” There was a crack of thunder so loud it swallowed my words. The screen went black. Call failed.

I tried to call back, but it didn’t go through. I tried again, same result. I attempted a half dozen more times, just in case, but to no avail. I threw the phone onto the passenger seat and sagged against the window, forehead pressed to cold glass. Outside, the wind drove debris across the yard in streaks, the maple bent almost to a right angle, and the air was thick with the smell of ozone and wet earth. For a second, I considered just sitting there, letting the storm run its course, but the growing sense of vulnerability—alone, exposed, powerless—spooked me back inside.

I sprinted through the rain, slipped once in the mud, and barely made it through the front door before the porch light snapped and fell, glass dusting the steps behind me. I slammed the door and sagged against it, breathless, soaked down to my bones. My jeans clung to my skin. My teeth chattered as I peeled off my hoodie—well Dawson’s hoodie that he’d let me borrow at the hospital but I’d kept—and shoes, leaving a trail of water across the entryway.

Not wanting to wait out the storm in soaking wet clothes, I wandered upstairs and found a box of old clothes in my childhood bedroom closet. I changed into a pair of Cupid High sweats and a t-shirt two sizes too big that were actually Dawson’s gym clothes from high school, and grabbed the pillar candles from my dresser and my matches, then shuffled back to the kitchen, phone flashlight strobing shadows across the walls. I set my pillar candles around the living room and two in the kitchen, lit them, then I looked at the letters, stacked in neat chronological misery, and felt the same ache return—the sense of a life I could have had, if only I’d been braver, or kinder, or less in love with running away.

Yes, I left because of what I saw, but maybe that was also just an excuse to get out. To leave a town that I felt I disappeared in, that I would never be able to know who I was in. If I truly had a come-to-Jesus moment with myself, I had to admit that there was a big possibility that’s what I’d done. Not because I hadn’t loved Dawson, I had, he was the one good thing in this town. The problem was, at times, he felt like the only good thing in my entire life.

I sat in Buddy’s chair, knees drawn up to my chest, and started reading again. The words blurred with each flash of lightning. My eyes watered, but I kept going, as if his confession could somehow burn away regret. I traced Dawson’s chicken scratch handwriting with my thumb, memorizing the slopes and jagged corners, the places where he pressed too hard or I could see he was concentrating on perfect penmanship, or gave up and scrawled. I was so mad. Mad at Dawson, but not for him waking up in Vicki Blair’s bed. I was mad at myself for copping out and using that as a convenient excuse, and Dawson for letting me.

All the time we’d been apart, I’d tried to convince myself that what we’d shared as teenagers wasn’t real, that it was just puppy love or infatuation. But now, being back here, reading these, spending time with him again, it was real. We really loved each other. And then one night, a series of unfortunate events and rash decisions on both our parts, seemed to negate that truth.

Time passed in fragments—the storm, the darkness, the letters, the slow feeling of my hair drying in the heatless air. Every once in a while I would think I heard footsteps on the porch, or the faint metallic click of the mailbox, but every time it was just the wind or the house settling. I alternated between reading and watching the window, the yard lit up in strobes by distant lightning. The world outside felt a million miles away.

At some point, the storm reached its crescendo. The thunder was so close it rattled the mugs hanging on the rack in the kitchen cabinet. Lightning split a tree in the back field, and I saw it go white-hot and then black in the space of a single heartbeat. I was happy, then, that I didn’t have animals to tend to. I worried about all my neighbors, Dawson included, who had horses, cows, chickens, goats, all sorts of living things that would be terrified in this.

The force of the wind made the house hum and vibrate, and for a second I thought it would lift off the foundation and carry me out over the flooded pastures.

Since there was nothing I could do, I tried to lose myself in the letters. I was halfway through the stack when I saw the headlights sweep the driveway. First just a flicker, then two sharp beams carving through the deluge. I blinked, almost certain I was imagining it, but then the engine noise cut through all the storm’s percussion. Someone was here.

The vehicle looked familiar—a hulking, mud-spattered pickup, lights still on, windshield wipers slashing back and forth. I saw the driver’s side door open and a figure emerge, moving quickly and hunched against the rain. My body recognized him before my eyes sent the information to my brain. He hit the porch steps at a dead run, and the motion was all muscle and purpose and inevitability.

Dawson.

I rushed to the door and flung it open. He stood in the entryway dripping onto the mat, shoulders heaving with the effort of the dash from the truck. He was soaked to the skin, hair plastered across his forehead, flannel glistening with rain.

He looked like a man who’d just crawled out of the ocean, every square inch of him drenched, hair dripping onto his heavy brow and rain running off his jaw in fat silver rivulets. For a moment, he just stood there, towering and heaving, his silhouette nearly filling the door frame. The sight of him—so raw and elemental—was almost cinematic. It would have been funny if I didn’t feel like I might break down all over again.

He toed off his boots, leaving them by the door, and glanced at me like he wasn’t quite sure he should be here. The wind slammed the porch behind him, rattling the metal frame of the screen. I realized we hadn’t said a single word.

“Where’s Millie?” I asked as I stepped inside and he followed suit.

He grinned. “You’re stranded here, and you’re worried about the cat?”

“It’s storming.”

“She’s with my mom. She needs to be bottle fed every two to three hours and you know my mom’s all over baby duty.”

“What about the rest of the animals?”

His grin widened, seemingly amused at my concern. “It’s all hands on deck. Everyone is safe and accounted for.”

“How did you know where I was?” My voice was too thin, brittle.

He shook his head, water droplets flying. “There aren’t too many places for you to go, Sadie.” He said it quietly. It wasn’t an accusation, just a fact. He glanced down, noticing the stack of letters strewn out, and his face changed, like he’d been punched, but decided not to show it. The next words were a whisper, rough with something halfway between hope and regret. “You found them?”

I nodded and pointed at Buddy’s antique roll-top desk. “They were in the bottom drawer. Unopened.” I tried to keep my eyes on his face, but it hurt to see the way his jaw flexed, the way he bit down on whatever he was trying not to say.

He stepped closer. “He kept them? He just decided not to give them to you.” He didn’t sound angry, just resigned. He looked at me, really looked, and the weight of his gaze felt like it could hold the whole house together.

“It wasn’t you, I promise. It’s hard having me around,” I tried to explain. The words made my stomach ache. I never told anyone that. Never said those words out loud, that it was hard for Buddy, that I was a walking reminder of every empty space in his life.

“What do you mean?” His voice was very gentle, almost apologetic. He reached out and tucked a strand of damp hair behind my ear, careful not to touch my skin.

I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk about how every time he looked at me I knew he saw them or how Buddy cried when he thought I couldn’t hear, or how every room in this house was haunted by what we’d lost. I didn’t want to talk about the way guilt built up in me, year after year, until I thought I might drown in it.

“It doesn’t matter.” I turned away, blinking emotional stormwater from my eyes. “You’re soaking wet. You should get out of those clothes, or you’ll catch pneumonia.” I said it like a joke, something Selma always used to say about being in wet clothes, but my hands were already moving, reaching for the buttons of his flannel before I could think better of it.

The second my fingers touched him, I felt the shiver run through him. I didn’t think it was from the cold. I started on the third button, hands shaking, and he didn’t stop me. He just stood there, letting me do it, his eyes locked on mine. My heart beat so hard I thought it might bruise my ribs.

He reached up, covered my hand with his own. “Sadie,” he said, like it was an apology and a prayer all at once. “You really don’t have to⁠—”

“I want to,” I confessed. My hands were still trembling, but I kept going, working my way down until the shirt hung open. He shrugged out of it and it fell to the hardwood floor with a thud. I scanned the constellation of scars across his chest, the one from the barbed wire fence he had to scale to save Damon when he got stuck in Mr. Kepler’s backyard, the one from the time he fell out of the hayloft, the thin white line from when I’d dared him to race me through the blackberry bramble and he’d eaten dirt at the finish line. All the places he’d been broken and healed.

“I read all your letters,” I admitted, not looking at his face. “Even the one you wrote the week after I left. All of them. Even the ones you probably don’t remember writing.”

His muscles flinched, just barely. “I remember all of them.” He was shirtless now, water beading along the curve of his collarbone.

I reached for a faded dish towel from the counter and started patting him dry, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He let me, not moving, the muscles in his jaw tight with restraint. His hands stayed at his sides, every nerve ending focused on my touch.

There was a pause, the kind that felt like it might last forever.

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” he said suddenly. “That night. I would have told you if I remembered, but I didn’t. I’m sorry I didn’t fight harder to make you stay, to make you understand. I just felt guilty, for putting myself in a situation where I could end up in a compromising position. I respected you and our relationship more than that. I just, I didn’t think you’d want to hear excuses, but I should have told you. I’m sorry.”

I looked up at him, the towel clenched in my fists. “You don’t have to say that, Dawson. You don’t owe me anything.”

His laugh was low, incredulous. “Yes I do. I owe you everything.”

We were so close now I could feel the heat coming off his skin, the familiar scent of him beneath the rain and soap and something faintly metallic. I tried to step back, but he caught my wrist, gentle but firm.

“Sadie,” he said my name like a warning. “What are we doing?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, and it was true. I didn’t know if I wanted to kiss him or slap him, or just crawl into his arms and sleep for a year. I didn’t know if I was angry or grateful or just so desperate for comfort that I’d take whatever little scraps of him I could get. But I did know there was nowhere else I’d rather be.

21

STORM: 1, SELF-RESTRAINT: 0

Dawson

My jeans clung to my thighs, heavy and cold, outlining every inch of me like a second skin. My bare chest was splotched with water, the droplets trailing down and gathering at my waistband, a fact I was hyper-aware of only because of the way Sadie’s eyes kept darting there and then jerking away, like she’d been caught gazing at something indecent.

She stood across from me, silent, her face lit by the candle flames flickering throughout the space. I’d asked her what we were doing and she’d said she didn’t know. As much as I wanted to push her for an answer, to make her admit that something was happening between us, that it wasn’t a fluke or a one-time thing, I knew that was not the right thing to do. Instead, I focused my attention on her. I wanted to make her feel the things I could not say to her. I wanted to overwhelm her with sensation to the point that she couldn’t deny it anymore.

I’d always been good at waiting, at holding my ground while the world tried to shake me loose. I can ride out the Oregon winter storms and the most obstinate of colts. But when it came to Sadie, my patience dissolved. She’d always been the exception, the one force in the universe that could make me reckless. Standing in the kitchen, half-clothed and soaking, I wanted all of her in a way that bordered on painful. The restraint I’d built up over years was nothing compared to the ache of needing her touch.

I could feel her stare on my skin, more real than the cold water that clung to my torso. She kept glancing at my waist, quick and hungry, and every time her gaze darted away, it left an impression. I could have reached for her, but I held myself in place, hands open at my sides, waiting for her to decide if this was something she wanted to move forward with.

She stepped closer, a foot between us, her fingers clutching the dish towel so tightly the veins in her hand stood out. She dabbed at my chest, her touch almost clinical at first, but the more her hand moved, the less she seemed to be thinking about drying me off and the more she seemed to be cataloging the shape of me. The storm outside pressed at the windows, rattling old glass, but inside the only noise was the ragged cadence of her breathing and the quiet hum of the refrigerator.

She shifted her weight and the towel fell. It landed on the slate floor with a thud that seemed to echo through the empty house. Without it, her hands hovered just above my skin, and then, with a quick exhale, she let them settle on the top button of my jeans. She didn’t look up, not at first. She focused on the job at hand, literally, careful and deliberate, so slow it made me want to scream. My pulse quickened, pounding so loud I was sure she could hear it through my ribs.

Her hands trembled when she pulled the zipper down, and I wanted to help, to do anything that would make her feel safe, but I also wanted to see what she would do if I waited. She caught the waistband between her thumb and forefinger and tugged, but the denim was soaked and clung to me like shrink wrap. We both gave a half-hearted laugh at the struggle. It broke the tension for a split second, and I used the moment to brace a hand on the counter behind me and shift my hips to help. She gripped the waistband and tugged down, peeling the jeans down over my thighs, my knees, my calves. When they pooled at my ankles, she crouched, removed my socks and worked the cuffs over my bare feet, her hair brushing the tops of my thighs as she did.

When she finished she remained on her knees in front of me. Her face an inch from my straining erection. I stood there, dripping and completely exposed, not even the thin comfort of cotton between me and her eyes. She stared, and I let her. I wanted her to see what she had done to me, how much I wanted her, how much I trusted her with my nakedness.

A flush crept up her throat, painting her skin pink, and her eyes flicked up to my face, searching for something. I wasn’t sure what she found there, but it seemed to calm her. She straightened and brought her hands to my hips, settling them there for a second before letting them wander, slow and reverent, over my waist and up to my chest.

Her touch left trails, electric and hot, and even though I’d been freezing a minute ago, now my skin burned wherever she touched me. Her hands mapped me—my scars, my muscles, the sharp line of my hip—like she was relearning a language she thought she’d forgotten. Every place her fingers lingered, my nerves fired. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep still.

She reached for me, but I caught her wrist, gentle but firm, holding her pulse between my thumb and first finger. I saw the question in her eyes, half uncertainty and half daring.

“You’re overdressed,” I said, the words coming out rougher than I intended. I tugged, careful, inviting her forward.

I pulled her to a standing position and lifted her shirt up and off. As soon as her arms fell to her sides, she hooked her thumbs in the elastic waistband of her sweats, pushing everything—underwear included—down her hips and thighs. She stepped out of the oversized garments, and she stood tall, baring herself to me and leaving me breathless. The sight of her, unguarded and luminous in candlelight, was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Every inch of her was familiar and shockingly new, an echo of my best memories, but made sharper and more real by the years in between.

For a moment, neither of us moved. The tension that had been building between us for days—years—was a living thing, an atmosphere that pressed in on my skin and filled the space with the electricity of anticipation. Each time her eyes traveled over my body, I felt it as a physical touch, warm and hungry. I let her look, let her take me in, because that was what I wanted, more than anything was for her to see me, all of me, and know that I was hers, if she wanted me.

She stepped forward, so close I could feel the tremor of her breath on my chest. Her hand came up, trembling slightly, and for a second I thought she’d touch my face. Instead, she reached lower to my straining erection, curling her palm around me, delicate and reverent, like she was testing the reality of what she held. Her thumb flicked over my engorged crown, and I nearly buckled. She glanced up, her eyes twinkling with both hunger and shyness all braided together in her smile, and then she sank to her knees on the kitchen tile, her bare thighs folding beneath her.

The sight of her naked, kneeling for me, looking up with that mix of challenge and invitation, short-circuited my brain. I braced myself against the edge of the counter, knuckles white. She tightened her slender fingers around me, grasping me firmly, gliding up and down my shaft in a tantalizing rhythm, recalling the exact motions that drove me wild. Then she leaned forward, her mouth wrapping around my tip. The first touch of her lips—warm and wet and impossibly soft—sent a full-body shudder through me. She circled the head with her tongue, then took me deeper, her mouth a hot velvet sleeve that undid every hard-won ounce of self-control I had.

She worked me with a precision that was less technique and more instinct, matching my shallow breaths and low, strangled groans. Each time I thought I was on the verge of losing it, she would ease off, letting her hand do the work while she looked up at me, dark lashes fluttering, waiting to see how much I could take. My body reacted the way it always had to her: helpless, desperate, hungry in a way that was almost embarrassing. My hips flexed, my vision tunneled, and I had to fight to remain standing upright.

When it got to be too much, I threaded my fingers into her hair, not to force her, but to steady myself. She hummed, a sound that vibrated all the way through me, and my knees buckled. I barely caught myself on the counter behind me. She laughed around me, and the vibration made me curse under my breath. She pulled back, lips glistening, and grinned up at me, triumphant and a little wicked.

I wanted to repay her, to make her body sing the way she’d made mine, but the second I bent to pull her up, she surprised me by rising on her own and pushing me backward until I hit the living room wall. She pressed her chest to mine, skin to skin, and kissed me with a kind of urgency that left no room for doubt. She wanted this as much as I did, and that knowledge almost undid me. We stumbled together, moving in mutual desperation toward the couch. She was gasping, her hands in my hair, my face, my chest, anywhere she could touch as she walked on her tiptoes.

In one swift motion, I picked her up and carried her to the couch. I lowered down, and she straddled me, knees on either side of my hips. The wet heat of her sex pressed against my steel-hard shaft, slick and insistent. I could feel how ready she was. She arched into my hands when I filled them with her breasts, cupping them, thumbing the peaks and pinching them until she gasped. I ran my mouth along her throat, her collarbone, lapping up the salty tang of her skin and the pulse that raced beneath it. She was all motion, rolling her hips against me, grinding herself along my length in a rhythm that made my head spin.

I’d always loved her breasts, the perfect shape of them, the way they fit my palms so perfectly, how sensitive she was when I teased the soft undercurve with my tongue. She moaned when I sucked her nipple, and the sound shot straight to my core, making me throb with pent-up desire. I pressed kisses lower, over the swell of her ribs, then back up to her neck and jaw, because I wanted her to feel how much I worshipped her, how many years I’d spent thinking about what it would be like to have her again.

Her hands roamed my back, nails dragging down my shoulder blades, leaving trails of heat in their wake. She grew more and more restless until finally, she leaned back, bracing herself on my thighs, and lifted her hips. I watched as she reached between us, guided me to her, and hovered just above, letting the anticipation stretch out until I was nearly mindless with need. She rubbed my crown along her slit, teasing both of us. Finally, she lined me up and sank down, slow and steady, her eyes locked on mine as she did.

The sensation was shockingly intense. I had to grit my teeth against the urge to grab her hips and thrust up, because I wanted to savor the feeling of her, every inch, every pulse and clench as her body took me in. She bottomed out and stilled, shivering, her head tucked against my neck.

I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight, not trusting myself to speak. I wanted to say so many things, wanted to tell her how much I’d missed her, how sorry I was for everything that had come between us, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, I poured everything I wanted to say into the way I touched her, the way I moved inside her, hoping she’d understand.

For so long, my future was bleak. Now, I didn’t know what it held. I didn’t dare picture it, not really. But the idea that I might have a second chance with her, both terrified and electrified me. I knew with a certainty that felt bone-deep that I loved her. There hadn’t been a single day, since the moment I first learned what the word meant, when I didn’t love her. Even when she was gone, even when that love was the thing that hurt most. Even when I’d convinced myself it was over, that I’d ruined it beyond repair. I still loved her, and I wanted her to know it. Not just as something I felt, but as something I did. If she wouldn’t believe my words—my words, worthless and clumsy as they were—maybe I could speak in a language she always trusted: the way I touched her, the way I let her see me.

All the things I’d wanted to say to her, all the apologies and explanations and desperate, wordless pleas for forgiveness, they pooled inside me now, a pressure that threatened to break me apart. I’d never had the right vocabulary for her. Not when we were kids, not when we were falling in love, not even now after a decade of carrying her memory around like a scar inside my chest. But I could give her this: my body, my hands, my hunger, every ounce of restraint I could muster to prove to her that I meant to go slow, that I wanted this to last.

22

TEN OUT OF TEN, WOULD REBOUND AGAIN

Dawson

Iwas perched on Dawson’s lap, knees gripping his hips, my palms splayed on his shoulders for balance. The moment I sank down onto him, a silent gasp burned in my lungs, my body stretched and heated, shaken by the fullness of him. My pulse drummed so fast I was certain he could hear it, the way my whole body reacted—clenching, spasming, opening to him—making it impossible to hide just how much I missed this, missed him, missed us. I pressed my forehead into the angle of his neck and shoulder, just breathing, letting my body remember every inch of him, the scent and heat and unyielding strength of Dawson Lockhart.

I don’t know if it was all the letters I’d read, or if it was something more primal, older than words and heartache and regret, but as I rocked against him, my skin felt raw and electric. I was stripped open, past the point of unforgiveness or pride. It wasn’t just the sex, even though every nerve in my body was sparking with it. It was every memory and every hope and every longing I’d ever tried to ignore, all crashing together in the space of his arms.

He let me set the pace, let me move how I wanted, but his hands never left me—one arm wrapped around my waist so securely it was as if he was anchoring me to this moment, the other tracing up my spine, cupping the back of my neck, his fingers buried in my hair. My body was tingling, every movement rippling with pleasure, but it was his eyes that made me unravel. He held my gaze, his pupils blown wide, lips parted, jaw tight with restraint. The look on his face—awed, worshipping, almost anguished—made me want to cry.

The rhythm built between us, slow at first, but deep, and every time I pushed down onto him, he pushed up into me, stretching me, filling me, until pleasure started to crest and I forgot to breathe. I moved faster, chasing that sharp, perfect edge, and he met me thrust for thrust, his hands guiding me, shaping my body to his. He found the sensitive spot between us, rubbing in time with every rise and fall, his thumb slick and sure. My body arched into it, overwhelmed, and I came so quickly it startled me, a sharp, sweet, shuddering rush that made my vision blur.

He didn’t stop. He kept moving, holding me through it, coaxing more and more from me until I was shaking, limp, draped over him like I’d lost all sense of gravity. But even then, I didn’t want to let go. I wanted to stay pressed against him, to feel him inside me, to keep reliving every flash of memory that this, this was what I’d been missing for years.

Dawson shifted, one hand gripping my hip while the other slid up to cradle my jaw, tilting my face up to his. He kissed me hard, hungry, desperate, like he was dying of thirst and I was water. I tasted myself on his mouth, tasted salt and skin, the heat of his breath. Our foreheads touched, his nose nudging mine, and I felt the stubble of his beard scrape my skin.

