1
Sometimes You Can’t Go Back
Maggie
I leaned my head against the window of the truck, fields zooming past.
Ugh.
The leather of the bucket seat creaked as I shifted position. Nope. That wasn’t any better. Closing my eyes, I worked to clear my mind. Tequila. She was an evil mistress. I was an adult. Why couldn’t I stop at one shot? Tonight, if I was being honest, certainly hadn’t been one shot. More like several smallish shots followed by a couple of beers. I was a fool. It had been years since I drank that much. What on earth was I thinking?
The noise of a throat being cleared floated across the truck. Glancing over, I looked at Sully’s profile. I sighed again and tried to tamp down the feelings of desire that rose up whenever I saw the man. Holy hotness. Dark hair curling over the collar of his flannel. Probably should have gotten it cut a week or so ago, but that was something he wouldn’t care about. Brows drawn together as he focused on the road. Just enough scruff at his jawline to hint at a beard, but I’d guess it was only a few days of growth.
I first laid eyes on Cole Sullivan at the age of eight when I headed to my new best friend’s house for a playdate after school. Emma Sullivan had been the only girl in my new class that I had any desire to befriend. Her brother Cole, who always went by Sully, was eleven at the time. I could just picture him and his best friend, Maxwell Harp, standing in the kitchen when Emma and I walked in to grab a snack. My little-girl heart waved the white flag; he was it for me. Sully and Max had proceeded to act like eleven-year-old boys do and took turns tormenting us all afternoon as well as for years to come.
That fall day was the beginning of a secret infatuation that would take over my dreams. Sully fantasies lived strictly behind a do-not-cross line for me, never to touch reality. In my heart of hearts, I feared it would never work, so why ruin a great friendship? We were simply too different, too bullheaded, too everything.
Sully’s truck bounced through an intersection on the country road, and my stomach flipped, bringing me back to the present. I let out a groan through gritted teeth. Blah. Stomach didn’t feel great, but my head was clearing up just a bit. Sully had switched me to water for the past hour at Max and Emma’s place. It seemed like we were back in high school once again with the guys trying to watch over Emma and me. Lordy, when they’d come home from college, Emma and I would be lectured nonstop on the evils of overindulging, the danger of being around guys we didn’t know well, et cetera, et cetera. I closed my eyes, mortified that I never seemed to be put together or adultlike in front of this man. Damn it.
I saw Sully glance over at me again, lean to the side, grab something out of his back pocket, and flip it out in my direction. I glanced down at the purple bandanna and met his eyes with some confusion.
Sully gestured toward my face. “You’ve got a little something…”
I whirled forward, pulled down the visor, and looked in the mirror. Shit, that was just great. Mascara had streaked down my cheeks at some point. Using Sully’s handkerchief, I tried to get rid of any traces of the makeup. I thought back on the evening with Max and Emma at Max’s farmhouse. They’d only been seeing each other for a week, though she’d been in love with him since kindergarten. I was thrilled for Emma and for Max. Emma and I had been each other’sride or diesince I moved here in second grade. Neither Max nor I were townies, not having been born in Highland Falls, yet I’d venture to guess that we both considered this small community in Illinois our home. We both had been honorary members of the Sullivan family since we arrived, although if Max and Emma kept on their current path, I had a feeling he’d be part of their family in an official way pretty soon.
That’s what tonight had been all about. Emma had been holding back a bit about the seriousness of all that was her and Max. The guys grilled steaks while I chatted with Emma, finding out how everything was really going with her and Mr. Maxwell Harp along with her mindset on all that she was dealing with in general. I was thrilled to hear that things were good, and I meanreally good. And maybe, just maybe, I might have been a bit overexuberant in my pouring of the shots. You have to understand; I look out for Emma. It’s a lifelong mission of sorts. She has the biggest heart of anyone I know, and along the way, that heart has been shattered to pieces.
Tonight Emma showed me that for the first time since forever, she was almost healed. Schoolyard bitches and insecure ex-boyfriends had taken their toll on my girl, and she’d been trying to put herself back together since college. Now, at twenty-nine, I thought she was just about there. I was so damn proud of her tonight that I sang her our song, Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful.” It was one I sang to her over the years to remind her to be herself, that she was enough. Tonight I sang it because she now embodied everything the song said. No one was going to bring her down again. As I sang, I might have broken down just a bit. Fine. It was an ugly cry, likely brought on by my liquid nemesis. The type of cry that I didn’t want anyone to see but me, maybe Emma. Max and Sully were there, unfortunately, with ringside seats.
Shit.
Our night had brought a lot of feelings up for certain and also important realizations. Emma truly was on her way. She was settled, at a job she loved, and she’d found her guy. That lifelong role of protector wasn’t needed anymore. Max had her, and more importantly, Emma had herself.
Maybe it was time I got on with my own plans.
I’d returned to Highland Falls to save up money before moving on, heading for somewhere bigger than our small town. This summer the plan was to travel, checking out this big country that I’d only seen a fraction of before coming back to my job in the middle school in the fall. What if I used this summer to pick my next landing spot? I had quite a bit saved up at this point. I could give my district a year to find my replacement and then move on for good.
My stomach clenched at the thought, but excitement fluttered as well.
Sully cleared his throat again. “Your brain is working so hard over there smoke might start coming out of your ears soon. Want to talk about it, or are you just planning to sit there in silence?”
I took a breath as my stomach dropped. Was I really going to do this? Was it finally time to move on? I looked out the window into the darkness. A bit of moonlight shone down onto empty fields. Working to pull my shit together, I took a breath and then whispered, “It’s fine, Sully. I appreciate the ride.”
The quiet rumbling of tires on asphalt settled into the cab of the truck, and I thought he was going to let me go back to my thoughts. And then his strong hand squeezed my thigh, and I yelped. My eyes shot up to meet his.
“Mags, easy. Sweetheart, I just want to know what’