He moved me on him, up and down, slow and deep, and the sensation was almost too much—aftershocks of pleasure sparking along my spine, my nipples brushing against his chest, every nerve ending lit up. The sound of our bodies was obscene, slick and gasping, but it made me want him even more. I fisted my fingers in his hair, pulling at the roots, and he groaned, the sound so raw it gave me goosebumps. He was so big, so strong, but he held onto me like I was breakable, precious.

When he started to lose control, his rhythm stuttered, his hips bucked harder, and his body trembled under mine. I could feel the tension in him, the way he was holding back, afraid to hurt me, afraid to let go. But I wanted him to. I wanted him to take everything he needed from me, my body, my heart, my forgiveness. I whispered his name, “Dawson. Fuck, Dawson,” and he moaned, then pressed his face into my shoulder, his breath hot on my skin.

His mouth was at my ear, and it felt like he could swallow my every thought. I lost myself in the rasp of his voice, the words coming low and reverent, sometimes rough. “God, Sadie, you feel so fucking good,” and “I missed you, missed this, missed us.”

My breath came in shallow pants, my body thrumming in time with the way he moved beneath me. Every time I ground down, Dawson met me with a slow, deliberate push, his hands clutching my hips, guiding, steady, as if we had all the time in the world. The weight and width of him inside me was almost too much, but the way he held me softened every sharp edge, melting the pain into a hot, desperate hunger.

My head spun with it, his scent, the taste of his skin, the feral look in his eyes as he watched my every reaction, like he was memorizing how to break me open. I tried to meet his gaze, but it was too much, and I had to look away, pressing my forehead into his neck, letting my hair curtain around me. He rocked into me, slow at first, but gradually built a rhythm that made my thighs tremble. The air around us was fever-bright, every nerve ending tingling. I never wanted to be anywhere else again.

As the pressure of pleasure built inside of me as my body drove towards a release, he slid his hand between us, thumb finding that exact spot just above where we were joined, and when he pressed and circled there, I shattered. My orgasm hit me out of nowhere, sharp and fast, making my whole body arch and clamp down on him, stars bursting behind my eyelids. I tried to stifle the sound, but he caught it with his mouth, swallowing my whimpers and answering them with a low groan that vibrated all the way through me. But he didn’t let up. His thumb kept working, his hips kept moving, and I felt another wave building before I’d even started to come down. The bliss was relentless, impossible. I clung to his shoulders, nails digging in, sobbing out his name as I rode the aftershock after aftershock, each one crashing through me, leaving my muscles wrung out and boneless.

He held me through every full-body tremor, never letting me drift away. “That’s it,” he murmured, voice thick with awe. “Good girl, come for me. I’ve got you.” Those words undid me more than anything else. I had never felt so safe, so completely unguarded, in my entire life.

Finally, when my breathing slowed, he shifted us so I was lying flat on my back, his weight braced above me. He slid out, only to slip back inside with a fluid, practiced motion. The angle was different now, deeper, and I gasped at the way it changed everything. He started to move—a steady, determined rhythm that had my sex clenching and fluttering all over again.

My legs wrapped around his waist, my ankles crossing at his lower back, anything to keep him close. My hands found his biceps, his shoulders, the hard line of his jaw. I wanted to touch all of him, to remember every inch I’d missed.

He pushed into me, faster now, and the couch creaked under our weight. I dragged my nails down his back, leaving marks that would last, and he moaned into my mouth, kissing me like he couldn’t bear to be apart for even a second. Every thrust sent tiny explosions bursting through my core, and I could feel another climax coiling inside me, slow and inevitable. He sensed it, too, the way my inner walls tightened around him, the way my breath hitched and my hips tilted to meet his every move. He drove into me harder, sweat slicking our bodies, his fingertips digging into my thighs and hauling them even higher around his waist.

But I couldn’t get close enough. I wanted him deeper, wanted him everywhere. I could tell he felt it, the wild frustration in me, the hunger that wouldn’t be satisfied. He paused, just for a second, his eyes meeting mine with something like a challenge. Then, without warning, he flipped me, strong hands grasping my hips, turning me onto my stomach in one seamless motion. My heart nearly stopped from the thrill of it—I’d always loved when he took me that way, and my whole body lit up with anticipation.

I felt him behind me, his chest blanketing my back, his erection pressed against the curve of my ass. He brushed my hair off my neck, planting a slow, tender kiss just below my ear, then trailed his mouth down over my shoulders, along my spine, all the way to the small of my back. I buried my face on the throw pillow, shuddering under the heat of him, the way his rough stubble rasped against my skin.

He kneaded my ass cheeks, spreading me open, and it was so dirty, so vulnerable, that I almost told him to stop. But the look in his eyes when I glanced back—hungry, worshipful, utterly in awe—made me melt. He bent down and kissed the swell of my ass, then nipped at it, then licked, the hot slide of his tongue making me gasp. It was filthy and perfect. He kept going, licking lower until his mouth was on my most private spot, the place no one else had ever even touched. I jerked in shock, but he only pressed his arm tighter around my waist, pinning me down, licking and stroking and driving me out of my mind.

My pussy clenched so hard it hurt, my arousal dripping down my thighs, and his fingers found my clit again, circling and pressing in time with his tongue. I lost all sense of the world. All I could feel was him, his mouth, his hands, the rigid length of his cock rutting against my body. I started to shake, the pleasure so intense it bordered on pain, but I couldn’t say no, couldn’t slow down, didn’t want to.

He licked me until I sobbed, until I was begging for it, then slid two fingers inside my sex, curling them just right, hitting that spot no one else had ever found. My release hit so hard I nearly blacked out, my body convulsing, every muscle seizing. I screamed his name, choking on the sound, and he was right there with me, whispering, “So good, Sadie. You’re so fucking perfect. Every part of you.”

He let me ride the high, never letting go, until my limbs went limp and I was slumped onto the couch cushions, boneless. Then, he shifted so he was kneeling behind me, and I felt him lining himself up again. The pressure of his engorged tip was pushing against my entrance. I looked back at him as he pressed inside of me, and I held onto the pillows.

He held me tightly with both hands, manhandling me into perfect alignment, and I braced myself against the arm of the couch. The pressure was excruciating and perfect, each slow grind of his hips opening me up, claiming me deeper than he’d ever been. He massaged my ass, spreading me wider, and when he started to thrust—inexorable, ruthless, owning every inch—I nearly sobbed from the intensity. The slap of flesh on flesh, the dirty wet sounds of my tight canal swallowing him over and over, echoed in the dimly lit room.

He bent his torso over mine, burying his face in the back of my neck, the heat of his breath igniting fireworks on my skin. “You like that?” he rasped, voice shredded with need. He bit down, not enough to hurt but to remind me who was in control, and I whimpered my answer, too delirious for words.

His arm snaked around my middle, palm splayed over my lower belly, holding me steady while he pounded into me with merciless precision. Then his hand found the tender knot of nerves at the top of my sex, slippery and swollen, and he circled it with his thumb in perfect rhythm to the thrusts, like he knew my body’s secrets even better than I did.

I was gone, lost to the world, nothing but sensation—pain, pleasure, want, more. I lost myself as I screamed into the throw pillow, my inner muscles clamping down, milking him for everything he had. But he didn’t stop. He held me steady and took every aftershock, chasing his own release, grinding out incoherent praise and filthy talk at my ear. “You’re so fucking tight,” he groaned, “so good, Sadie, you were made for me.”

The raw, almost reverent way he said it undid me, made me feel precious and owned at the same time. The world narrowed to the two of us, to this couch, to the slick, animal collision of bodies. My mind fractured, exploding into a million points of light, each one a flash of memory, us at seventeen in his truck, prom night, promising to love me forever, all the years I’d pretended I didn’t want this. It was all still there, the history and heartbreak, written into the lines of his body and the muscle of his hands.

He pulled me upright, so my back was flush against his chest, his hand at my throat, the other gripping my hip. He pounded into me, fucking me through my aftershocks. He started to lose control, his thrusts growing wild, more frantic, and I wanted to see his face when he came. I reached behind me, grabbed his hip, tried to turn, and he got the message—he pulled out and flipped me like a rag doll onto my back.

I barely registered the loss before he was inside me again, driving home with a single, punishing stroke. The new angle made me arch off the couch, thighs shaking, toes digging into the upholstery. He kissed me, hard and brutal, his teeth catching my lower lip until I gasped. He swallowed the sound, pinning my wrists to the cushions, his body like a furnace above mine.

“Look at me,” he demanded, and I did, even though my vision blurred from the tears of pleasure streaking my temples. His eyes were wild, desperate, vulnerable—like he couldn’t believe I was real, like he was terrified I’d vanish if he blinked. He slowed his thrusts, drawing them out, savoring the connection, and his hand came up to cradle my jaw. “Don’t ever leave again,” he whispered, and I realized it wasn’t a command so much as a prayer.

I couldn’t answer. I could barely breathe. My whole body clenched around him, and I felt his cock jerk, the hot flood of his release painting my insides. He moaned my name, voice breaking, and collapsed on top of me, our bodies tangled and slick with sweat. We rode out the aftershocks together, shuddering and trembling until there was nothing left but the drumbeat of our hearts and the ragged pull of air in our lungs.

For a long moment neither of us moved. I lay there, pinned beneath his weight, feeling every inch of skin pressed against mine, trying to memorize the sensation in case it was the last time. His breath fanned my cheek, his arms caged me in, and for the first time in years, I didn’t want to run.

Eventually, he rolled us to the side, careful to keep me tucked into his chest, like I might slip away if he loosened his grip. I curled against him, my ear above his heart, and let myself be held. The room was shadowed, the only light leaking in from the candles flickering, painting the wall in rippling gold.

His hand moved in lazy circles across the small of my back, soothing and grounding. “You okay?” he murmured, voice rumbling through his chest to where my cheek rested. I nodded, unable to speak, and he kissed the top of my head, lingering like he was taking a sacrament.

It was the gentleness in his touch—the way he wrapped the blanket around us, the way he stroked my hair—that made it impossible to pretend this was just sex. The need in his voice, the worry that I might be sorry, the vulnerability in the way he waited for my answer. He was showing up for me, the way he always had, even when I’d been too stubborn to see it.

I nodded and cleared my throat, voice hoarse. “Why did you come?” I asked, meaning why he’d come over in the storm. But he misunderstood—he thought I meant the sex, the madness we’d just survived.

He smiled. “You have to ask?”

I thought about rewording my question but realized there were so many other things that needed to be said. I wanted to tell him that I’d spent years longing for this, for him. That the distance between us had never felt right, not even for a day. But all I could manage was, “I never stopped missing you.”

He tensed, a sharp breath escaping him, and I worried I’d said too much. But he just pulled me tighter, held me like a lifeline. “Good,” he said simply. “Because I never stopped missing you, either.”

We lay like that for a while, cocooned in the silence, the ghosts of the past finally quiet for once.

He smoothed the hair from my face and sat up, still holding me close. “You want pizza?” he asked, so matter-of-fact it made me laugh. And somehow, that made everything okay.

I realized, once again, that he was showing up for me, just like he always did.

23

A CULT IN YOUR HONOR

Sadie

The blue vinyl chair by my grandfather’s hospital bed was starting to mold itself to my body, the plastic creaking softly every time I shifted, as if it, too, was growing bored of the slow drip of saline and the mechanical sigh of the oxygen monitor. Every day was the same: I’d show up at nine with a coffee and a New York Times crossword, sit with Buddy while he dozed under the stiff white blankets, and pretend that we were both just passing time in a train station instead of waiting for the bell to toll. I’d been in Valentine Bay for a little over a week, and the world I’d left behind was already shrinking in my rearview. All the commotion and deadlines and coffee-fueled all-nighters felt like a fever dream from another person’s life.

Still, when my phone vibrated in my pocket, I nearly jumped from my seat. The number was one I knew as well as my own, though the New York area code looked almost foreign against the gray Oregon light. I checked to see if Buddy was awake, his mouth was slack, and he was deep in the kind of sleep that belonged to infants, so I slipped into the hallway to answer.

“Oh my god, Sadie, I’ve been calling you all morning. Nobody here knows what the hell is going on and Arthur is literally pacing the conference room, he looks like he’s about to have an aneurysm. He kept asking me if you were bluffing, and I had to pretend I knew, but I don’t—are you? Please tell me this is a negotiation tactic.” Janine paused, but only long enough to inhale. “Because if you are, it’s a genius move. I mean, not showing up for the Ashbourne pitch when Mason refuses to meet with anyone else? You’re basically holding the firm hostage. I love it. But also, I hate it, because I think you mean it. Do you? You can’t, right?”

I pressed my back against the wall and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to keep the sound of her panic from seeping into the room where my grandfather was resting.

“I’m not bluffing, Janine.” The words were harder to say than I’d anticipated. “I really am taking leave, indefinitely. The situation here is…it’s complicated. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

A gasp, then a strangled, “The Walters account is yours, Sadie. The committee was practically planning the press release. You’ve been working nonstop for this for three years. If you’re not here, it’ll go to—” She dropped her voice, as if even thousands of miles couldn’t keep her safe from the predator she was about to name. “—to Finch. He’s already sniffing around your clients. I found him logging into your accounts.”

I wanted to laugh, but my chest was so tight it felt like something might snap. “That’s fine,” I said. “Honestly. If Tyson Finch wants the Walters account, he can have it.” I paused, searching for the right words to make her believe me. “It sounds crazy, but none of that matters right now. Buddy needs me. I have to be here.”

Janine started to protest, but I could hear the shift in her tone—a softer, warier note that meant she already knew she’d lost this argument. “I get it,” she said finally, her voice small. “But what the hell am I supposed to tell Arthur?”

I watched a nurse walk past, tugging an IV pole. I imagined myself at the next boardroom meeting in lower Manhattan, sitting across from Arthur Stein, president and CEO of Bishop & Black Creative, with the Manhattan skyline reflected in his glasses. My life there had been sharp-edged and blinding, this one was all soft light, damp air, and the ancient smell of salt from the ocean and geraniums.

“Tell him whatever you want. Tell him the truth or tell him I’m having a breakdown, or I caught a virus, or I decided to become a nun.” The words felt like little lead pellets dropping into water, simple and final.

There was a silence on the line, the kind that only exists between people who have carried each other’s secrets in the fireproof box of work wives and after-hours drinking buddies. Then I heard the rustle of a tissue and realized Janine was crying.

“You’re really not coming back, even for the Walters pitch?”

“Not unless the Walters family wants to schedule their meeting in Buddy’s hospital room,” I said, trying for humor that didn’t quite land.

She sniffed. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it—this is career suicide. You know that, right?”

I did know it. I’d made my peace with it, sitting in the hospital room with Buddy. “Yeah. I know. But, look at it this way. This is an opportunity for you to step up. It’s your time.”

She barked out a laugh, the kind that was more pressure release than amusement. “God, I don’t even know who I am without you here. Remember when you hired me? You said you liked my ‘murderous energy.’”

“I do remember.” I chuckled at the memory. “You were bloodthirsty.”

“Well, I’m not feeling very homicidal. I don’t want to take your clients, Sadie. That’s not what this is.”

I smiled, though it hurt. “You’re not taking them. I want you to have them. I wouldn’t trust anyone else with them.” I shifted the phone to my other ear, trying to ignore the pressure that was building behind my eyes. “Listen, Janine, I know you’re scared, but you’re ready for this. You know those accounts better than anyone. Every single one of my clients loves you. I’m recommending to Arthur that you be promoted and take over my portfolio. You deserve it.”

There was a ragged inhale, then a long pause.

Janine’s voice was so incredulous I almost laughed. “You’re recommending me to Arthur? Like, actually? You think I can do it?”

“I know you can. You’ve been doing the work for months,” I encouraged her. “The team loves you and will listen to you. You’re going to be amazing, Janine. Take care of them for me, okay?”

Janine was quiet for so long I thought the call had dropped. Then, in a voice that sounded suddenly older, she said, “When are you going to talk to Arthur? I need to brace myself for the fallout.”

I could picture her—forehead pinched, mouth a hard line—already calculating the chaos she was about to inherit.

“Soon,” I said, “I’m drafting an email and I’ll BCC you on it.”

“Okay, okay, but when you come back then⁠—”

“Then we’ll figure it out,” I assured her. “I have to go, we’ll talk soon.”

The moment I disconnected the call, I let my head fall back against the cool, institutional wall. For years, my phone had been an unstoppable metronome, every buzz a summons to action, every message a new fire to put out, a new negotiation to finesse, a new client to appease. I’d built a life around the urgency of it, my sense of purpose pinned to the constant whitewater rapids of deadlines and conference calls. That was all over now, and I didn’t feel liberated so much as emptied out. The part of me that had been sustained by adrenaline and deadlines was already starting to calcify. But at the same time, there was a slow, diffuse relief, like the hush just after a fire alarm is silenced, when your body remembers what it means to rest.

I stood in the hallway as my phone screen faded to black, feeling the shift in the air. The old rules of my life no longer applied out here. I was in the borderlands now, stuck in a space between the person I’d been and whoever I was supposed to become next. And the thought that Janine—my Janine—was going to be the one to inherit my legacy made me oddly proud. I knew my clients would be in good hands with that girl, and she would burn the whole place down if they underestimated her. She’d do great, and I would be…here. In Valentine Bay. Existing.

I was still running my thumb over the home button on my phone when I heard footsteps coming up the linoleum. I expected a nurse, or maybe one of the cleaning staff, but it was Gio—Dr. Russo—in his scrubs, holding a file in one hand and a half-eaten protein bar in the other. We’d fallen into an odd rhythm with my visiting Buddy in the hospital. He’d check in on Buddy’s progress, make small talk, and then pivot to whatever little drama was currently flaring up in the ER, third floor, or town in general. I’d listen, offer some snarky commentary, and we’d both pretend for five minutes that this was just a regular small-town day.

“Hey,” he said, glancing at my phone. “Everything okay?”

“I think I just fired myself.”

“Wow…that’s quite impressive.”

“Not really.” I managed a weak smile. “Turns out I’m replaceable after all.”

“Nah,” he said, shifting the file under his arm. “They’ll probably start a cult in your honor. Or at least a LinkedIn group.” He took a bite of the protein bar and chewed, studying me. “You gonna be okay?”

I wanted to say yes, but the word stuck in my throat. Instead, I shrugged and looked down at my sneakers, which suddenly looked too shiny and new for a hospital corridor.

He didn’t push, just nodded toward Buddy’s room. “He had a rough night. They upped his fluids and started him on a new round of antibiotics for the respiratory infection that developed. Vitals stabilized around four, but he’s still pretty out of it.”

I tucked my phone into my pocket and tried to assemble my face into something approximating composure. “How long will he have to stay?”

Gio shrugged, a gesture that was meant to convey uncertainty, but I read something darker in his eyes. “He needs to transition to a rehab facility. He can’t go home like this, Sadie. He’d be back here in a week.”

I let the words settle, their weight filling my lungs until it was hard to breathe. “Have you told him that?”

He hesitated, then shook his head. “Every time I bring it up, he says he’s discharging himself and then starts listing all the chores he needs to do. He’s stubborn even when he can’t stand up without help.”

“Sounds about right.” I laughed, but it came out too thin, more like a leak than a release. “I’ll talk to him. Again. He won’t listen, but I’ll talk to him.”

Gio looked sympathetic. He stuffed the wrapper of his protein bar into his pocket and started to walk away, but paused. “Hey, do you know if Dawson is around tonight? I’ve been messaging him, but he’s not getting back to me.”

I blinked, momentarily thrown by the shift. “I’m not sure. Why?”

Gio shrugged, his eyes doing that thing where they flicker with a thousand unspoken thoughts before he settles on the most innocuous version. “Just need to catch up with him about something. No big deal.” He started to walk away, then stopped and turned back. “If you need to talk, you know where to find me.”

I nodded, and he disappeared around the corner, leaving me alone with the whirring of the air ducts and the faraway sound of a heart monitor alarm.

For a few seconds, I just stood there, staring at the pattern of scuffs on the floor. Then I steeled myself and pushed open the door to Buddy’s room.

He was awake this time, eyes half-open and roaming the ceiling as if searching for the answer to a question he couldn’t quite remember. He turned his head and saw me, and something like a smile crept across his face.

“Hey there, city girl,” he rasped.

I moved to the blue vinyl chair and sat, feeling the edge of the seat dig into the backs of my thighs. “You’re awake. Good. You missed your morning gruel.”

He made a face. “They’re trying to starve us to death in this place. Never thought I’d miss hospital Jell-O.”

Buddy needed to up his protein and fiber, so the nurses had stopped giving him Jell-O until he ate his oatmeal and regular food.

I smiled and set my phone on the tray table. “You want me to sneak you in a cheeseburger? I could do it. I have connections.”

His eyes twinkled, but his hands trembled as he tried to adjust his blanket. “Maybe later. Got to get my strength up if I’m going to bust out of here.”

I reached over and helped tuck the blanket around his shoulders. “You know you’re not going anywhere until the doctors say so.”

He grunted, clearly unconvinced. “Doctors don’t know everything. Sometimes you got to listen to your gut.”

I let that pass, because I knew better than to argue with him when he was this tired and grumpy. Instead, I busied myself with the crossword, flipping it open and pretending to care about the clues. We sat like that for a while, the silence companionable rather than oppressive.

Eventually, he spoke again, voice softer this time. “Who was that on the phone that you had to sneak off into the hallway?”

I hadn’t expected him to notice. I tried to play it off. “Just work stuff. Nothing important.”

He gave me a look that could have peeled paint. “Sadie Rose, you’re a terrible liar.”

I hesitated, then decided there was no point in hiding it. “My assistant. Well, my former assistant. I’m handing off my clients to her. I’m…out of the game. For now.”

He closed his eyes and drifted for a minute, the lines on his face relaxing. When he spoke again, his words were thick, like he was talking through a dream. “That got anything to do with the Lockhart boy?”

“Dawson?” I questioned. “No, my plans don’t have anything to do with Dawson.”

“Really? Cause I heard he was sniffin’ around ya again.”

Of course he heard. It was Valentine Bay, I wouldn’t be surprised if he heard what I had for breakfast. I felt my own body tense, not sure of where this was going, especially since he’d hidden the letters from me. I picked at the seam of my jeans, hoping he wouldn’t press.

He did, of course. “You pickin’ up with him again?”

I hesitated. Technically, I was. But also, not. It was more complicated than that, a shifting constellation of unfinished business and old wounds. “We’ve been…spending some time together. I’m staying at the ranch, Selma insisted.”

I wasn’t sure why I’d thrown that in. Dawson’s mom had insisted, but I was a grown woman. I could stay wherever I wanted to on my own accord.

He grunted again, but it sounded different this time. “I always liked that boy. Good head on his shoulders.”

I smiled, thinking of Dawson’s scowl and the way it softened when he didn’t think anyone was looking. “Yeah, he does.”

Buddy’s hand twitched on the blanket. “You two got history.”

It wasn’t even a question. Just a flat statement of fact.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “We do.”

“You know what they say about history? It repeats itself, so just make sure that it’s a do si do you want to do again.” He nodded, satisfied with his warning. But then, as if a switch had been thrown in his brain, his face darkened. “Well, you don’t have to babysit me, Sadie Rose. Don’t go changin’ plans on my account. You got your own life to live. Don’t let an old man, or any man, drag you back here.”

His voice was climbing, the ragged edges of anger bleeding into his words. I saw his heart monitor spike on the readout, the beeping growing frantic.

I reached for his hand. “A wise man used to tell me, the past is history, the future is a mystery, right now is a gift, that’s why they call it the present. Let’s just focus on that,” I recited the words he always said to my mom during uncertain times with her health, which my mom would then say to me.

“You’re old enough to know, that’s the Disney version of that sayin’. Your Gigi Rose made me clean up my language after we had your mama.”

“Really?”

“Yep, what I used to say before we had little ears runnin’ around was, if ya got one foot in the past and one foot in the future, then you’re pissin’ on the present.”

My head fell back and I laughed. That actually sounded a lot more like Buddy. From what people said, Gigi Rose tamed Buddy quite a bit. He was a wild one before he met and fell in love with her.

Some people used to say that about me, they said I tamed ‘the heartbreaker,’ which I thought was funny since we got together when we were twelve. Still, I used to take pride in that, I felt special. Part of the reason I’d left when I found Dawson in bed with Vicki was embarrassment. My identity was being Dawson Lockhart’s girlfriend, his soulmate, the love of his life. And when that was threatened, I didn’t know how to face it.

Maybe Gio was more right than I thought. Maybe part of the reason I’d stayed away was so I could figure out who I was without Dawson, without the shadow of my mom and grandma, two Miss Valentine Bays, literal beauty queens, who I looked exactly like.

The thing was, I’m not sure I did find out who I was. I felt more myself the past week that I’d been back in Valentine Bay than I had the entire twelve years I’d been gone, and I wasn’t sure what to do about that.

24

BROS BEFORE BETRAYAL

Dawson

I’d rather wrestle a half-ton Hereford bull into a trailer than sit through another one of Damon’s monthly meetings but unfortunately, that wasn’t an option.

The cavernous, high-ceilinged conference room at the heart of Lockhart Ranch’s admin building was designed to awe, not foster intimacy. I suspected that was Damon’s point of using it, he was a man who believed in the power of spectacle, in the ritual of gathering the troops under a single roof and making even the most trivial of operational updates feel like an event. From where I sat at the U-shaped mahogany table, every wall of the room was hung with a hundred years’ worth of Lockhart family memorabilia—sepia-hued photos of ancestors in Civil War-era garb, black-and-white images of the ranch’s earliest days, a collection of rusted branding irons arranged in a monogrammed shadow box. A few of the newer frames featured Damon himself, his square jaw locked in a smile that looked genuine only if you didn’t know him, flanked by some up-and-coming state senator or local news anchor.

My left leg bounced with a restless energy that threatened to set the entire table vibrating while Damon droned on about quarterly projections for the vineyard expansion and the spa’s record-breaking bookings. I never envied Damon’s job, and I sure as hell couldn’t fathom why he seemed to enjoy it. Maybe it was because he’d always been more of a people person, or because he genuinely believed in the transformative power of spreadsheets and mission statements. Me? I would have rather spent the morning shoveling hay or fixing tractor engines, anything that involved animals or moving parts with a clear end result. The only “moving parts” in this room were the sycophantic heads nodding in time with Damon’s cadence, a peculiar ballet of deference that left me feeling like the walls were closing in.

Every so often, Damon would pause and look directly at me, as if daring me to contradict his claim that “consolidation of departmental reporting will streamline efficiency.” I never rose to the bait, mostly because I didn’t care, but also because I’d long ago learned that my opinions on process improvement were unwelcome unless they involved animal welfare or fire mitigation.

The only redeeming feature of these meetings was the presence of my mother, a diminutive force of nature whose appearance belied the fact that she could outwork any man on the crew. She sat two seats away from me, her posture prim as a schoolmistress. She held Minnie on her lap, scribbling on a color-coded legal pad while sipping black coffee from a chipped mug. During one particularly dull lull, she leaned over and whispered, “You look constipated. Are you going to survive this?” I snorted, and Damon glared at us both, but Mom just grinned, unrepentant.

We were half an hour into Damon’s color-coded PowerPoint when the boardroom door creaked open, and Dylan wandered in, looking every bit the prodigal son. My youngest brother had perfected the art of the unapologetic late entrance. Today he wore dusty Timberlands, a faded Seahawks tee, and a ball cap pulled low over his eyes, the brim still bent from his high school baseball days. He carried with him a palpable sense of mayhem, like a tornado disguised as a human, and as he slid into the empty chair beside me, he offered a sideways grin.

“Sorry, got hung up with the fence crew,” he lied. We all knew he’d probably slept through his alarm, but nobody called him on it. Not even Damon, who ignored his entrance entirely and moved on.

Dylan pulled a can of energy drink from his back pocket, cracked it open with a daring fizz-pop, and whispered to me, “I’ll give you fifty bucks if you fake a seizure and get us out of here.”

“You still owe me two hundred from the Pereira fight,” I reminded him.

“I told you I’m good for it.”

“Yeah, you did, six months ago.”

I knew I was never going to see that money. If I kept a spreadsheet of all the money Dylan owed me from betting, borrowing, and bankrolling he’d be in debt to me in the tens of thousands. Luckily for him, Buddy taught me never to give anyone money you expected back, especially family. Which is why, while I gave Dylan shit, in reality, he owed me nothing.

Dylan shrugged, unbothered, and settled in for what he clearly expected to be a nap with his eyes open. It amazed me how little the passage of time had changed him, how he retained the same anti-authoritarian streak that landed him in the principal’s office at least once a week, back in the day. And yet, for all his bluster, Dylan had been the first to sign enlistment papers after graduation, and the first to come home after serving his country, a little less reckless and a lot more careful about how he spent his anger.

It was easy to forget, sometimes, that Dylan had seen things that none of us would ever understand in war zones. He hid it well, beneath layers of bravado and sarcasm, but every so often I caught him staring off into the distance, as if daring the world to throw something at him he hadn’t already survived.

As Damon pressed on about expanding guest capacity and the need for standardized checklists, my attention drifted to some of the other department heads ringing the table like suspects in a murder mystery. There was Noah Carter, the guest relations manager, a former cruise ship director who wore pastel suits and talked with his hands so much I always half-expected him to levitate. Walt Walker, ranch manager, an old-timer who looked like he’d been carved from a single block of sun-dried beef jerky, contributed only grunts and the occasional “yep” when prompted. Charlotte Winslow, the tasting room manager was a recent hire—a woman from one of the pinot-centric wineries up north—who had already instituted a dizzying array of “sensory flight” options that I found pretentious, but was clearly not the intended audience.

The spa director of operations, a stone-faced woman named Brenda Sterling, listened with the serene patience of a Buddhist monk. Still, I’d once heard her reduce a vendor to tears over an unsatisfactory shipment of Himalayan salt. Catering manager, Ricky Alvarez, was in a constant state of panic, as evidenced by the tremor in his pencil and the flop sweat darkening his collar. Wes Bennett, maintenance supervisor, a curly-haired guy who dressed in a rotation of salmon-colored polos, spent the meeting tapping out texts with the speed of a court stenographer.

I’d been to enough of these meetings to know that the real decisions happened outside this room, usually after hours in the kitchen or during impromptu gatherings at the back fence line. Still, Damon believed in the theater of consensus, and so there we were, all fifteen heads of the respective sub-kingdoms in the Lockhart Ranch land, plus me, whose title was technically CEO but who’d rather be hip-deep in manure than neck-deep in bureaucracy. Actually, I’d rather be at the hospital with Buddy and Sadie.

It struck me as almost funny, in a sick twist of fate, that after years spent drowning myself in Lockhart Ranch work to avoid the Shepards, now all I wanted was to drop everything and go be with them. I pictured him in a hospital bed, still managing to look bigger than the furniture built to contain him, every inch the stubborn old bastard he’d always been. But his stubbornness wouldn’t mean shit this time. That stroke, heart attack, and subsequent bronchial infection were game-changers, and even with the best prognosis, he’d be out of commission for the entire season. Maybe longer.

I reached for my coffee and realized I was squeezing the cup so hard I was crushing it. I forced my grip to relax and took in the scene around me. Damon was laying out the expansion timeline with a laser pointer in hand, aiming it like a sniper at a floor plan projected on the wall. The other department heads all scribbled in their notebooks or clicked away on tablets, but no one looked up, this was just another round of the same old song and dance. My brothers both sat on the opposite side of the table, Dean hunched over his iPad, and Dylan—having downed his energy drink—was now constructing an elaborate tower out of Styrofoam cups. If Damon noticed, he didn’t let on.

I was only half listening when I heard, Lydia, our events manager—the one person on the ranch who never, ever took days off—announce she was taking early maternity leave. She’d been with us for five years, and I’m pretty sure she’d attended every wedding, anniversary, birthday, and corporate retreat held at the ranch since she was hired. Now she was about to disappear for up to a year, and the mere mention of this caused a wave of mild panic to ripple around the table.

Damon tried to sound upbeat about it stating—“We’ll hire someone and until then, we’ll beef up the admin team, we’re a family and we’ll pull together”—but I knew from experience that any work not directly assigned to someone got lost in the black hole of competing priorities. There wasn’t a person alive who could keep up with Lydia’s all-hours, all-emergencies approach. Her shoes would not be filled, at least not in any way that didn’t involve duct tape and prayer.

It came at a shit time. As much as I loved the ranch, I might need to take some time off and dedicate some time to help Shepard Farm and Buddy. At the very least, I was going to need to split my time. I wasn’t going to bring it up now, not in front of everyone. I’d speak to my mom and brothers later, in private. I knew they’d give me a little shit, at least my brothers would, but they’d understand.

I was so lost in my own head that I barely registered when the meeting adjourned. Damon gave his usual closing speech—full of “action items” and “takeaways” and “synergy” bullshit—and then everyone stood, stretched, and began the typical post-meeting shuffle toward the doors.

As I stepped out and headed for the stables, my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a text from Gio. Actually, it was around the sixth text from Gio I’d received over the past few days. The first had shown up shortly after he’d taken Sadie to the Cupid’s Arrow. I hadn’t answered any of them.

I thumbed the phone and read the latest.

Gio

Call me as soon as you can. It’s important.

I considered ignoring it, but I knew I’d needed to deal with it. Whatever else he was, Gio had been my best friend for over twenty years, and if he wanted to talk, he probably had a good reason. Probably. The memory of Sadie laughing at something Gio said played in my mind’s eye. Irritation bubbled up inside of me as I shook my head and did my best to erase the image like an Etch A Sketch.

The day was gray and overcast, the kind of weather that made you want to go back to bed, but I was wide awake, heart pounding in my ribcage like something trying to bust free. I inhaled the cool, cedar-scented air. I made it halfway to the stables before I heard my name.

“Lockhart!” It was Gio, but his voice sounded more stressed than usual, less like the cocky smartass who’d once gotten us banned from the Bluewater Inn for setting off fireworks from the roof and more like the dumbass who almost missed taking his MCATs because he partied the night before and overslept.

The look on his face, the anxiety I saw there, made me wonder if I’d misjudged his reason for reaching out to me altogether. What if he wasn’t messaging me about him taking Sadie out for a drink? What if it was something more serious?

I stopped in my tracks. “Is Buddy okay?”

Gio nodded as he strode towards me. “What? Yeah he’s⁠—”

“Giovani Russo! Are you making house calls now?” My mom appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, Minnie curled up in her arms. She looked at Gio with a mother’s x-ray vision.

Gio smiled and to anyone who didn’t know him well, it would look like a relaxed, casual grin. I could see the effort it took. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of this one and he wasn’t answering my messages.”

My mom’s eyebrows lifted as her eyes volleyed between us. “How’s Buddy?” she asked, her stare landing on Gio and pinning him like a searchlight.

“About as good as he can be, all things considered. They’re keeping him for observation, but he’s not cooperating. He keeps trying to escape.”

I nodded. That sounded like Buddy. I could almost hear him, demanding to be discharged so he could check on the irrigation pumps.

“Who’s this?”

“Minnie,” my mom and I chorused.

“Dawson rescued her,” my mom explained. “But she’s spending time with Grandma while she gets better.”

“Grandma?” Gio grinned as he glanced over at me.

I shrugged.

“Speaking of, how’s Nonna?” my mom asked.

“She’s feisty as ever.” Gio softened at the mention of his grandma who raised him.

“You give her my love.” She patted Gio on the arm.

“Will do,” Gio promised.

Mom gave me a knowing look, then headed back, talking baby talk to Minnie. I watched her go, thinking again how she managed to keep four, now five adult sons, a husband, four dogs, two cats, over a hundred rescue animals, and seventy-eight employees in line with nothing more than guilt trips and a deeply honed sense of expectation.

Once she disappeared into the admin offices, Gio looked at me with the kind of earnest, desperate intensity that made me want to look away. I didn’t. I braced for whatever was coming.

“Is this about Sadie?” I asked, sharper than I intended.

His eyes dropped to the ground. “You remember graduation night?”

I flinched. Of course I remembered. “Only every day of my life,” I answered. “What about it?”

“There’s something I never told you.” He took a deep breath and raked a hand through his hair. “Something I heard a couple weeks later from Jeremy Miller.”

Jeremy Miller? The little shit with the rat face and the rich dad who owned half the strip malls in three counties and whose uncle was the Sheriff, so he thought he could get away with murder. I’d hated that guy since kindergarten.

“What?”

Gio swallowed hard. “You remember how I worked construction the summer before I left for college, I was working with Miller and he talked a lot of shit. But one day at lunch he was bragging about how he drugged Donovan Valentine, or he tried to roofie him on grad night but someone else drank his beer.”

“Donovan?

He nodded. “Yeah, it was payback for Donovan breaking Jeremy’s jaw sophomore year. He dosed Donovan’s beer and was going to take compromising photos of him, but somehow the drinks got switched and you ended up drinking the dosed beer.”

The memories came at me in sharp bursts: drinking with Donovan and Gio, the way the lights swam in front of my eyes, the sense of being outside my own body, watching events unfold from underwater. There were hours I still couldn’t account for. Waking up in bed with Vicki feeling like I got ran over by a fucking truck.

“You’re saying I was drugged?”

He nodded. “That’s what I’m saying.”

I wanted to punch something, but all I could do was stare at the gravel at my feet, like if I just looked hard enough, I’d find the missing pieces of my life buried there. “And you’ve known all this time?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“At the time, I just, I don’t know, I told myself it wasn’t that big of a deal but looking back I think it was because I was always jealous of you, man.”

“Of me?” I had no clue what he was talking about. He got as many, if not more, girls than I did. We were always neck in neck in sports. He got better grades than me. He was accepted into medical school.

“Yeah, you had everything I ever wanted.”

“I did?” I had no clue what he was talking about.

“You had this.” He fanned out his arms. Gio’s voice fractured at the end, and he looked away, jaw clenched so hard a vein throbbed in his temple. “You had the ranch, brothers, a mom and dad who loved you, a family. I love Nonna and Gen but…it’s not…it wasn’t the same. Growing up, I was so jealous of you. Your life seemed perfect to me. You had the girl, the family, the ranch, and I don’t know I guess I just, I was an asshole for not saying anything and I’m sorry. I should’ve told you, D. I should’ve told you all those years ago, but, I thought telling you would somehow make you end up being the good guy again, and I was just sick of you getting everything you ever wanted.”

The world stopped spinning. All the old rage and shame and heartbreak I’d buried for years—the bloodbath in my chest—came surging up like a tide, but beneath it was a sharp, stinging clarity. There had always been holes in my memory from that night, a sense of having been played, but I’d written it off as blackout drinking and my own fucking stupidity. I’d never once considered that I’d been set up. That someone had targeted me, or not me, but the same result, and that one of my best friends had known about it and never said a word.

I wanted to punch him in his fucking face. I wanted to hit at him for being a coward, for knowing the truth and letting me rot in it. I wanted to walk away and never look back. But most of all, I wanted to know why. Why now? After all these years, after all the wreckage, why the confession? Why did he finally care?

I stared at him. “So why now? Why the fuck are you telling me now?”

“I saw you and Sadie at the bar that night, I realized something. You’re still carrying it. All of it. And it’s not fucking fair.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I know you hate me right now, and I deserve it, but I needed you to know. I’m sorry. I really am. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry I envied you. And I’m sorry for every single thing I did to make it worse.”

The air between us was thin enough to snap. I looked at Gio and saw the kid I’d grown up with—the one who’d I’d had countless sleepovers with and who I’d learned to ride my bike with and had my first beer with—and I saw the man standing in front of me now, all his armor gone. I had no idea what to say. Anger and grief and relief, all tangled together, caught in my throat.

I let the words settle. The pain was still there, hot as a dragon’s breath of flames, but it burned out the poison that had been eating me alive. Maybe this was just another trick, a way for Gio to clear his own conscience. But I wanted to believe him. More than anything, I wanted to let it go.

He held out his hand. “I’m sorry, man. Really.”

For a long time, I just stared at it. Then I took it. His grip was strong, anchoring, and when I let go, I realized I could breathe again.

“Thanks for telling me,” I said. My voice was hoarse, but steady. “It means more than you think.”

Gio nodded, relief flooding his face. He started to say something else, but then just shrugged, like that was all there was left to say.

We stood there in the dirt, two broken idiots in the morning fog, and for the first time in a long time, the past felt like something I could finally put behind me, after I spoke to just one more person.

25

GRAND ROMANTIC COUP

Sadie

Iheaded down the boardwalk toward the main stage with the banner reading Valentine Bay Summer of Love Bachelor Auction: Bid on Your Destiny, phone in hand, as the air vibrated with heat and the anxious, sticky anticipation that comes from a small-town crowd giddy with the prospect of a communal spectacle. The annual bachelor auction was the evening’s centerpiece, and it seemed like every woman in a hundred-mile radius had convened, armed with purses and the ruthless, carnivorous energy of charity for a cause most couldn’t name. Somewhere in a bandstand, musicians were warming up with a cover of “Brown Eyed Girl,” and the air smelled of kettle corn, sunscreen, and the briny, slightly rotting sweetness particular to a coastal Oregon town in early June.

Navigating the pier, I kept my eyes on my phone screen instead of the crowd, while at the other end of my Facetime call, my Uncle Ronnie and his husband, Lorenzo, sat in their kitchen in Boca Raton in matching “Nassau or Never” T-shirts and with fresh cruise tans. Behind them, their cat, Galileo, kneaded the cushion on his bed.

“So, Sadie-girl, how long until you are back home?” Uncle Ronnie asked, leaning in so close to the phone that his right nostril briefly dominated my entire screen.

This was the longest I’d gone without speaking to my uncle since I’d moved in with him at eighteen. Even after he and Lorenzo retired to Florida, we always spoke at least twice a week, if not more. It felt good to hear his voice and see his face again. I’d filled him in on everything that had been going on.

“I don’t know,” I sighed. “At this point, I’m thinking weeks, could be more.” I kept my voice casual, but heat crept up my neck as I said it. I was still working out how I felt about it.

Lorenzo, who was sixty-eight but managed to look both younger and older, depending on how much time he’d logged in the sun that week, cut in, “Let us see the hunky lumberjacks! Turn the camera around, show us the scene!”

For some reason, Lorenzo had always associated lumberjacks with Oregon. The fact that I was raised on a Christmas tree farm didn’t do anything to dispel his assumption. With the resigned affection of someone who’d been forced to FaceTime every meal, milestone, and mid-level professional achievement since my uncles moved to Florida, I obliged. I flipped the camera and did a slow pan, capturing the booths stuffed with tie-dyed T-shirts, locally sourced pickles, and a glassblower demonstrating his craft while shirtless behind a thick barricade. Neon lights blinked around a makeshift bar, and the line for the funnel cake snaked so far that it threatened to merge with the line for the dunk tank.

“Oh, Babygirl, that’s precious,” Lorenzo enthused. “It’s like a Norman Rockwell if he painted for ‘Queer Eye.’”

I flipped it back on me.

“Before I let you go, are you happy?” Uncle Ronnie ended every call with the same question, voice softening, tilting his head so that his brow creased in what he probably thought was a fatherly gesture.

I thought about it. I weighed the gnawing, low-level anxiety that had followed me since I’d arrived in town a couple of weeks ago, but also the serenity of feeling like myself for the first time in a dozen years.

“I’m not here on vacation, I’m here for Buddy. It’s not about my happiness,” I pointed out.

“Happiness isn’t based on geography or circumstance, it’s a state of mind,” Uncle Ronnie went full Buddha.

“Where’s everyone headed in such a hurry?” Lorenzo ignored Uncle Ronnie’s lesson in Zen, commenting on the people swarming around me to get to the main stage.

“The bachelor auction.”

“Oh, that’s fun!” Uncle Ronnie smiled.

“And you’re wearing that?” Lorenzo grimaced with disapproval.

I laughed, then glanced down at my plain T-shirt and midi-length, flowy skirt and informed him, “I’m not the merchandise.”

Lorenzo tilted his head. “Still.”

“I was packing for a three-day conference and ended up being here indefinitely. I have limited options,” I defended myself.

“Leave her alone, Renz, she looks adorable,” Uncle Ronnie chastised.

“Is adorable the standard we’re settling for?” Lorenzo, who spent his career in the fashion world as a stylist, defended his stance.

I knew better than to weigh in on this debate.

“I gotta go. Love you both.” I blew them kisses.

“Love you, darling.” Lorenzo waved. Ronnie blew a kiss and made the universal sign for ‘call us later or else.’

I hung up and slipped the phone into my purse, trying to steel myself for the crowd. I didn’t realize how many people in Valentine Bay remembered me until I tried to walk, inconspicuous and solo, down the midway of the Summer of Love festival. At first, I could almost pretend I was just another face in the technicolor crowd, one more anonymous Pacific Northwesterner in a sea of windbreakers, sunglasses, and ironic vintage band tees. But it’s impossible to be invisible when every third person stopped to ask me about Buddy, as if I were not only his granddaughter but also his nurse, publicist, and spiritual proxy.

I had to keep reminding myself that this was supposed to be temporary. I’d be back in New York soon enough, once Buddy was stable and the drama of his spectacular, near-fatal collapse had faded to mere folklore legend. But the longer I stayed, the less certain I felt about anything.

I’d made it ten steps before I was ambushed by a woman in a sequined visor and a boy with a shaved head and a cast on his arm, who both greeted me by name. For the next twenty minutes, I couldn’t move five feet without someone flagging me down. My old babysitter, Beverly Cooper who had just turned fifty and was now a hot yoga instructor, wanted to know when Buddy would be released and if there was anything she could do. An elementary school teacher, who I barely remembered but who seemed to remember me, pressed me for news about Buddy’s condition. Buddy’s neighbor, Earle who was pulling his beloved senior bulldog Sampson, who’d survived three heart attacks and recently made local news by swallowing an entire tennis ball, in a cart decorated with photos of the dog and flowers, making it look almost like a float, asked when Buddy would be released and coming home so he could drop by his famous Philly cheesesteak sandwiches, Buddy’s favorite.

My phone buzzed and I pulled it out of my pocket, hoping it was Dawson. He was on the auction block tonight and I hadn’t spoken to him all day because I’d been in the hospital. I wondered if he was thinking of me at all or if he was more focused on who would win him. The thought of another woman going on a date with Dawson, even one she’d paid for and he was obligated to attend, left a very bad taste in my mouth. But it was for charity and we weren’t together, so I knew I was being ridiculous.

When I glanced down and saw the contact, my heart sank. It wasn’t Dawson. It with a text from my boss, Arthur, reminding me to submit the Q4 proposals by end of day EST tomorrow. I’d sent him my resignation with the recommendation that Janine was ready to step in and take my place, but he countered by pitching that I work remotely. I declined, but he wasn’t giving up that easily. I typed out my response, that I didn’t have the report completed since I resigned, and even if I hadn’t, I was on leave, and my thumb hovered over the reply button. I waited to feel guilt, or at least the familiar jolt of panic, but all I felt was an intense desire to throw my phone into the nearest oyster cart and run. I didn’t want to do ad work anymore, not really. Not after seeing how easily everything could be upended by a single, phone call, every priority in my life shifted.

“Sadie Rose!” The voice was both a shout and a caress, somehow. I’d know it anywhere.

I lifted my head to see Selma Lockhart, barely five feet tall, in a wrap dress that matched her eyes, smiling at me like she’d just run into her own daughter after a semester abroad.

I barely managed a “Hi, Selma!” before she enveloped me in the kind of hug that had once convinced a traumatized, motherless sixth grader that maybe the world hadn’t gone completely to shit.

“Don’t you look beautiful!” she exclaimed.

Tell that to Lorenzo, I thought to myself. I was wearing a floral midi-skirt and a baby doll shirt, which I’d planned on wearing to brunch on my L.A. trip before I got rerouted to my hometown.

I let her fuss over me, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from my sleeve and brushing a stray hair from my cheek. No one mothered like Selma did, not even my own mother, and it was both deeply comforting and slightly mortifying to feel my emotional guard drop so instantly.

Selma wasted no time. “Honey, how’s Buddy?” she asked, and her eyes were so open, so guileless and intent. It was a test, almost, to see if I’d keep up the brave front or let the mask slip. Someone once said that Selma Lockhart had a sixth sense for other people’s pain, and I’d never known her to miss a beat.

“He’s…he’s okay, considering,” I said, voice already thickening.

“I was going to send flowers but I ran into Nonna at Ever After Blooms and she told me he’s not a big fan of them, she told me to get him a succulent instead, that’s what she got him and apparently when he eighty-sixed all the floral arrangements he kept her succulent.”

“Nonna got him the succulent?” I hadn’t even considered Gio and Gen’s grandma, mainly because I only thought of her as Nonna, but her name was Teresa. Teresa Russo. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. She was age-appropriate. She was a widow, like Buddy, and she’d also lost a child. Her oldest son passed away in a car accident.

Selma nodded, tilting her head to the side, looking a little confused. “She said that’s what he prefers.”

“Yes, no, yes, he does. She’s right.” I nodded.

“I was thinking about getting him a cactus, because he’s so prickly and strong.”

She wasn’t wrong. “I think he’d love that.”

A grin of satisfaction pulled at her lips before she took a step back, as if to examine me for signs of wear or distress. “And how about you, Sadie Rose? You holding up?”

I smiled, hoping that she couldn’t see any distress that was simmering right beneath the surface. “I’m good, yeah, fine.”

She nodded slowly, understanding more than she let on. “How much longer do you think they’ll keep him?” She was asking about Buddy, but the question felt booby-trapped, as though she were really asking about me.

“I’m not sure how much longer they’ll be able to,” I relayed. “He’s already threatened to sneak out the second he gets his hands on shoes.” I tried to keep my tone light, but I wasn’t kidding. I honestly didn’t know how much longer the hospital would be able to keep Buddy admitted.

“That’s pretty much what Gio said when he stopped by the ranch,” Selma interjected, with a sly little glance. “What’s the next step for Buddy, once he’s out?”

“Technically, he should be moving into a rehab facility. But you know Buddy. He’d rather die than admit he needs help.” I felt my face flush with the impossibility of getting an eighty-two-year-old man to change his ways. “He told the hospital social worker he’s ‘allergic to being supervised’ and that he’d rather take his chances at home.”

Selma chuckled, not unkindly, just amused. “He’s a tough old bird. But that’s not fair to you.”

I shrugged, trying to minimize it. “I’m fine, I’ll figure it out.” Figure out my job, my lease in New York, and a life I’d spent years building from the ground up.

Before Selma could press further, she rested her hand on my arm. “Listen, hon. If you want, you can bring Buddy out to the ranch. The spa girls have all sorts of therapies, stuff for pain management and mobility. You know he wouldn’t be the first stubborn old cowboy we’ve patched up out there.”

From my understanding Buddy needed daily PT, not red-light therapy and deep tissue massages. But the truth was, I could totally see him perched on the porch swing of the Lockhart ranch, making the staff laugh and pretending he hated every minute of the attention.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Thank you. Really. That’s generous, but…I don’t think a spa is going to cut it. He needs medical care.”

Selma squeezed my arm. “You let me know if you change your mind. We’ve got resources, and if he needs a nurse or an aide, I know people.”

She meant it, too. One of the reasons Selma was both beloved and low-key feared in Valentine Bay was that she had an almost supernatural ability to get things done—meals delivered, roofs patched, funerals organized, all before anyone even asked for help.

Selma took a breath then her voice dropped to a conspiratorial murmur. “So, how long are you planning on staying in town?”

My eyes widened, caught off guard by the shift in conversation. “I…don’t know.” I looked away, blinking against the sting behind my eyes. “I have to see how Buddy does, and after that, I don’t really have a plan.”

Mainly because I have no clue what’s going on with your son. We’re behaving like we’re back together, but we haven’t talked about it, and it’s driving me crazy. I would bring it up, but I wasn’t sure I knew what I wanted, so what was the point in trying to nail his intentions down when I wasn’t even sure what mine were?

“Is that so terrible?” Selma asked, her tone softening. “The not knowing?”

It was, actually, but I couldn’t say that out loud. Instead, I pasted a smile on my face and lied, “I guess not.”

Selma’s gaze didn’t waver. “You know, sweetheart, you’re allowed to change your mind about things. Sometimes we think we’ve got a life mapped out, and then—” She glanced toward the bachelor auction stage, where a shirtless man in a construction hat was currently flexing for the crowd while a bachelorette party screamed. “—something happens, and all of a sudden, the map’s useless.”

I followed her gaze, and for a crazy second, I imagined myself buying a raffle ticket and bidding on a night out with one of the bachelors, mainly because I didn’t want anyone else winning a night with Dawson. The thought made me inhale a shaky breath, and Selma’s eyes brightened at the sound.

“See? Not so bad.” She nudged me gently.

A woman in a black tank top jostled past us, nearly spilling her entire cup of sangria on my skirt. I barely managed to sidestep, and Selma giggled and reached out to steady me.

“You want a drink? They’ve got some cute non-alcoholic options at the cider truck,” she offered. It sounded like she was offering more than just a drink, maybe a little shelter from my own uncertainty.

I was about to answer when my phone buzzed again—this time with a text from Peter.

Peter

Are you downtown at the summer festival?

I stared at the text, rereading it, wondering how he even knew about it and why he would be asking if I was there. I responded yes. In seconds another message appeared.

Peter

I thought that was you, I just wasn’t sure.

The text remained on my screen, incongruous and faintly menacing, like a spiderweb in the corner of a well-lit room. I stared at it, waiting for it to morph into something else, something more plausible, but it stayed there. I felt my pulse in my teeth.

“Everything okay?” Selma, who had the maternal intuition of a seasoned bomb-sniffing dog, turned toward me with those light, quick eyes. “You look pale. Do you need to sit down?”

I almost said yes, but I had the sense that sitting down would only create a smaller, more stationary target for whatever was barreling toward me. Instead, I shook my head and made a show of straightening, stretching my spine so I looked less like a hunted animal. I tried to focus on her, to steady myself with the warmth of her voice, but my eyes kept drifting over her shoulder, scanning the crowd for a familiar silhouette. I told myself I was being paranoid, that Peter was in Midtown, that he had a standing Thursday meeting at the firm and a burning need to be seen at his regular after-work bar. That he would never, could never, show up here, of all places, in the middle of some tie-dyed, small-town festival.

But as I scanned, almost immediately, I saw him: jaw set, mouth slightly open, striding through the crowd with the up-tempo focus of a man who thought the universe might actually have been laid out as a series of obstacles just for him to overcome. His navy slacks were sharply creased, his white button-down a shade too bright for the setting, as if his body still clung to New York’s fluorescent-lit logic. The sleeves were rolled to his elbows in an attempt at casualness, but the look was all wrong, like a vice president who’d come to shut down the fun. The effect was so jarring, so cosmically opposed to the tie-dyed and ironic-mustached energy of the festival, that I heard a distant commentary of incredulity from a group of teens at a funnel cake stand. Peter, of course, was oblivious. He was moving with purpose, eyes locked on me with the kind of optimism only the truly delusional can achieve.

I managed a smile for Selma, who’d followed my gaze. Her eyes, sharp even in her warmth, flicked from Peter to me and back again, assessing the situation with the brisk efficiency of someone who’d once run herd on four unruly sons and a husband.

“Oh,” she said, the “oh” dense with meaning.

I braced myself.

Peter reached us, smiling with all the white-collar assurance of a man who’d never once considered that a woman might not want to see him. “Sadie!” he called, as if I might have missed him otherwise. He stopped less than a foot from me, then hesitated, apparently unsure if a hug was appropriate. After a tense beat, he went for it, pulling me into the kind of embrace that’s meant to be sweet but feels more like a financial acquisition. He smelled faintly of cologne and ambition.

I fixed my mouth into a neutral line. “What are you doing here?” I asked. My voice, famously unreliable in crisis, came out both too loud and too incredulous.

Peter’s smile faltered for a millisecond—the human equivalent of a buffering wheel—then returned to full strength. “I thought I’d surprise you,” he said. “I, uh, had some vacation days, and you didn’t respond to my last few messages, so…here I am.” He gave a little jazz-hands flourish, like a bad magician revealing a limp bouquet.

“Everything okay?” Selma cut in, her tone deceptively even. She placed a comforting hand on my elbow, her thumb making tiny, anchoring circles. The way she said it—each syllable crisp, each vowel perfectly weighted—made it clear that she’d already assessed Peter as a possible threat and was mentally sorting through her network for a nearby Lockhart males. If necessary, she could summon all four in under ninety seconds.

Peter was a lot of things, but I didn’t think dangerous was one of them. Persistent. Self-involved. Egotistical, sure. But I was certain this was not a case of him stalking me, he probably thought him showing up like this would be some grand romantic gesture, like in the movies. For context, one of his favorite films was Friends With Benefits starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake, and his favorite scene from that movie was the flash mob at the end when they, spoiler alert, get together and profess their love for one another.

He thought proposals on jumbotrons and sky writing were romantic. I was sure in his head this was going to end in me swooning with delight. Unfortunately, that was not how this was going down. I was not happy to see him, and Selma was ready to unleash the wrath of the Lockhart Y-chromosomes on him if I just gave the nod. That wasn’t going to happen.

“I’m fine,” I said, “I just—didn’t expect to see you here.”

“I know,” Peter replied, grinning. “That’s the point of a surprise, right?” He clearly expected someone, maybe the universe, to give him a gold star for initiative.

“Um,” I said, realizing Selma was still waiting for a cue, “Mrs. Lockhart, this is Peter McKinley. My…friend from New York.”

Selma, ever gracious, offered her hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. McKinley.”

Peter shook it, possibly harder than necessary, and said, “You too, Mrs. Lockhart.”

“Oh, please, call me Selma.” She waved her hand dismissively and there was a glimmer of something in her eyes—amusement, maybe, or the satisfaction of confirming a hypothesis about finance bros she’d shared with me the week prior, that they were all self-involved A-holes.

A pause followed. A long one, in which Peter expected more introductions or pleasantries, but Selma simply smiled and waited him out. Finally, she patted my arm. “Well, I better go check on the boys as long as you’re good.”

I nodded, and she drifted away, her stride easy but her posture erect, like a bodyguard making herself available but not intrusive.

“Peter, what are you doing here?” I repeated my question.

“Honestly, I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

“Did you not get my messages?”

“Yeah, but I thought that was just, you know, self-sabotage, or you were worried I couldn’t handle everything you had going on here. I came here to tell you I can handle it and I’m not going to let you push me away like you push everyone else away. This is too good. I’m protecting you from you.”

It was a miracle I had ever agreed to go out with Peter in the first place. Even now, standing under the bunting and string lights of Valentine Bay’s jam-packed summer festival, I could barely recall why I’d ever found him appealing, let alone compelling. The rapport had been quick, I’ll admit that much. Our first date in Manhattan was a kinetic blur of wine bars and rapid-fire banter, Peter effortlessly steering the conversation from global markets to Broadway musicals to the best Michelin-starred ramen in Midtown. He had a confidence that bordered on the absurd, the kind of man who’d walk into a room and immediately act like he owned not just the room, but the entire building, maybe the city. Tall, put-together, objectively attractive in that upscale finance-guy way—expensive haircut, Italian shoes, bespoke suits that probably cost more than my old Subaru.

But time with Peter had the strange effect of making everything, including myself, feel slightly less real. At first, I assumed it was just the giddiness of new romance. Later, I realized it was more like being pulled into the orbit of a very shiny, very self-obsessed planet. I could never quite get his attention to settle on me for more than a few seconds at a time, unless I was telling a story about him or his work or something that would impress him. There was this running joke among his circle of friends that Peter had “Main Character Energy,” but if I was honest, he lacked the heart and depth you’d want in a protagonist. He was all surface-level charisma: cocktail party stories, gleaming white teeth, Ivy League credentials. Once, at a friend’s wedding, I watched him spend twenty minutes holding court about the physical and psychological effects of intermittent fasting, ignoring both the bride’s toast and my attempts to get him to dance. Afterward, when I told him I’d hoped to share a song, he’d blinked at me in gentle confusion, as if the thought simply hadn’t occurred to him.

Honestly, I’d always known that Peter was more interested in the idea of a relationship than the reality of one. He was the kind of guy who liked having a girlfriend the way some people enjoyed having high-end kitchen appliances: as a status marker, an indicator of taste and discernment, but not something you really took out and used unless company was coming over. I was convenient, presentable, and accomplished enough to check all the boxes on his personal spreadsheet, but I was never the main course. Our first fight was about how he’d RSVP’d us both to an out-of-state wedding without bothering to ask if I was available, then called me “overly rigid” when I explained I already had a work obligation. Our second fight was about how he’d posted a photo of us to Instagram with the caption “my better half,” even though we’d only been seeing each other for two weeks. He thought it was romantic. I felt like a prop.

And worst of all, this was the version of Peter I’d gotten when he was still pretending to be on his best behavior. The “honeymoon phase” was less a period of mutual infatuation than a series of gradual reality checks, each one a little less thrilling than the last. Eventually, his inability to listen, to empathize, to see beyond his own reflection, wore me down so thoroughly that it felt like there was nothing left to lose by breaking things off. Which I’d wanted to do for weeks before I’d even arrived in Valentine Bay.

So when he appeared in the middle of a small-town festival, unannounced and wholly uninvited, it was less a romantic gesture and more a testament to Peter’s singular superpower: his absolute, unshakeable conviction that the rules of normal human interaction did not apply to him. He’d texted me, sure, but when I hadn’t responded, he’d simply booked a flight and shown up, confident that his presence alone would be enough to smooth things over.

As I stood next to Peter’s crisp white shirt and glitzy watch, I realized that the only thing we’d ever really had in common was a shared allergy to boredom. He was a man in perpetual motion, and I’d been drifting, looking for a distraction. On paper, Peter was perfect: a checklist of desirable attributes, each one more impressive than the last, but on the inside, something essential was missing—a softness, an understanding, maybe even a soul.

I glanced at him, at the way he scanned the crowd with smug satisfaction, certain that he’d just pulled off a grand romantic coup. I thought about all the times I’d let myself believe that being with someone “good enough” was preferable to being alone. About all the little ways I’d shrunk myself to fit inside the lines of his life, how I’d learned to pretend that his dismissiveness was just a quirk rather than a warning sign. In the end, my relationship with Peter was less a romance and more of a placeholder, a way to pass the time until I could figure out what I actually wanted.

The wild thing was, I didn’t even feel sad about it anymore. I felt…nothing. Just the faintest flicker of relief, like the moment you realize a dental procedure is over and you survived without screaming.

“Peter, we’re not together anymore. I broke up with you.” The words spilled out faster than I could reel them in.

Peter’s eyes went wide, then narrowed, calculating. “Whoa…Sadie, wait. What? Where is this coming from?”

I could feel the noise and color of the festival blurring around us, like the whole world was rubbernecking our disaster, even though I knew that was all in my head and no one was paying attention. “It’s been over,” I said, softer but no less sure. “I’ve told you that.”

He took a step closer, lowering his voice to the kind of pitch reserved for high-stakes negotiations. “I flew all the way here to see you. You can’t just pretend what we had meant nothing?”

He said it like I’d just tipped over a Monopoly board because I was losing, not because I’d finally realized the game itself was boring and I was over it. “I’m not pretending, Peter.”

“Come on, Sadie. This is just that self-sabotage thing again. Every time we get close, you freak out.”

I surprised myself by not flinching. “No. Every time we get close, you steamroll me, and then act shocked when I don’t want to spend my life being an accessory to your ego.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, seemed to process, then shifted tactics. “Okay, look. I get it. You’re stressed, you’re processing some stuff from your hometown, you’re—” He made a vague, flapping gesture that somehow encompassed all of Valentine Bay and, presumably, my entire personality. “But don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

I looked at him—really looked at him—and realized he was incapable of seeing what I meant. Not because he was evil or even particularly obtuse, but because he’d never built that muscle. Some people were born with an extra sense for empathy; Peter had a blind spot the size of Manhattan.

“It’s over, Peter,” I said with finality.

He stared at me, stunned, then recoiled as if I’d slapped him. “You’re serious.”

“I am.”

He let the silence balloon between us, searching my face for some sign that I was joking, or would back down, or would let him talk me out of it like every other time. When he didn’t find what he wanted, he huffed out a breath, straightened his cuffs, and said, “You know, most people would kill for what we had.”

I didn’t bother replying. I just watched as he turned on his heel and stalked off into the crowd, shoulders squared, already reconstructing the story of tonight so he’d be the wronged party.

It was almost comical, how abruptly the noise of the fair filled the space he left behind. I exhaled. I may not have my entire life figured out, but at least that chapter was now closed, and I was ready to write the next one. And what better place to do that than at the bachelor auction?

26

WORLD’S WORST CHIPPENDALE

Dawson

Nobody warned me that being a bachelor at this auction would be the equivalent of a meat raffle with cocktails. It was the Price is Right, and the showcases were eligible men and their questionable relationship skills.

Behind the main stage, an almost ceremonial hush had settled over the proceedings, the kind that precedes either a thunderclap or a catastrophic mistake. Since not a single cloud dared mar the clear Oregon sky, I was betting heavily on the latter. White globe lights strung above the boards cast a forgiving glow over the burlap-draped runway, as if even the décor felt sorry for us. The crowd of women pressed close, their laughter rising in sharp, gleeful bursts, the unmistakable sound of people enjoying someone else’s humiliation.

That someone else was me. Us, technically.

I stood with the rest of the Lockhart men—Dean, Damon, and Dylan—who were all dressed in our Sunday best to be paraded around like pieces of meat, arranged in a lineup that could only be described as the world’s least-credible Chippendale audition. The other men up on the auction block were Gio Russo, whose best feature was his uncanny ability to make everyone else look bad by comparison. Cameron Dallas, an up-and-coming rodeo star. Beckett “Beck” Hayes, a firefighter/paramedic who was both charming and handsome, a lethal combo. Beck had a reputation as a shameless flirt, Still, I believed he was secretly a relationship guy who just hadn’t met anyone worth risking his heart for: Griffin Cole, laid-back, funny, and the town’s resident animal whisperer. Griffin took over for the small-town veterinary clinic when Dr. Pollard retired and had a habit of bringing home strays nobody else wanted, a trait he shared with my mom. Kids adored him, grandmas tried to marry him off, and half the single women in town suddenly found reasons their pets needed checkups. And finally, Nash Wilder, bar owner & former pro hockey player, confident, tattooed, and annoyingly sexy. After an injury ended his career on the ice, Nash returned home with the goal of turning the town’s rundown tavern The Heart & Anchor into its hottest gathering spot. Its grand reopening was pending. He insisted he was perfectly happy being permanently single, which naturally made the matchmakers and single women in town determined to prove him wrong.

Gen approached the lineup in full command mode, a clipboard hugged to her chest and a walkie clipped to her waistband. She moved from man to man in the group, dispensing last-minute instructions and threats with the same bright, unflappable smile. When she stopped in front of us, even Damon shut up and stood at ease.

“Okay, here’s how it breaks down,” Gen announced, voice pitched low but clear. “Dawson, you’re up first, right after the welcome. Dean, Damon and Dylan, you’ll follow, then Gio, Beck, Griffin, and Nash. You’ll get called up, with your sizzle reel playing on the screen. You’ll answer three questions, one from the emcee, me, and two from the audience. No cussing, nothing about politics or religion, and nothing raunchy, this is family-friendly. Anyone who tries to get cute will regret it.”

Damon straightened his lapels. “Define cute.”

“Whatever you’re thinking about doing, don’t.” Gen pointed at him, then directed her attention to the men at large. “If anyone has questions, ask now or forever hold your peace.”

She waited two seconds and then dipped her chin in a nod. “Good.” And she was off, speaking over her walkie to whoever was on the other end.

Damon watched her walk away. “That woman frightens me in a good way. Like, I’d trust her with my PIN.”

I was barely listening, my mind was elsewhere, tracking the crowd for a particular person. It was that sixth sense I’d never been able to shake, a trained radar for all things Sadie. I could hear her laugh, two notes higher than her real one, the laugh she used when she was surrounded by people who expected her to be charming.

It took me less than thirty seconds to find her. She was talking to a man in a white dress shirt, crisp, probably straight from the dry cleaner, sleeves rolled to his elbows with the calculated carelessness of someone who did not, in fact, do manual labor. The man’s hair was dark and parted deep, gelled so precisely it looked like helmet plastic. His jaw was angular, clean-shaven, and punctuated by a vertical dimple that made him look both smug and oppressive. He had the air of someone who’d spent his college years tormenting underclassmen in some Ivy League secret society.

Sadie’s lips were parted in a polite smile, but I could see even from here that it wasn’t genuine. I knew her tells: the subtle lean away, her hand on her stomach, the way her right foot angled toward the exit while the rest of her body played at engagement. She wanted out of the conversation, but something—obligation, maybe, or sheer stubbornness—kept her rooted to the floor.

Damon followed my line of sight and whistled under his breath. “Who’s the suit? He looks like someone who gets his coffee overnighted from Milan.”

I felt a ripple of movement at my side, and suddenly my mother was there, her presence as strong as gravity. At five feet even, Selma Lockhart had the ability to make everyone else feel like they needed to stand up straighter. She wore a sea-green wrap dress and a pair of cowboy boots, her hair fell loose around her shoulders. She gave my arm a proprietary squeeze.

“Dawson, honey, are you okay?” she asked. “You look like you’re about to eat a horseshoe.”

“He’s fine,” Damon answered for me, grinning. “He just spotted Sadie’s new friend.”

Mom peered out into the crowd, then let out a soft, considering sound. “I just met him. His name is Peter.”

Right, I had a feeling it was her ex. Mom just confirmed it.

“Peter,” Damon repeated, as though trying it on for size. “Are you sure his name isn’t Clark?”

She pursed her lips. “No, I’m certain. Peter. From New York.”

“Really? ‘Cause I think it might be Clark, as in Clark Kent. You can’t tell me that is not Superman.”

I should have laughed, if only to show my brother he wasn’t getting to me. I couldn’t. Instead, I watched Peter lean in toward Sadie, saying something I couldn’t hear but which made her expression flicker, as if she’d just caught a whiff of mildew in a bouquet of roses. She blinked once, nodded, and then—deliberately—notched her body a half-step away from him. I wondered if anyone else could see the minute choreography, the dance between what she wanted to say and what she couldn’t.

Mom sighed, “She wasn’t thrilled to see him.”

“No,” I agreed. “She wouldn’t be.”

Damon elbowed me. “Well, if you want to go over and save her, do it now. Otherwise, she might get carried back to the big city on the back of a flying superhero.”

The hell she would. Everything inside of me was telling me to fuck this auction, walk over and insert myself in their conversation.

Gen returned, this time with a bullhorn, putting the bachelors into parade order. “Places, everyone! Let’s go, Lockhart boys, upstage right.”

I felt Mom’s hand at my elbow, warm and steady. “Don’t do anything rash,” she warned in a whisper. “Let her fight her own battles. If she needs backup, she knows who to call.”

I nodded, but the words barely made it past the white noise of irritation in my head. I stared into the crowd and saw Sadie standing alone. Peter was nowhere to be found. I craned my neck and saw him walking away from her, he didn’t look too happy.

Before I could decide whether to abandon my post and responsibilities to make sure she was okay, the auction started, with Gen welcoming the crowd and explaining the rules. There was a lot of hollering from the back row, mostly from the old-timers who’d been day-drinking since breakfast, and even more from the table of bridal shower attendees armed with custom T-shirts and dollar bills.

Then Gen brought the house down with my intro. It was over-the-top, embarrassing, but the crowd lapped it up. “Our first bachelor is none other than the infamous Dawson Lockhart, eldest son of the Lockhart dynasty, man of mystery and muscle, and, ladies, rumor has it he’s got a heart to match that jawline. When he’s not wrangling cattle, he’s rescuing animals, drinking black coffee by the gallon, or breaking hearts left, right, and sideways. He claims to prefer horses and dogs to people, but that’s only because none of you have convinced him otherwise!” She winked at the assembled masses, lips painted fire-engine red.

I played my part. I smiled, answered her questions, and tried to keep my head in the game. But all the while, my gaze kept drifting back to Sadie. She was clapping for me, cheering along with the rest.

The bidding started at a hundred bucks, which was less than I’d paid for a pair of boots that fell apart in the rain, but it quickly took off like a stampede. A brunette in an all-denim jumpsuit shouted, “Two hundred!” and a table of retired teachers instantly countered. Within seconds, it was a bidding war. Gen kept up a rat-a-tat commentary, hyping my virtues in ways that made even me blush. “He’s a man of the land, ladies—he can mend a fence, wrestle a bull, and still make it home by six for dinner! Look at those arms! He’s practically a monument to American agriculture!” I could barely keep a straight face.

At four hundred, the local librarian entered the fray, nearly smacking her seatmate with her paddle. At six hundred, a group of middle-aged runners in matching 5K T-shirts pooled their resources and began bidding as a block. By the time it hit eight hundred and fifty, I was starting to worry about someone’s mortgage payment.

But then came the real shock: Sadie entered the game. She had her paddle raised, eyebrows up, a look of “try me” aimed at the rest of the room. I knew she didn’t have that kind of disposable income, especially with all the time she’d taken off to be with Buddy and the improvements she’d been making on the farm, but she was doing it anyway. That was her way, never the center of attention, but always the wildcard. The number leaped to a thousand, then twelve hundred, and there was a pause as the crowd recalibrated.

Sadie put her paddle down, and gave me a slow, deliberate shrug. She was out. I understood completely. I was flattered she’d bid at all.

The next bid nearly took me out at the knees. Five thousand dollars. I turned to see who’d made the offer, and there she was, Annabeth Timmons, queen of the Historical Society and rumored to have single-handedly funded a restoration of the town library because she couldn’t stand the carpet. She was in her eighties and wore a sequined visor indoors, which was either legendary or insane, depending on the day.

Gen slammed her hand on the podium with a flourish. “Sold! To Miss Annabeth Timmons! Five thousand dollars for four hours with Dawson Lockhart—that’s an hourly rate that would make a Wall Street banker blush! Hope you’re worth it, cowboy.”

I bowed, and let the applause wash over me. As I wandered off the stage, I heard Annabeth call out, “I bought him for my granddaughter!” which prompted a new round of laughter and more than a few side-eyes from her table. The granddaughter in question, a pretty redhead with a magazine-perfect smile, was seated beside her and buried her face in her hands.

Damon intercepted me as I hit the stairs, clapping a meaty hand on my shoulder. “Julia only got three grand for the entire week with Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. You’re getting five grand for four hours. I put it down to inflation.”

I ignored my brother and made my way through a minefield of congratulations and lingering perfume. At Annabeth’s table, I stopped to thank her, and she patted my cheek with a hand that smelled of lavender and lemon tart. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” she said in a low voice, leaning in conspiratorially. “I’m just making sure my granddaughter doesn’t end up with one of these tech bros from Portland. You’re solid. Country stock.”

The granddaughter looked up, her cheeks flaming. She was objectively stunning, glossy brown eyes, movie-star dimples, a smile that was brighter than the sun. If I were any other man on earth, I’d probably have been over the moon. But as I shook her hand and made polite small talk about the upcoming “date,” I caught myself glancing back at the exit, searching for Sadie.

She noticed, because she was sharp. “Don’t worry,” she apologized. Her voice was gentle but edged with something like sympathy. “I know this is not romantic, and I promise to make this as painless and quick as possible.”

I got the feeling this wasn’t her first rodeo, that she’d probably been through a dozen of these awkward setups. The last thing I wanted her to think was that I was upset about the lunch that her grandma just paid five thousand dollars for. “Oh, I didn’t…I wasn’t…” I stumbled over my words.

Her smile widened. “Tell her she’s a lucky girl.”

Relief washed over me that this woman knew the score. It was refreshing to speak to someone so direct, and I hoped that she found whatever she was looking for. I spent the next ten minutes fielding handshakes and back pats as I weaved through the dense crowd, eyes trained on the periphery for any sign of Sadie—everyone from the town’s dog grooming champion to the orthodontist with the shock of white hair and a tragic fondness for Hawaiian shirts. My jaw hurt from smiling, and my tongue had gone dry from the endless thrum of half-congratulatory, half-mocking remarks by the time I made it to the boardwalk.

I was scanning the area when a hand landed on my shoulder. Half-expecting Damon or one of the other bachelors with a fresh round of mockery, I turned and found myself face-to-face with none other than Vicki Blair. Back in high school, Vicki was the undisputed queen of Valentine Bay: she ran student council, cheer squad, and half the boys in our class with equally ruthless efficiency. Even now, with her precision-bleached hair and wrinkleless slacks, she looked like she’d stepped out of a homecoming court photo and into a power lunch. The only difference was that she’d traded the prom queen tiara for a real estate license and an Instagram following large enough to merit a blue checkmark. She was Valentine Bay’s Regina George from Mean Girls. Not just because she was popular with blonde hair and blue eyes, but also because she was mean.

We weren’t friends before ‘the incident’ or after. I, of course, made sure she was okay. When we spoke about it twelve years ago, I asked her if she knew what happened and she told me that she didn’t remember either.

Now she stood before me with an expression that told me she had a confession to make. “I heard about what happened with Jeremy,” she said. There was no venom in it, only a kind of hollow regret. “I just wanted to say, for the record, I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

I blinked. For a moment, my brain refused to process the words. “No, of course not, I didn’t think that you did.” That thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.

“He told me to go to that room and sleep in that bed, but I thought it was going to be Donovan in it,” she rushed out.

“Miller told you to sleep in that bed?” I repeated, sure I must have heard her wrong.

Vicki took a breath, her perfectly manicured fingers twisting in front of her. “Yes, Jeremy told me to sleep in that bed. He said Donovan was waiting for me, and when I got in and saw you there, passed out, I thought it was just a prank.”

I tried to assemble the pieces of the puzzle she was filling in for me. “So, all this time, you knew nothing happened between us?”

Reluctantly, she nodded.

“Why didn’t you say anything, when I asked you about it?” I heard my voice distant and echoing with disbelief.

Vicki’s eyes darted away. “I was embarrassed. I thought the prank made me look stupid. Desperate. And then… the more time that passed, the less I wanted to bring it up. It felt like ancient history.”

All these years, I’d worried that I’d actually cheated, and Vicki knew this entire time nothing happened. My best friend knew I got roofied. This was insane.

She took a deep breath, collecting herself. “I’m sorry. I was young and self-involved.” She searched my face, and for the first time since I’d met her, I saw a person instead of a myth. “But after I heard what Jeremy said he did, and Sadie is back in town, I knew I had to say something. I can talk to Sadie, if you want me to. Tell her exactly what happened, or I guess didn’t.”

“No, it’s fine.” I could tell Sadie, it would be better if it came from me. I still hadn’t told her what Gio told me. She’d had so much going on with Buddy, I hadn’t found the right time to bring it up. But if other people in town were hearing about it, it seemed like the time was now. “Thanks for telling me.”

Vicki hesitated, then offered a real, unvarnished smile. “You’re a good guy, Dawson. I hope everything works out for you.”

She melted back into the crowd, just another face in the swirl of attendees. I stood there for a long moment, trying to anchor myself. The ground felt different, less like quicksand and more like something solid. For the first time in years, what happened on grad night seemed less like a curse and more like a screwed-up chapter that could be closed.

I scanned the crowd once again, searching for Sadie, and found her. She’d drifted away from the auction action, settling in on a wooden bench overlooking the ocean, speaking on the phone. She wasn’t crying, but she didn’t look happy. I slowed down, suddenly self-conscious about my size and the echoing clomp of my footsteps.

Sadie heard me coming anyway—she always did—and turned, squinting up at me. When she hung up I lowered myself down on the bench beside her and asked, “Everything okay?”

“Just work stuff.” Her lips curled in a smile. “Five grand, congrats! When’s the big date with Timmon’s heiress? Should I start prepping the ‘Mother of the Bride’ speech for your mom?”

“You can start the speech, but only if it’s you walking down the aisle.”

Her smile faltered, and I wondered if I’d gone too far. But then her eyes twinkled. “So you’re saying I don’t need to be jealous?”

“It wouldn’t matter if I got auctioned off to Marilyn Monroe, Helen of Troy or Aphrodite herself, I’d still be thinking about you.”

“You do realize those women are all dead, right?”

“So you’re saying I’d need smelling salts?”

She bumped her shoulder against mine, and for a second, I almost forgot the last twelve years we’d been apart. “You’re disgusting,” she said, but she was smiling now, the real smile, the one that pulled the right side of her mouth up first and made her eyes crinkle at the corners.

“Guilty.” We sat there in companionable silence, the kind that only two people who’d grown up together could share. The waves chewed at the sand and pulled it back, over and over. I could feel the words building inside her, and I tried not to rush it. Sadie was always better at the slow burn, at letting the silence do the heavy work.

She shivered a little beside me, whether from the cold or from nerves, I couldn’t tell. I stood, offered her my hand. “Ready to go?”

She nodded and took my hand, together we walked the sand back to where I’d parked. The festival was still in full swing, the lights strung along the pier blinking on as the sky darkened to cobalt. We didn’t talk much on the way, but it didn’t feel awkward. It felt like the night itself was giving us permission to not fill every silence.

I opened the truck door for her, waited until she was settled before sliding behind the wheel. I wanted to say something profound, or at least clever, but all I managed was, “It’s really good to see you again, Sadie.”

She looked at me sideways, her hair catching bits of streetlamp. “It’s good to be seen.”

I pulled away and decided it was time to take her to the place I’d bought for both of us. The house that had been our dream. It was time to take her home.

27

HARD TRUTHS AND HARD COUNTERTOPS

Sadie

The thing about riding in Dawson’s truck was that you always knew exactly what you were going to get: hard lefts, hard stops, one-word sentences, and a silence so loud it filled your head with questions. All the years of second-guessing myself around this man, and I’d finally made my peace with that. I could do hard lefts. I could do loaded silence.

What I could not do—what nothing prepared me for—was the moment the most tight-lipped man in Sutter County turned off the radio, white-knuckled the steering wheel, and said, “Gio and Vicki told me what really happened on Grad Night.”

I’d spent the better part of my adult life building a tidy little story around that night, too much booze, bad judgment, the kind of blurry mistake you bury under enough years that it starts to look like fiction. But I was wrong. Apparently, Gio had shown up at the ranch the week before, restless in that way that meant something big was eating him alive, and he’d unloaded every last bit of it.

Jeremy had planned it. The roofie in the beer was a prank gone sideways. The only problem—the one detail that rewrote everything I thought I knew—was that Donovan had never touched that drink.

Dawson had.

And Vicki was just another pawn in Jeremy Miller’s sick and twisted game of human chess. She’d been told Donovan Valentine was waiting for her, only to find a very passed out Dawson Lockhart.

A cold bloom of shock spread through my chest, radiating to my fingertips, and then the slow, stinging burn of something like betrayal followed in its wake. All these years, I’d carried around my own narrative, that Dawson had been unfaithful, on purpose or not, and that I’d been right to leave, right to build a life out of self-respect and preservation. But now everything was unsettled, like someone had shaken the snow globe and all the pieces were suspended and drifting, not landing anywhere clear.

“How did Gio even find out?” I asked, my voice sounding weirdly flat, like it wasn’t broadcasting at full volume.

I could see why Vicki hadn’t said anything. She thought she’d gotten set up and didn’t want to make herself look any worse, although it would have been nice to know nothing happened between them twelve years ago.

“He overheard Jeremy talking about it,” Dawson explained, not taking his eyes off the road. “Back when he was working construction. Jeremy was bragging about it at lunch.”

I tried to picture Gio at seventeen, Dawson’s best friend, overhearing that and not doing anything about it and doing nothing. “So Gio’s known this whole time, and he never told you?” I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. Gio was the one person who’d always been on my side, no matter what.

“Yeah,” Dawson confirmed, like the syllable fought its way out against a lifetime of holding things back. He didn’t look over, but I could see every muscle in his jaw cut and tense, an entire argument happening between his teeth.

The world outside was a monochrome blur as we drove. I felt the chaos of it all—what I’d just learned about Gio, about Jeremy, about the night that had changed my entire life—rattling around my chest like pennies in a dryer. I wanted to ask a hundred questions, but the first one that came out sounded small, even to me,

“Why?” I said, and the word was so flat it barely cleared my lips. “Why did he wait all this time to tell you?”

Dawson didn’t shrug, but he didn’t need to. “It’s complicated.”

I gave him a sidelong glance, searching his face for even a hint of the old Dawson—my Dawson—the one who would have turned that into a three-act joke, drawn it out to see me laugh. “What? Like a Facebook relationship status?”

He huffed, just the hint of a smile, and it hit me that this was the first time he’d laughed all night. “Something like that.”

“Are you guys okay?” I asked, meaning him and Gio, but really wanting to know the answer for him and me. Would he forgive me for not knowing he would never do that to me?

Dawson considered a long time, then nodded once. “Yeah. We’re fine, or we will be.” It sounded final, so I let it die there.

For a few miles, the only sound was the hum of the engine, tense and steady.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the chain of events, all the things that would have been different if any one of us had just said something out loud. I let it churn, and when I spoke, it came out in a rush. “What are you going to do?”

He looked at me, this time meeting my eyes just long enough for the question to land. “About Gio?”

“No, Jeremy,” I said, the words rolling off my tongue like gravel. It surprised me how harsh I sounded. “Are you going to press charges?”

“No,” he stated flatly.

“Why not?” I could feel my hands balling into fists in my lap, a righteous anger that didn’t even make sense. After all, Jeremy had drugged him, not me. But it felt like an offense against the whole world, like the crime was bigger than just the sum of its parts.

“If I was going to do anything about it,” Dawson sighed, “I’d handle it myself. No way I’d trust Gary Williams to actually follow through.”

That made me laugh, and not in a nice way. “Gary Williams is a police officer?”

Gary was the hall monitor and I could see him being mall security, but an actual police officer with a gun and authority, that just didn’t track.

His eyes cut to mine before looking back at the road. “Lieutenant Williams is second in command at Valentine Bay P.D.”

I squinted through the windshield, imagining Gary Williams in a cop uniform. I couldn’t do it. “But isn’t Donovan a cop? And the roofie was meant for him?”

Donovan Valentine had spent six years on the East Coast in D.C. working in the Secret Service. We’d met up a few times when he was in the city. He came back home a couple of years ago and married his childhood best friend Ella.

“Yes, he is.” Dawson’s fingers tightened on the wheel.

“So why not go to Donovan?” I asked, not out of loyalty to the badge, but because someone should have done something.

Dawson’s knuckles flexed, pale and bloodless on the steering wheel. “Because Jeremy’s life is shit enough. He’s been in and out of prison, three DUIs, the last one put him in a wheelchair. He’s in a halfway house now.”

That stopped me. I thought I’d feel vindication, or at least relief, but instead there was just this empty, hollow ache. “So, nothing’s going to happen to him.”

I didn’t love that Jeremy wasn’t going to answer for drugging Dawson, but since it wasn’t me, I didn’t really have a leg to stand on. Something about the logic of it—that the world’s most glaring injustices could slide by, as long as you weren’t their direct target—clanged around in my ribcage as the truck slowed, then stopped altogether. I surfaced from my thoughts, expecting the familiar sight of the cedar-shake cabin at Lockhart Ranch, the one with the two-burner stove, fireplace, and rainfall shower head that I had been calling home for the past month.

But that wasn’t where we were.

The landscape outside the window was a freshly mowed lawn hemmed in by white-washed fences. It overlooked the little cove at the edge of Valentine Bay, the one with the driftwood pile and the scraggly pines. In the midst of all that was a house so familiar it made my breath catch, the one-story, sugar-cookie-colored cottage with the powder-blue trim and the wraparound porch. The ‘seashell cottage,’ as we’d once called it—at twelve, at fifteen, at seventeen—because the scalloped molding around the window frames reminded us of the conch shells we’d dig out of tide pools on day trips up the coast.

I blinked at the sight of it, half expecting the next inhale to bring a rush of cinnamon like the old owner’s baking, or the woodsmoke that always seemed to hang in the eaves. Instead, all I got was the plasticky new-car scent of Dawson’s truck and a metallic tang at the back of my throat.

He’d put the truck in park but didn’t kill the engine. He just stared straight ahead, his hands still wound tight around the steering wheel. I was so thrown that at first I couldn’t speak. The cottage had been our private fantasy, something we’d built together out of late-night promises, long before either of us had a credit score or any idea how thirty-year mortgages worked. It was, for lack of a better word, our dream house, the one where we’d raise three imaginary golden retrievers, and a couple of kids, and maybe plant an apple tree in the side yard.

I cleared my throat, not trusting my voice. “What are we doing here? I think someone is living here.”

When we’d fantasized about this being our dream home, it had been vacant. But now, it looked renovated. Updated. The paint was fresh, there was a wraparound porch and the shrubbery was well maintained.

Dawson hesitated, which was rare. He was a man of action, historically allergic to even a two-second pause. “I know the owner,” he said, which was not what I expected. Then he turned off the engine, unbuckled his seat belt, got out of the truck, came around to my side, opened my door, and shot me a look that was a challenge and an invitation at once as he offered me his hand. “Come on.”

Before I could protest, I was out of the truck, and he was shutting the door behind me with a soft, decisive thunk. Dawson and I walked up the flagstone path that led to the porch, his stride purposeful but not rushed, shoulders squared as if braced against a headwind that only he could feel.

When we reached the porch steps he nodded toward the swing at the far end, its ropes sun-bleached but perfectly intact.

“Oh my gosh.” My voice went all soft and wonderstruck. “Just like we talked about.” The porch swing was exactly where we said we’d put it. I could see us clear as day like déjà vu, two teenagers with hands intertwined and heads on each other’s shoulders, rocking back and forth under the big indifferent sky.

“Yep,” he concurred. No smile, but his eyes flicked to me and then away, and I could feel the pulse of a memory pass between us.

The sound of the screen door hitting the side of the house falling was so ordinary, so domestic, that for a second I thought I might pass out. He put the key in the lock and turned it, then opened the front door. I’d been gone from this town for nearly a decade, and yet here was a piece of my old life, not just preserved but waiting, like something out of a time capsule.

The door swung open on a draft of cool, slightly salty air. I stepped inside, and the first thing I noticed was how much bigger it looked than I remembered from the time we broke in to look around. The ceilings were low, but the rooms opened up in a surprising way, a trick of design, or maybe just the absence of all the clutter that used to fill them. The walls were painted a calm, neutral off white, and the baseboards gleamed as if they’d just been installed. There were no photos on the side tables, no muddy shoes by the door, no evidence of who might live here. The only art was a pair of watercolor prints above the mantel: one of the Valentine Bay pier at sunset, the other of the lighthouse that stood at the north end of the harbor. Both places were very sentimental to us.

I drifted through the living room, trailing my fingers over the arm of a caramel-colored leather couch. The furniture was all top-tier—Pottery Barn, maybe Crate & Barrel—but so generic it could have belonged to anyone. I peered into the open-concept kitchen, where a single bowl of fruit sat in the center of the marble island. The fridge was stainless steel, the stove a six-burner gas range, the kind of thing you’d see on a cooking show. The place was spotless, almost suspiciously so. There was no sign of personal life: no dishes in the sink, no magnets on the fridge, not even a coffee mug left on the counter.

“So is this an Airbnb?” I called over my shoulder, trying to keep my tone light, as if it wasn’t the most crucial question I’d ever asked.

“No.” Dawson’s voice was closer than I thought, he’d followed behind me.

I pivoted toward him, arms crossed. “Then who owns it?” I demanded, but I already knew.

“I do,” he said, and it was so unadorned, so completely unfussy, that for a moment I wondered if I’d misheard him.

“You bought it,” I said, willing the words to make sense.

He nodded.

“When?” The question sounded almost accusatory, but I couldn’t help it. For years I’d scrolled the online real estate listings every few months, checking to see if the place had sold, and never come up with any answers, although it had been a while.

“About five years ago.” Dawson’s jaw flexed, the old tic of discomfort that came out when he had to talk about himself for more than eight seconds at a time.

“Five years?!” I repeated, and it came out shrill and bright. Five years ago I was in New York, working eighty-hour weeks and sleepwalking through a relationship that, like Peter’s, I already knew was doomed.

I walked around trying not to read too much into the fact that he’d bought the home we’d always talked about living in. He probably just wanted to live here because it was an amazing house. It most likely had nothing to do with me or our relationship. As that thought drifted through my mind, I saw the view out of the window over the sink of the ocean.

Anyone would want to live here.

“It was the only thing I had of you,” he said behind me.

“What?” I turned around and found Dawson standing less than a foot in front of me.

He lifted his hand and brushed a stray strand of hair off my face. “You were my future. When you left, you took that future with you. This was a little part of the life we’d planned together I could still have. Maybe that wasn’t the healthiest way to look at things, but that was the truth.”

Hearing him say that, knowing that he’d thought of me all these years, just like I’d thought of him, erased any lingering doubts that his feelings weren’t real. What we had was real.

I felt tears forming in my eyes and one slid down my cheek.

He noticed and instantly tensed as he lifted his hand, cupped my face, and wiped it. “I’m sorry, don’t cry.”

Dawson had never done well with me crying. In fairness to him, I’d done a lot of it when we were first together since I was grieving the loss of my mom. I could always see how helpless it made him feel.

“They’re not sad tears.” I sniffed.

“They’re not?” he questioned.

“No,” I assured him as I tilted my head, pressing my cheek into the warmth of his palm before kissing the heel of his hand.

His eyes closed as my lips brushed his skin and his jaw tensed. He must have taken my nuzzle and peck as a green light because in the next breath his fingers speared into my hair as he lowered his head and claimed me in an all-consuming kiss.

I melted against him as his tongue explored my mouth. His lips were the perfect combination of firm and soft as one hand held my head in place and the other wrapped around my body.

He tightened his hold and I felt my feet being lifted off the floor before I was, set down on the counter. He stepped between my open legs and continued kissing down my neck, then he pulled my shirt up and began to feast on my breasts through the lace cups covering them. My hands fisted in his hair as he sucked and nipped my nipples. The roughness of his tongue licking me through the material sent shocks of bliss exploding between my legs.

Wanting more of him, I worked as fast as I could to unbutton his shirt, then peel it off his body. When he was down to an undershirt, I grabbed at the material and attempted to tug it over his head. He exhaled through his nose in what sounded like frustration as he broke the contact of our mouths and reached behind his back, peeling off the material in one swift movement, leaving his chest bare. While he did that, I fumbled with his pants, quickly unbuttoning and unzipping them. Once I had, I slid my hand into the waistband of his boxer-briefs and wrapped my fingers around his straining cock.

I massaged his shaft as he pushed the material of my skirt up my thighs and his hand slid between my legs. He kissed me with a hunger that was both familiar and foreign—the kind of hunger that made me forget all the time and pain and distance, as if he could inhale those years straight from my mouth. His tongue tangled with mine and I met him stroke for stroke, greedy, desperate. I fisted his hair, tugging him closer, and when his fingers began to move over my feminine folds, the jolt of sensation nearly separated me from my own body.

He pressed the heel of his palm against my sex, slow and deliberate, and I moaned, the sound muffled by his lips. I stroked him, felt him thick and straining, and tugged the elastic down over his hips so I could have better access. He gasped, biting off the noise as if he was on the edge of losing control. The thought that Dawson needed to keep it together made me want to unravel him all the more.

His dick jerked in my hand as I closed my fingers around him, stroking with purpose. He shuddered, mouth pressed to the hinge of my jaw, stubble scraping my skin in a way that made me want to crawl inside of him.

He slid two fingers under the hem of my panties, his knuckles rough and warm, and circled me until my thighs trembled. I tried to arch away from the pressure, but he just followed me, pinning me to the counter with his body so I had nowhere to go. He nipped my throat, then my collarbone, then let his tongue trail down to the edge of my bra. With one hand, he unhooked the clasp behind my back and pulled the straps down my arms, exposing my breasts to the cool kitchen air and his stare.

“Fuck, Sadie,” he whispered, voice ragged as he cupped my breast, thumb flicking over the nipple until it pebbled. He sucked it into his mouth, biting just shy of pain, and I gasped, the sound echoing in the cavernous quiet of the kitchen.

I squeezed him harder, stroking faster, and he groaned. The sound sent a spark of heat through me, straight to where his fingers were working me open, slick and insistent. He teased my entrance, not quite entering me before pulling back to rub slow, relentless circles over my clit. The sensation was so sharp, so overwhelming, that I lost the rhythm of my hand for a moment, but then he pinched my nipple again, and I was back in the moment, matching his pace with my own.

His lips left a wet trail across my chest, down my ribs, and then he knelt so fast the world tilted. He pulled my underwear down my legs, spread my knees wide, hands braced on the insides of my thighs, and looked up at me with that old, smug, unbreakable confidence.

“Keep your eyes on me,” he commanded, and then he buried his mouth on me.

The first stroke of his tongue made my whole body seize. He’d always known exactly how to eat me, how to alternate pressure and speed until I couldn’t see straight, but this was somehow worse, better, more. He licked me like he was starved, like nothing else in the world mattered but my taste and the way my hips bucked helplessly into his face. His fingers circled my opening and then slipped inside, curling in a way that made me see stars behind my eyelids.

I braced myself on the marble countertop, grasping at the edge until my knuckles went bloodless. He added another finger, and I clenched around him, the pressure so much, too much, and then suddenly exactly right. He flicked his tongue against my clit, fast and merciless, and I lost my grip, both on the counter and on reality. My orgasm ripped through me, a body-wrecking burst that left me shaking, mouth open, no sound coming out but raw, primal gasps. I came so hard I almost blacked out, and he didn’t stop, didn’t slow, just coaxed every last aftershock from me with his mouth and hands until tears leaked from the corners of my eyes.

When I could breathe again, I looked down and saw Dawson staring up at me, his chin slick, his eyes gone dark with satisfaction. He pressed one last linger of his tongue to my oversensitive skin, then rose to his full height, looming over me with his cock still hard and glistening in his fist.

He kissed me once, deep and slow, so that I could taste myself on his tongue. The intimacy of it, the lack of shame, made my heart slam against my ribs. His other hand was still between my legs, two fingers hooked inside me, and he moved them with slow, obscene precision. I whimpered into the kiss, restless and desperate for more of him, grabbing at his hips, wanting to feel him inside me, wanting to be filled, wrecked, unmade.

28

STAY IS A FOUR LETTER WORD

Dawson

The first time I had sex in a kitchen was on the counter, and I was sixteen. The second time, I was thirty, with the same woman on the counter who I’d spent twelve years pretending to forget.

Funny how life worked.

Sadie’s pulse hammered beneath my lips, wild and unsteady, as I kissed the hollow of her throat, and the vibration of her moan traveled along my tongue straight to the base of my spine. I almost lost whatever self-control I had left.

When I rasped against her ear, “You want me to take you to bed or fuck you right here?” my voice came out ragged, animal.

Her breath caught and for a second, her body tensed in my arms, like she needed the question to settle into her bones. Then she melted, eyelids fluttering, and she whispered, “Here. Fuck me here.”

I don’t know what snapped inside me at those words, but it was like a match to gasoline. My hands were shaking, actually shaking, and I tried to slow down, to savor every second with her, but she was already moving—hips canting forward, hands gripping the countertop behind her, open and hungry. I watched her watch me, pupils blown wide. My cock was so hard it ached, painfully, and I didn’t have the patience for finesse. I shoved my pants and boxers down, kicking them across the floor, not caring where they landed. The second my dick sprang free, her eyes went wide, and she licked her lips like she was dying to taste me.

As much as I’d love to have her mouth on me, I knew it would be over if that happened. I stepped close, so close her thighs brushed the hair on my legs and lined myself up at her sex. My hands bracketed her hips, holding her steady as I ran my blunt head up and down her slick heat, teasing her, drinking in the way she shuddered and whimpered. I let myself linger at her entrance, savoring the impossible velvet of her folds, then slid in, slow at first, letting her stretch around me, letting her feel every inch.

She was hot and wet, and so fucking tight it almost knocked me off my feet. Her nails dug into my shoulders, nearly drawing blood, but I wanted the pain, wanted any reminder that this was real and happening and not some fever dream I’d torture myself with later. I thrust into her, slow at first, then faster. The slap of skin against skin echoed in the house, each sound ratcheting my need higher.

But it wasn’t enough. I needed more of her: the sound of her breath, the taste of her arousal, the way she clenched around me every time I shifted my angle. I bent and took her left breast in my mouth, tongue circling slowly before I pulled her nipple between my teeth. As I sucked, her whole body arched, pushing her flesh into my mouth, and her hand tangled in my hair, holding me in place. Her tits were perfect, round and soft and just the right size for my hand. I wanted to worship them, to lavish her with my tongue until she was shaking.

She moaned, a high, keening sound, and the noise went straight to my groin. I could feel her walls starting to flutter, but she wasn’t all the way there yet. I wanted her to come, needed her to come, needed to see her lose control because of me. I let go of her tit with my mouth and kissed my way up her jaw, along her cheek, until I was at her ear.

She gasped, the sound rough and desperate, and I grinned against her skin, remembering how sensitive she was there, how just a little pressure would make her soak my fingers or shaft. I thumbed her nipple, rolling it hard, and her whole body arched off the counter. Her hips jerked up, trying to force me deeper, but I held her steady, savoring the way her inner walls clenched down on me. She was slick, fluttering hot around me, but I could tell she was holding back, waiting for that last push over the edge.

Instinctively, I knew exactly what she needed. Without warning, I slid free, making her whimper in protest, and eased her off the countertop. She clung to my shoulders like she thought I might disappear, but I gripped her waist and spun her around so her hips pressed into the stone, her skirt bunched around her waist. I shoved the fabric down and off, leaving her bare to the cold kitchen air, then bent her forward and pulled her ass back to meet me. I took a moment to stare—she had the kind of ass that was so juicy it made my mouth water, and I couldn’t resist smacking it, just once, just hard enough to leave my print.

“Oh fuck, Dawson,” she gasped, voice thready, and when I lined myself up again I didn’t bother to go slow.

My grip tightened on her hips, guiding her ass back against me with the kind of greedy, possessive force I’d been dreaming about for years. She braced herself on the counter, fingers gripping the edges as her back arched, offering herself up like a prayer, her body trembling with anticipation. With one hand, I steered my plump tip to her entrance, teasing just the slick tip up and down her folds, feeling her pulse. She whimpered, a desperate little plea, and I couldn’t hold back anymore. I drove myself inside in one long, hungry push, dragging a cry from her lips that echoed in the space.

I started slow, deep, even, savoring every inch as her body stretched to accommodate me again, as if she’d been waiting all this time for me to fill her. But it wasn’t enough. I needed more. I needed to rebrand every memory she had of us with the way I felt now: older, harder, desperate to prove no one else would ever make her feel like this.

My pace quickened, I locked my hands around her hips and pounded into her, hips slapping hard against the soft curve of her ass, the sound loud and shameless. Every thrust sent a shockwave through my spine, building a pressure so savage it was almost unbearable. It was like every second we’d spent apart condensed into a single, seismic need—primal, unstoppable.

I leaned in and buried my face in her neck, breathing in the smell of her sweat and shampoo. “I missed you,” I growled, and bit the delicate shell, just hard enough to make her whimper. I continued telling her how good she felt and all the things I’d fantasized doing to her during our time apart.

She shuddered, and I could feel her tighten around me, her body responding to every filthy thing I whispered. I remembered every spot that made her crazy, every spot she’d ever begged me to touch, every place I’d once mapped with my mouth. I made it my mission to find them all again.

I caught a handful of her hair, winding it gently around my fist, and pulled her head back so I could see her face over her shoulder. She was flushed and wild-eyed, her lips red and wet, her expression a mess of agony and bliss. I felt a savage kind of pride at the sight. Her ass was as perfect as ever—high, round, just begging for trouble. I brought my palm down on it with a sharp smack again, coloring her skin with my handprint. She moaned, rocking back to meet every single thrust, greedy for the contact.

“You want it harder?” I rasped, my voice raw.

She nodded, her lips falling open. “Yes. Yes. Fuck, harder.”

I obliged, grabbing both her hips with bruising force and slamming into her, relentless, until the world was reduced to the sound of our bodies colliding and the ragged breaths tearing from our lungs.

As I fucked her, my free hand roamed her body. I cupped her tits, kneading them, pinching her nipples until she whimpered and begged, then let my hand slide down her stomach and between her legs. Her clit was swollen, slick, so sensitive that the first press of my thumb made her shudder and gasp my name. I circled it, slow at first, then faster, matching the rhythm of my hips. She was close, I could feel it, her pussy clenched tighter and tighter, her breaths coming in frantic, high-pitched whines.

My own release was building, primal and unstoppable, pleasure coiling tight in my balls. I wanted to hold on—to drag this out, to burn the memory of it into my brain forever—but the way she moved, the way she sounded, the way she felt, it was overpowering. I’d never wanted anyone like this. I’d never needed anyone to the point of pain.

I bit the sensitive space beneath her ear, and she moaned, writhing under me. I continued massaging her breast, squeezing and pinching until I could feel her muscles start to flutter in that telltale way. She was close, so close, and I wanted nothing more than to see her shatter.

I pressed my whole body against her, my chest slick with sweat, my mouth at her ear. “Come for me,” I commanded, voice barely more than a growl. “I want to feel you come on my cock.”

She didn’t need more encouragement. Her whole body went rigid, and then she broke, sobbing my name as her canal clamped down on me with such force I almost blacked out. The sensation set something off in my chest, a lightning-strike of pure animalistic bliss, and I fucked her through it, chasing that same white-hot edge. I was right there with her, seconds away, but I needed to see her face when I went. I pulled out, spinning her roughly to face me, and lifted her onto the edge of the island again. Her lips were red, kiss-swollen, her hair a wild mess, and her eyes locked on mine as I slammed into her, deep and rough, both of us beyond words.

I came harder than I had in my entire life, so hard I saw stars, my body jerking as I emptied myself into her. I buried my face in her shoulder and let the tremors wring me out until I could barely stand. My hands went slack on her hips, but she clung to me, burying her nose in my hair, panting and shaking with the aftershocks.

It took a minute to come back to earth. We were both breathing hard, sweat cooling on our skin. I finally eased out of her, still half-hard, and just watched her for a second, stunned. She looked wrecked—eyes heavy-lidded, lips parted, chest heaving—but I’d never seen her more beautiful. There was a look on her face, something raw and unguarded, and it made my heart hurt in a way sex never had before.

It was only then that I realized what I’d done. I’d fucked her in my kitchen, in my house, the house I’d bought for us, and for the first time in years, I didn’t feel numb. I felt alive. I felt hope.

Sadie steadied herself and lifted her head, her arms still wrapped around my neck. Her legs quivered, and her lips were swollen with kisses and want. She looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time, like maybe this was a different man than the one she’d left behind so long ago.

A satisfied grin lifted at the corners of her mouth.

“That was—” she began.

“Stay,” I ordered at the same time. I hadn’t meant for the single command to come out sounding so harsh. I just desperately wanted her to remain with me.

Her eyes widened slightly as her lips parted, and she sucked in a startled breath.

“For tonight,” I qualified, and her body relaxed.

Her grin returned as she agreed, “Okay.”

It was then that I realized she thought I was asking her to stay permanently, as in stay in Valentine Bay, and that had clearly horrified her to the point that her entire body froze. I tried not to let it bother me that my asking her not to leave caused the color to drain from her face and her expression to morph into horrified panic.

The truth was I did want to ask her to stay. I would get down on my knees and beg her even, if I thought that was what would make her happy. But I knew that wasn’t the case. As much as I wished that we hadn’t wasted a dozen years over a misunderstanding, I understood that she was a grown woman with an entire life that had nothing to do with me.

I might not be able to ask her for forever, but she’d agreed for tonight, and at this point, I had to take it as a win.

29

MARTHA STEWART BROKE IN

Sadie

Today was the day.

Buddy was getting discharged in a couple of hours, which meant I had just enough time to make sure everything was perfect at Shepard Farm, do a quick load of laundry, oversee the new staff, and buy two new sets of sweatpants so he’d have something to relax in besides Carhartt overalls and carpenter jeans. Then I’d be back to spring him like he was Andy Dufresne and the world outside was Shawshank, only with more apple cider donuts and fewer prison guards.

The doctors were still pushing inpatient rehab, which I didn’t blame them for, but Buddy was dead set on going straight home today, do not pass go. He’d told anyone who so much as poked their head into his room, including the janitorial staff and Edna, the volunteer who delivered the newspapers, that the only way he’d go to a rehab facility was in a body bag, because it would be over his dead body.

My phone buzzed three times while I was folding Buddy’s shirts and placing them in the downstairs guest room where he would be recuperating since he wouldn’t be able to walk up steps, the texts were all from Dawson. The first two offering, again, to go with me to pick up Buddy, the third a picture of Minnie curled up in a patch of sun in the stable next to Penny. The text beneath the photo said, “They miss you. So do I.” I ‘loved’ the photo and assured him that I could pick Buddy up on my own.

Buddy still didn’t know about what I’d been doing behind the scenes at the farm or my plans to relocate permanently to Valentine Bay. I hadn’t told anyone, not even Dawson. I wanted to tell Buddy first, I needed to see the look in his eyes, witness his unfiltered, unguarded response before I could fully commit to my plans.

Instead of telling him once more that I was fine on my own, I gave him more concrete information and messaged back:

Sadie

Discharge at 11, will update when done

After sending the message, I noticed the time, it was fifteen till. I grabbed my purse and keys to Herbie. On my way out of the house, I took one more look around. It was night and day from what I’d walked into nearly a month earlier. I wasn’t sure how Buddy was going to feel about it, but I knew I was much happier bringing him home to this.

The drive to the hospital was filled with anxiety over what the day would bring. When I finally arrived, I found a grumpy Buddy sitting on the edge of the bed in the clothes I’d brought him, with his arms crossed like he’d been waiting for hours. The TV was blaring a fishing show at full volume. A nurse I hadn’t met before was attempting to explain the new meds and discharge paperwork to him. I could see that he wasn’t paying any attention to what she was telling him.

As the person who was going to be caring for him, I, on the other hand, paid close attention and took notes. Once the release forms were signed, the nurse told us to wait there, and someone would be with us shortly.

I was expecting a nurse with a wheelchair, instead, a few minutes later Gio walked into the room. “Hey, a little birdie told me you are checking out of here.”

“That’s right.” Buddy, still perched on the bed, dipped his chin in a nod.

“And you’re headed over to VBRC?” Gio prompted optimistically.

All of his doctors and specialists had advised Buddy to go to Valentine Bay Rehabilitation Center. They stressed to him, dozens of times, that the inpatient PT he’d receive would be crucial to his recovery. He was hearing none of it.

“I’m going home,” Buddy stated firmly.

Gio continued pushing the narrative. “Look, I get it, you hate hospitals. Frankly, same. But this isn’t about you being weak or even being sick. It’s about not letting your pride get in the way of your shot at a full recovery. The only way to guarantee that is to do the inpatient rehab. Three weeks. Tops.”

Buddy rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere for three weeks, and I don’t need a babysitter. I can do my own PT, and I’ll do twice as much if I’m at home.”

Gio gave me a look saying, Sadie, tag in here, but I just shook my head and started putting his discharge folder in my oversized bag. We’d already danced this dance dozens of times, and Buddy’s resolve had only hardened.

Gio tried again. “You don’t have to like it. But you could have permanent nerve damage if you don’t let them help you. That’s not a scare tactic, that’s math.”

Buddy shrugged. “Then I’ll be a limpy old bastard running my farm and drinking beer in my own kitchen. Thanks for the concern. Sadie, let’s go.”

As if on cue the day nurse, Helena, came in with a wheelchair and announced cheerily, ”Your chariot awaits.”

“Nothin’ wrong with my legs,” Buddy protested. “I can walk just fine.”

Gio blocked the door and took the wheelchair from Helena, who appeared relieved not to have to deal with getting Buddy safely to his vehicle. “We know you can walk but this is the standard escort policy for all patients due to liability reasons,” Gio explained.

“I’ll sign whatever I need to sign sayin’ I won’t sue ya. I’m not gettin’ in that thing.”

Watching Buddy’s defiance made me wonder how in the hell I was going to force him to go to PT, which was mandatory for his recovery.

Gio was the only one in the room who looked like he was trying to have a little fun. He spun the wheelchair in a small circle, then backed it up to the bed like he was parking a Porsche in a tight garage. Buddy glared at him, but I could see the corner of his mouth twitching—he didn’t want to give Gio the satisfaction of making him laugh.

“Come on,” Gio said, patting the seat. “I’ll wheel you out in style. We can wave at the nurses on the way, see if you get any numbers.”

Buddy shot Gio a look. “Don’t need numbers. Got all the women I need.”

That was interesting. Gio obviously didn’t know that his Nonna was signing succulents with hugs and kisses to Buddy, or that she’d been visiting him daily from seven a.m. to eight a.m. before visiting hours. I’d only found out about it because Ida slipped and told me. I wasn’t sure how Nonna had been able to keep the secret from her grandson, considering he worked at the hospital, but I found it interesting.

Gio smiled widely. “I heard the night nurse left you a get well note and a piece of butterscotch in the drawer. Is she one of your women?”

Buddy actually blushed as he waved his hand dismissively. I had to hand it to Gio, the distraction tactic worked because Buddy let Gio help him slide from the bed into the wheelchair, one hand bracing the armrest.

“You’re a menace,” Buddy muttered.

Gio grinned, pushing Buddy toward the door. “And you’re as stubborn as a mule. That’s why we’re friends.”

We headed down the hall, and the nurse at the desk’s eyes lit up, most likely from relief that her most cantankerous, difficult patient was no longer her problem. “Bye, Mr. Shepard. You take care of yourself.”

Buddy lifted his hand. “Tell Dr. Jankowski I’m not coming back.”

The nurse gave him a thumbs-up. “Will do.”

Gio steered us into the elevator, spun Buddy around, and pressed the button for the lobby. I trailed behind, carrying Buddy’s ancient gym bag and the batch of discharge papers. Buddy’s arms were folded across his chest like a child refusing to eat his vegetables.

In the elevator, Gio leaned against the wall. “So what’s your first meal out of prison, huh? Burgers? Pizza? Hot wings? I know you’re not gonna say kale salad.”

Buddy grunted. “Grace’s chicken fried steak, extra gravy.”

Grace and her husband ran Main Street Eats diner and Buddy ate there every Sunday for as long as I could remember. He always ordered the same thing, chicken fried steak, extra gravy. He never wavered from that meal.

Gio clapped his hands in approval. “Good choice.”

I smiled, and Buddy caught my eye in the mirrored elevator door. For a second, his expression softened. He looked tired—older and smaller than the man I held in my memory—but there was a defiance to the tilt of his chin, a glint in his eye that reminded me of the Buddy who was invincible.

When the elevator chimed, Gio wheeled Buddy out so fast his shoes squeaked on the linoleum. He made a show of popping a wheelie at the exit, which made the volunteers at reception giggle.

Outside, the air was wet with late-morning fog, and the hospital parking lot shimmered like a mirage. When we got to the truck, Gio braced the wheelchair, and Buddy used the frame of the car to pull himself up. His legs wobbled for a second, but he gritted his teeth and made it into the seat without a word. I slid his bag in after him and tried to assist him by buckling him in, but he fought me on it, insisting he do it himself.

I walked around to the driver’s side and before we pulled away, Gio set the wheelchair off to the side and leaned in the open passenger window. “Listen to your granddaughter,” he said, voice warm but insistent. “If she tells you to do your exercises, do ’em. ’Cause I don’t want to see you back here.”

Gio smacked the door twice, then stepped away from the truck. As I prepared to drive away I saw that he got distracted, looked down and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He typed on his screen, then his brow creased and confusion clouded his expression.

I was pulling out of the parking lot as Gio lifted his head and called out to Buddy, “Nonna says to answer your messages.” Gio lifted his phone, as if it was evidence. “Why is Nonna texting you?”

“Tell her my battery died,” Buddy shouted back. “My charger wasn’t workin’.”

It was working, it just hadn’t been plugged in correctly. Gio looked like he had a lot more questions for Buddy as we pulled out of the parking lot. I was sure Nonna would be getting the third degree, not that he would get any information out of her. I had a feeling no one knew anything about Nonna’s life she didn’t want to reveal.

I thought about asking my own follow-ups, since the subject had been broached, but I figured he would tell me about her when and if he wanted to. Buddy Shepard was a private man. It was something that he and Dawson always had in common. Neither one of them liked people in their business, which in this town was pretty unavoidable.

Buddy was quiet for the first five minutes of the drive, arms folded tight, jaw set. I kept my eyes on the road, the hospital receding in the rear view, replaced by rolling green hills and downtown Valentine Bay. The silence made the clatter of the old truck’s engine seem louder, and I wondered if I should say something to fill it. But Buddy beat me to it.

“Y’know, you can just drop me at the farm and get back to your business.” His eyes fixed on the marshy fields rolling past. “Don’t need a babysitter.”

“Nobody’s babysitting. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

He muttered something under his breath. It sounded like, “Don’t need anyone making a fuss.”

My heart rate ticked up. I wanted to tell him that it was okay to accept help, that he’d done more than his fair share for the town, for my mom, for me. But I’d learned long ago that Buddy Shepard was a one-way street when it came to giving and receiving.

Silence returned, and I could see, in the harsh light of day, the dark circles under Buddy’s eyes. I knew he wanted to be home, but I worried, once again, if it was too soon.

He’d drifted off to sleep by the time we turned onto the long gravel drive. The stones popping under the tires stirred him from his slumber. When his eyes opened, Buddy’s head tilted, his brows stitching together as he took in the property. The grass was mowed in crisp, even stripes, running parallel to the drive like the outfield at a major league stadium. Both the house and barn had fresh coats of paint. The battered fence that had been held together with baling wire and prayer for the last decade was now taut, the posts set true and plumb. Even the battered mailbox at the end of the lane stood upright, the flag gleaming with new enamel.

Buddy whistled. “You been mowing the grass?”

“That would be Dawson,” I admitted.

He craned his neck to look at the house. “New porch light?” he asked, suspicion sharpening his words.

I kept my tone neutral. “Dawson put it in last week. The old one broke during that bad storm a few weeks ago,” I explained as I pulled the truck to a stop.

Buddy grunted, but I caught the twitch at the corner of his mouth, a smile in hiding, maybe. He didn’t say anything else as I parked the truck near the ramp that now led to the side door. He stared out the window for a long minute, like he was trying to memorize every detail that had changed or maybe trying to find fault with them.

I got out, circled to his side, and opened the door. Buddy made a theater of refusing help, but when he swung his legs out of the truck, he wobbled, and for a split second, his hand landed on my shoulder. He groaned from either pain or effort, and I quickly looked away, pretending I hadn’t noticed.

The ramp had been Dawson’s idea. He’d built it himself, after a long night of reading ADA guidelines and watching YouTube tutorials. I knew Buddy would hate it—would see it as an admission of weakness—but as he shuffled up the new planks, he didn’t say a word. He paused at the landing, put a hand on the polished newel post, and took a moment to scan the entire porch. The flowers, the newly patched screen, the gleaming copper lantern.

He shook his head, but I couldn’t read the expression. “Since when is this place a Bed and Breakfast?” he muttered.

If he thought those were changes, I braced myself for his reaction to the interior.

I unlocked the door and held my breath as we walked inside. The kitchen, once a museum of grease and outdated appliances, was now pristine. Every surface gleamed. The farmhouse table was scrubbed clean, a mason jar of wildflowers in the center. The outdated fridge had been replaced with a gleaming, modern stainless steel behemoth, covered in magnets spelling out “WELCOME HOME” and “SHEPARD STRONG.” The walls, which had once been a yellowed nicotine color, now glowed with a fresh coat of white paint.

Buddy hovered on the threshold, surveying the alien world within. His gaze darted to the recliner, the only piece of furniture Dawson hadn’t replaced or reupholstered. The whole house was set up for his comfort—low-slung handles, grab bars, every possible tripping hazard removed.

He gave me a look, half-accusation, half-bafflement. “Who did all this?”

“Dawson. Well, Dawson did most of it, and Damon pitched in,” I said, keeping my voice light. “I helped where I could.”

Buddy grunted. He walked stiffly through the house, touching surfaces as if to prove they were real. He stopped at the wall of family photos, some ancient, some new. I’d rearranged them, added some candid shots from the hospital, and printed out some I found on the town’s Facebook page. He stared at it for a long time.

“You shoulda just left it,” he said finally, voice cracking a little. “The place was fine.”

I shook my head. “It just needed a little TLC.”

He walked over to the couch, which had new upholstery. “Looks like Martha Stewart broke in and threw up on the place.”

I smiled nervously. “You hate it?”

He was silent for a beat. “No. Just not used to it.” He collapsed into the recliner and looked up at me, jaw set with the defensive pride of a man who’d never asked for anything. “I’ll pay Dawson back for all of it, and you too,” he said. “Every penny. You can let him know. It might have to wait till next season, because I don’t think I’ll be able to make much profit this season, but I’ll repay every dime.”

“You don’t have to pay anyone back.” I wanted to laugh, or cry, or maybe both. Instead, I handed him an envelope. “But if you did, I think this season is going to do very well.”

He frowned, suspicious, then opened the folder. Inside was the business plan I had written while he was in the hospital. I’d run the projections, analyzed the competition, and even called in a favor from a friend at the university’s agricultural extension. With the new upgrades, the farm was on track to break even by fall—and if we kept up the momentum, it might even be profitable by the end of the year.

He read the first few pages but stopped when he got to the employment portion. “What’s all this?”

“I hired a few people.” I forced myself to sound confident. “Part-time, just for the season. They’re good kids. Hard workers. The produce stand is open again, and we’ve added a delivery system and baskets, which is proving to be very profitable. I’m rolling out my marketing plan.”

Buddy looked up, incredulous. “Marketing plan?”

I nodded, pulling out my phone. “Watch this.”

I swiped through the TikTok page I’d created for Shepard Farms. The most recent video was a time-lapse of the barn being painted, set to an upbeat country song. Another video showed a line of teens at the produce stand at the Grand Re-Opening, doing blind taste tests of heirloom tomatoes, their reactions exaggerated and hilarious. There was a “guess the fruit” contest, and a “pie-eating challenge” that had gone semi-viral among the local high schools. The comment section was a war zone of playful teasing and hometown pride.

Buddy watched, jaw slack, as I scrolled through the posts.

“People are coming to the stand just to try and beat the high score,” I explained. “If you guess the fruit right, you get a bundle for it and your photo goes up on the wall.”

He didn’t say anything, so I opened up the Instagram page. It was full of photos, tourists posing in front of the new selfie mural I’d commissioned, local kids with their arms full of apples. There was a shot of him at the hospital, flipping off the camera with surgical tape still on his arms.

Buddy’s eyes narrowed. “I told you, no photos in the hospital.”

I grinned. “It’s got over a thousand likes. You’re basically famous. Look how many people are rooting for your recovery.”

He scrolled through the page, then set the phone down, shook his head, and stared at the business plan again. “Produce stand’s never turned a real profit.” He cleared his throat, voice low. “Not since your GiGi Rose ran it.”

I took a breath, steadying myself. “That’s because you never charged enough. Or advertised or diversified. Look, we’re selling out almost every day. I’m running preorders for Thanksgiving pies. We’ve got a waiting list a mile long for those preserves Gigi Rose used to make, the ones mom taught me. I even set up online orders.”

Buddy’s face twisted, skeptical, but not dismissive. He turned a few more pages in the plan, then looked up at me, question in his eyes.

“That’s not all,” I continued, heart pounding with anticipation. “I want to make Shepard Farms a real destination. For Halloween, we’re doing a haunted house in the old chicken coop, a maze in the cornfield, hayrides on weekends.”

He didn’t say anything for a minute, letting the quiet buzz of the fridge fill the room. There was a tension to his silence, a white-knuckle grip in the way his hands clenched and unclenched on the armrests of the recliner. I let him have the time. Buddy Shepard wasn’t a man of many words, he was a collector of silences, an archivist of unsaid things.

“You didn’t have to do all this,” he finally said, his voice smaller than usual. When I looked over, he was blinking hard, eyes shining with unshed tears as he stared down at the papers in his hands. “I’m not gonna be able to keep up with it when you leave.”

“I did have to do it, actually,” I argued, and my voice wobbled more than I wanted. “I had to do all this. Because you’re my family, and this is our home.” I took a deep breath. “And don’t worry about keeping up with it, because I’m staying.”

Buddy’s head jerked up, startled, like he’d just realized there was a second person in the room. “You’re what?”

I swallowed. “I’m not going back to New York. I’m staying here. In Valentine Bay.” There was no going back now, so I bulldozed ahead. “I know it’s not what you wanted. I know it’s hard for you, with me around. But I’m not leaving. I want to be here. I want to work for the farm, and I want to be with Dawson, and I’m sorry if that’s… if I’m too much for you.”

His face contorted in a way I’d never seen, like he was trying to laugh and cry at the same time. “What the hell are you talking about? You’re not makin’ a lick a sense.”

I felt heat rising in my cheeks, and I was suddenly eight years old again, blurting out the secret I’d hidden in my sock drawer, which was I’d found a pack of cigarettes and thought I’d smoked them because I’d put them up to my mouth, I had no clue you had to light them. “I’m staying. I love Dawson and want to work on the far⁠—”

“Not that.” He waved dismissively. “The part about me not wanting you here.”

“Oh, I know it’s hard for you to see me. I know I’m a reminder of the two people you loved the most in your life and lost, and I’m sorry,” my voice cracked on the apology.

Buddy shook his head, I could see that he was going to deny it, but now that I’d started talking, the words were flowing out. Everything I’d wanted to say to him was being broadcast unfiltered.

“That’s why you kept the letters from me, right?” I asked.

His eyes snapped back to mine, his expression more confused than ever. “What letters?”

I reached into my bag and pulled out the battered bundle of envelopes, the ones I’d found in his desk. I laid them gingerly on the table between us, like a peace offering or maybe a live grenade.

“I found them,” I managed to say, over the lump of anxiety in my throat. “Dawson’s letters. You never gave them to me. You told him you would, but you didn’t because you were afraid if you did, I’d read them and come back, and you didn’t want that to happen.”

He looked at the bundle like it was a snake poised to strike, then at me. There was a lifetime’s worth of hurt in his eyes, but also something softer—regret, maybe, or shame. For a moment I thought he might deny it, but Buddy Shepard never lied. Not even to spare feelings.

He exhaled, slow and shaky, like letting air out of a tire. Then he nodded once and closed his eyes.

“You’re right,” he said, and the admission cost him something. “I didn’t want you coming back. But not because of you, and sure as hell not because of me.” He ran a hand over his face, and when he dropped it, he looked older than I’d ever seen him. “It was because of a promise I made to your mama. Right before we lost her, she grabbed my hand and said, ‘Don’t let Sadie get stuck here. Not like me. Make sure she goes and sees the world.’ She wanted more for you than this little town, this farm. It was her dying wish. I tried, honey. I really did. I tried to do what she wanted, even when it killed me not seeing you.”

I felt the tears before they came, and for once I didn’t bother to hide them. “That’s why you didn’t give me the letters?”

“I knew if you read them, you’d be on the first plane back here. And I love that boy, but he messed up and I wasn’t about to let you throw away your life for a man who’s cattin’ around behind your back. Not like your mama.”

My dad cheated on my mom the entire time they were together, and pretty much bounced after she got pregnant with me, and it affected her health. I didn’t know Buddy found out what happened with Dawson. I never told him because I knew he wouldn’t forgive him. He never said anything, so I thought he was none the wiser. When I left so suddenly, all I said was that we broke up and I wanted to go see Uncle Ronnie, who had always said there was a room for me if I ever wanted to visit. I never told Buddy about what I saw at the motel, but I should have known he would hear it in this town.

“Actually, he didn’t,” I explained, my throat tight with emotion.

Buddy’s brow furrowed. “Don’t go makin’ excuses, the boy was young and⁠—”

“Jeremy Miller tried to roofie Donovan Valentine’s beer, but Dawson ended up drinking it, and he passed out. He spoke to Vicki about it and she confirmed nothing happened.”

Buddy looked as shocked as I’d been when I found out. He also looked guilty. He shook his head, but it was more in awe than disagreement. “Well, I’m sorry I kept those from you. I was doin’ what I thought was right. And I’m sorry I made you think I didn’t want you here. When I look at you, I only see my Sadie-girl, no one else. I know I checked out after we lost your mama, and I’m sorry about that. But it had nothing to do with you, I was drownin’ in my grief. But you’re wrong, I haven’t lost the most important people in my life, the people I love the most. One of them is still here and I’m looking at her. I had lost you, but it looks like you’re back now. And if being here is what makes you happy, I am over the moon about it. I’ve missed you so much.” Tears were forming in his eyes.

I crossed the room, and for the first time since I was a kid, I hugged him. He was stiff for a second, then he put his arms around me and squeezed so tight I thought my ribs might crack. When he let go, he wiped his eyes and laughed, a hoarse bark that startled us both.

“So that’s settled, then. You’re staying,” he said, like he needed to hear it out loud.

I nodded, grinning and crying at the same time. “I’m staying.”

He hugged me once more. “Welcome home, Sadie Rose.”

30

EMOTIONALLY WATERBOARDED

Dawson

Ihad the urge to pace, but I kept myself rooted in the reception nook by the row of battered wooden chairs. The waiting room of the admin building was lined with black-and-white photographs of mustached men and intimidating women glaring out from the Gilded Age. Spring sun spilled through the stained-glass transom and painted the far wall in pale green. I kept my eyes trained on the office door, listening to the muffled cadence of my mom’s voice and the higher, unfamiliar tone of a guest.

The grandfather clock in the corner—brought west by covered wagon, according to family legend—bellowed the half-hour. I’d been waiting for fifteen minutes, which was about fourteen and a half minutes longer than my usual tolerance for this kind of anticipation. I had a plan, or at least the skeleton of a plan: talk to my mom, get her read on the situation, then figure out how to fix what I’d broken with Sadie. I was a man who liked preparation, who found comfort in routines and contingency plans, but lately every interaction felt like walking blindfolded through a field littered with bear traps.

There was a thud behind me, followed by the low growl of Dean clearing his throat. The man could sneak up on a coyote, but when he wanted you to know he was around, he made sure you didn’t miss it. He leaned in the doorway with his arms folded, posture telegraphing both relaxation and the faint threat of violence, which was pretty much his default setting.

“This is a surprise.” He eyed my boots. “Everything okay?”

“I’m here to talk to Mom,” I replied, which was already more than I’d planned to say.

Dean glanced back at the closed door, then at me. “She’s got an interview. New events coordinator to fill in for Lydia. If it goes well, I’ll be meeting with them next.” His head tilted to the side. “You look serious.”

Dean’s comment landed sharp as a thrown horseshoe. He was the only man I knew who could make “You look serious” sound halfway like an accusation and three-quarters like he actually cared. I shrugged, which was about as much as I ever gave, but Dean waited me out. His stillness had a way of extracting answers, something about the way his jaw set.

“I am,” I said finally.

He grunted, as if this was the answer he’d been waiting for. “Sadie?” His tone was softer now.

I nodded, eyes fixed on the grid of ancient floor tiles. “Yeah.”

Before he could comment more, Mom’s office door swung open, and the volume inside the building doubled. My mother’s voice had a way of filling every available cubic inch, something she claimed to have inherited from her own mother. Apparently, my abuelita could call cows down from a hilltop and shame men into better behavior in the same breath.

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am,” said a female voice I didn’t recognize, high and bright with nerves. “I didn’t expect…well, any of this, really.”

Mom came through the door first, slight and graceful, wearing her favorite gray cashmere sweater and jeans. She was beaming, which meant something had gone very right, or very wrong in a way that allowed her to fix it.

She was followed by a woman I’d never seen before—she was petite but had an hourglass figure. Her face was flushed, color rising high on her cheekbones. She wore a ocean blue wrap dress that matched her eyes exactly, and her hair—long, honey-blonde—fell over her shoulders in a way that looked both accidental and deliberate.

The woman’s hand was locked in my mother’s, their knuckles pressed together with the fierce solidarity of survivors. I could tell, even before my mother spoke in a tone she reserved for people fresh out of wreckage, that this was another one of Mom’s projects: a wounded bird in need of a soft nest and a hot meal. She collected people the way some grandmothers collected porcelain figurines—the battered, the mismatched, the ones with stories written in cracks and chips—until the house felt packed to the gills with a revolving cast of beautiful strangers. Some stuck around and were now employees, some moved on, but every single one left a piece of themselves behind, like stray buttons in a junk drawer.

This one was different, though. There was something about the way she held herself—shoulders squared, chin tilted in permanent defiance—that told me she wasn’t here because she needed saving. She was here because she’d finally run out of other places to go. The dress she wore was form-fitting and exuded confidence and grace, but her white-knuckle grip on the leather portfolio said otherwise.

She was jaw-dropping, yeah, but not in the fragile, glass-doll way I’d come to expect from Mom’s parade of strays. There was a sturdiness to her, a physical presence that demanded you meet her gaze and keep it there. A curtain of gold-blonde hair tumbled down her back, shimmering like a damn shampoo commercial. Her face was all cheekbones and full lips, the kind of beauty that made you stare without meaning to. Her eyes—startlingly blue, almost aquatic—shuttered from my mom to Dean to me and back again, doing a quick threat assessment.

As soon as our eyes met, the comparison hit me so fast it felt like a punch to the gut: she was the living, breathing, doppelganger of Cameron Diaz in her late ’90s prime, only a very petite, five foot two version. The Mask, but with the intensity of Gangs of New York.

I flicked a glance at Dean, whose first crush had been Cameron, he had posters of her on his walls, to see if the resemblance had registered for him. Dean prided himself on never being rattled by anything, but his posture—normally all loose-jointed confidence—had gone stiff, and his jaw flexed like a guy chewing glass.

“Oh, perfect timing, boys. This is Felicity, she is interviewing for the events coordinator position.” Mom motioned to us. “Felicity, these are two of my sons, Dawson and Dean.”

Felicity’s gaze caught mine for a fraction of a second, her lips twitching like she was fighting the urge to laugh at the introduction. “Nice to meet you,” I said, offering her my hand, which she took with a quick, businesslike shake.

“You too,” she replied, and I could’ve sworn her eyes flicked up and down, measuring me up, not in a flirtatious way, just in a self-protective way, as if to calculate whether or not I was a threat. When her shoulders relaxed, I felt I’d passed the test.

But when her focus slid to Dean, the whole room seemed to shift. Her smile widened, teeth flashing, and a light flickered on behind her eyes, electric and unmistakable. “Oh,” she said, her voice suddenly softer and very familiar, “hello, Sunshine.”

Sunshine? I’d heard my brother called a lot of things, Sunshine was never one of them.

“You two know each other?” Mom asked, eyebrows up.

“Not formally,” Felicity vague-splained, performing a balancing act between truth and misdirection that only the truly interesting could manage.

I liked her immediately.

I shot a look at Dean. He held himself with the slack-jawed vacancy of a man who’d just been hit in the head with a two-by-four. His pupils were dilated to the point of cartoonishness.

That was new. I’d seen him cut deals with millionaires over the phone while simultaneously field-dressing a wounded steer. I’d watched him drop a full-grown man with a single punch on the Fourth of July, then step over the body to refill an apple juice for a crying toddler without missing a beat. The man ran at a constant simmer, never boiled over, and if he had feelings, he kept them locked up with the same combination that secured Mom’s stockpile of top-shelf tequila.

“Okay, well, Felicity, if you’d like to take a seat in the conference room?” Mom’s tone was the bright, competent chirp she used when she sensed the danger of an awkward silence. “Dean will be in with you shortly for round two of the interview.”

“Oh.” Felicity’s eyes widened, just a blink, but enough to suggest she hadn’t realized there was more to come. “Okay.”

Mom guided her down the hallway with the gentle authority of a hotel concierge, narrating the route as though the admin wing might at any moment rearrange itself behind their backs. “Last door on the left, darling, watch the dip in the floor, it always catches people off guard.” Felicity followed, back straight and steps measured, her wrap dress swirling with each stride.

Dean stared after the closed conference room door like a retriever fixated on a duck in flight. I let the silence hang until it started to vibrate with potential energy.

“Real smooth, Romeo,” I teased, grinning.

He blinked twice, like an old television set powering back on after a blackout. “What?”

It was the first time I’d ever witnessed someone be lovestruck. I was glad it was my brother. He was full-blown twitterpated.

“Sorry, should I say, Sunshine?” I corrected.

He blinked once more, finally snapping out of the trance the woman had clearly put him under.

“Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to make up for your rude behavior.” Mom spoke beneath her breath as she joined us. “Now go hire her. I like her.”

“Rude?” Dean questioned.

“You blanked her,” I pointed out.

“I didn’t…I was just…” Dean fumbled over his words, shaking his head.

It was nice to see Dean off balance, on the back foot for once. He was always in control. Never showing any emotion. I was actually a little bummed that I was leaving and wouldn’t be able to watch this play out. I glanced over at my mom, I could see that she was as amused by my brother’s reaction as I was.

Dean stood taller straightening his shoulders. “I’m not going to hire her just because you like her,” he stated firmly before heading down the hall.

Since taking over the role as CFO, Dean had insisted on having the final say in all employment contracts, mainly because my mom took in every sad sob story and paid them according to their needs, not their job descriptions or ability. It was generous, kind, and I for one loved that about her, but I wasn’t the one dealing with the bottom line.

When Dean took over, the ranch was in the red thanks to Mom’s visions of the spa, vineyard, and resort expansions. Not to mention her rescuing every hurt or abused animal in the state. He’d worked very hard to put us in the black. Part of that meant taking the reins on payroll.

“No, you’re gonna hire her because you like her,” Mom said beneath her breath as we watched him pause at the door and take a breath before walking in.

“Do you have a minute?” I asked as my brother disappeared into the conference room.

“For you?” She lifted her arm, straightening it. “Always.”

We headed into her office, and she lowered herself onto the couch and patted the cushion beside her. The space was her sanctuary—wide windows overlooking the sweep of the pastures, the sea glimmering blue on the horizon, every surface crammed with succulents, African violets, and the occasional surly cat, or in this case the kitten she’d stolen from me. Minnie was curled up on the windowsill, basking in the sunlight. She’d designed the place herself, and in the morning light, it looked like a slice of Tuscany had been dropped in the middle of coastal Oregon.

I sat down, trying to find the words. I’d rehearsed what I needed to say all night, but now that I was here, my mind was blank, and I didn’t know where to start.

“Everything okay?” she asked, peering sidelong, voice gentle but edged with maternal radar.

“Yeah,” I said. “I just—needed to talk to you.”

She was quiet, the way she always was when she knew something big was coming. She never forced it, just let the silence settle until you had no choice but to fill it.

“I’m leaving,” I finally confessed, and the admission felt like a boulder tumbling out of my chest. It wasn’t what I’d planned to tell her, but I had never been good with words.

She blinked, once, then twice, like she suspected more but didn’t want to get her hopes up. “Leaving the ranch for the day or leaving, leaving?”

“Leaving, leaving. I’m moving to New York.”

Her breath caught, but she didn’t say anything, didn’t launch into arguments or try to guilt me into staying. She just listened, which was so much worse than anger, because it meant she knew this was real.

I tried to explain how much I loved the ranch, how I loved working with my family, and with the animals. I told her about Sadie, how she’d come back different, stronger, but just as much mine as she ever was. I told her I was terrified of losing her again, that I wouldn’t survive it a second time.

“She’s your future,” Mom said, and it wasn’t a question.

“She’s my everything,” I admitted, the words rawer than I meant them to be.

She nodded, lips trembling, and for a moment I thought she’d finally break. Instead, she just got up and wrapped me in a hug, the kind that made you feel small and indestructible at the same time.

“You’re not mad?” I mumbled into her hair.

“How could I be mad?” She pulled back, knuckling tears from her cheeks. “All I’ve ever wanted for my boys is for you to be happy. I know you haven’t been happy, not truly happy, since Sadie left.” She sniffed. “You belong with her. Will I miss you? Of course, you’re my boy, but this is the right thing to do.”

I swallowed, the relief so sudden it made me dizzy.

She smiled, shaky. “But you will visit, or I’ll send your brothers to drag you back by your ankles, and you know they’ll do it.”

“Every summer and holiday,” I agreed.

She pointed a finger at me, mock-stern. “Every. Single. One.”

“Every summer and holiday,” I promised. I’d have to work it out with Sadie, but I had a feeling she’d be okay with it since she’d already talked about visiting more to keep an eye on Buddy.

“When are you leaving? We need to have a party."

“I don’t know. Buddy is coming home today. I haven’t even told Sadie. I’m going when she’s going. If she leaves today, so am I. If she leaves in a week, then so am I.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay, well, keep me updated.”

“I will.” I stood, leaned down, and kissed her on the top of her head.

I left the office feeling lighter, the decision finally real now that I’d spoken it aloud. The air outside was sharp and salt-heavy, the sky the kind of blue that barely looked real. Next, I needed to tell Sadie my news. I just hoped she was happy about it.

I was halfway to my truck, planning to drive straight to the Shepard house, when I heard a voice in the stables, and I recognized it. I ducked inside, heart hammering, and found Sadie with Penny, brushing down the horse. Penny flicked her tail, contented, while Sadie murmured quietly to her.

I didn’t know why she was here instead of with Buddy, but then I realized: this was where she’d always gone when she was upset about her mom, whenever she’d had bad news and after she lost her. Where she felt safe. Where she could pretend, for just a few minutes, that the rest of the world didn’t exist.

My heart dropped thinking something had happened to Buddy.

When I spoke, it came out small, almost reverent. “Sadie?”

She turned at the sound of my voice, and I saw the streaks of tears on her cheeks. She didn’t try to hide them or brush them away, and I recognized that as something new—old Sadie would have wiped her face and covered the evidence before anyone got close. She was clutching a curry comb, her knuckles white around the plastic handle. For a second, all the words I’d planned to say clogged in my throat.

But I could read the panic in her face, the way her chest heaved with every shaky breath. It twisted inside me. I closed the space between us fast.

“Sadie,” I breathed, “what’s wrong? Is Buddy⁠—?”

“He’s okay, he’s fine,” she rushed out. She dropped the comb and walked out of the stall. “He’s good. He’s stubborn and cranky, and he’s gonna outlive us all. It’s not Buddy. I just—” She wiped her hands on her jeans. “Sorry. I just, uh. Needed a minute. It’s been a day.”

She was still crying, even if she was smiling, and I did the only thing I could think of—I pulled her to my chest and let her soak the front of my shirt. For a long time, we just stood there, her sniffs filling the stables: horses shifting their weight, pigeons rustling above the rafters, the wind knocking at the weathered boards. She buried her nose in my sternum and took one last shuddering inhale, like she was trying to take in the whole world at once.

“Are you okay?” It was a stupid question I wished I could take back as soon as it left my mouth.

She nodded against me but didn’t let go. “I’m okay. I’m better than okay. I had a long talk with Buddy this morning,” she said, her voice muffled by my shirt. “A real talk. About everything I’d never told him, everything I wish I’d said before, and it just—” She hiccupped and pulled back as she wiped her cheeks. Instead of that old defensiveness, there was something like relief in her eyes. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Sorry. I’m sure you didn’t expect to get emotionally waterboarded today.”

I smiled. “I don’t mind. You can waterboard me anytime.”

She gave a weak laugh and shook her head. “I’m a mess.”

“Yeah. But you’re my mess. Always have been and always will be.” The words were out before I could second-guess them, but she didn’t flinch. She didn’t run. She just smiled. I took a breath so deep it made my ribs ache. “I, uh. I have something to tell you, too. But I really hope it doesn’t ruin your good day.”

That got her attention, her shoulders tensed, and she braced herself like she was expecting bad news. “What?” she asked, voice tight.

I swallowed, nerves suddenly back in full force. “I love you,” I blurted, then shook my head. “Shit, no, that’s not—well, yes, I do, but what I mean is… I gave my notice. At the ranch. I just told my mom. I’m leaving. I’m moving to New York.”

She stared up at me blankly. “What?”

“I’m moving to New York. Not to, like, live in your apartment or anything. I mean, unless you want that, but I know you’ve got your own life there, and I’m not trying to impose on that—” I was rambling, so I stopped myself. “I just…I want to be with you. Or at least near you. I’m not letting another three thousand miles come between us. I’ll get my own place. We can take things slow. I don’t care. I’ll shovel snow all winter and even try street meat. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Her brows knit together, confusion fighting with shock. She opened her mouth, closed it, then tried again. “You’re moving to New York?”

“Yes,” I confirmed.

She shook her head back and forth. “What are you going to do in New York?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. I’ll figure it out. The only thing that matters is that I’m with you. I’m not going to lose you again.”

For a second I thought the shock had actually paralyzed her, but then her face crumpled—first confusion, then disbelief, then something that looked suspiciously like hope creeping in around the edges. My mind raced, trying to anticipate her next words, prepping for every worst-case scenario. Maybe she’d tell me no, thank you for the gesture, but her life was in New York. Maybe she’d laugh and say I was being ridiculous, that this was just a walk down memory lane, nothing more.

Instead, she just stared at me for a long moment, open-mouthed, eyes wide and shining. Then she asked, “Can you get your job back?”

I blinked, caught so off guard I almost dropped the curry comb I’d taken out of her hand. “What?”

She shrugged, trying to look casual but her voice wobbled. “At the ranch.” She gestured around the barn. “Because if not, you will need to be available for a minimum of three Facetime calls a day.”

I frowned, because my neurons were still misfiring. “Facetime calls?”

“Yep. Long distance. Video calls. Screen-sharing.” She grinned, and for a second she was sixteen again, challenging me to a game of horse or a pie-eating contest or who could hold their breath the longest in the lake. “Because I’m not going back. I’m moving here. I was going to see if there was room at the seashell cottage, which I guess there would be if you’re in New York.” She paused, licking her lips,

“You’re moving home?” My mouth went dry. “You want to move in with me?”

She shrugged, feigning nonchalance but her voice was trembling. “Unless you think that’s moving too fast.”

I felt my eyebrows shoot up past my hairline. “I’ve been trying to marry you since I was twelve, Sadie. Fast doesn’t scare me. Slow is what kills me.”

She grinned, wide and wild, and then she was back in my arms, kissing me like it was the only way to keep breathing. The horses in the stalls clopped and snorted, unimpressed by our drama, but somewhere above us, a pigeon made a noise that sounded suspiciously like applause.

We broke apart, and she pressed her forehead to mine as we caught our breath.

“What about Buddy?” I managed, once the world was right-side-up again. “Does he need us to be there?”

If that was the case, I had no problem moving in with him, if he’d have me.

“Buddy needs someone to check on him, but he’s never going to let me move back in. He’s too proud. If he does need live-in care, it’ll have to be a professional and at least I’ll be here and I’ll know when and if that time comes.”

I wanted to ask her a million questions—about her plans, about how we’d make this work. But none of it seemed as important as her heartbeat, fast and steady against my ribs.

Her cheeks flushed and her mouth kiss-bruised, she beamed up at me. “I can’t believe you almost moved to New York for me.”

“And I can’t believe you actually moved back and are mine again,” I replied.

She shook her head, smiling, and reached up to brush a lock of hair off my forehead with infinite tenderness. “Are you sure this isn’t too fast?”

“No.” I exhaled. “I think we’re finally done wasting time.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but I beat her to it.

“I love you,” I said, and so did she, both of us speaking at the exact same time, the words crashing together and overlapping so perfectly that all we could do was laugh, and then kiss, and laugh again. And that was our happy ending, in each other’s arms, in the stable, her safe place, my happy place, and our home.

THE END

Hope you enjoyed Dawson and Sadie's road to HEA! If you did, you won't want to miss Dean and Felicity's story THE HEARTBREAKER NEXT DOOR coming 9/24! Pre-Order Now.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NYT and USA Today Bestselling author Melanie Shawn lives in Southern California and is a mama to two adult people (she doesn't know how that happened...they were babies like two seconds ago!). She loves all things romance from books (of course!), movies, songs, and even reality TV...please don't judge.  

She writes small-town romances that are filled with sweet and sassy heroines, cinnamon roll alphas, casts of supportive *cough: meddling* family and friends who put the fun in funny, toe-curling combustible heat, and sugary sweet "aww" moments that will have your hearts and e-readers melting.

When she's not writing or reading, listening to love songs on Spotify, or binge-watching TV she loves spending time with her dog Romeo, teaching Zumba classes, and drinking lotsa Dr. Pepper. Oh, and she also has a girl crush on Julia Roberts and is a die-hard Dawson's Creek fan. #Pacey4Ever

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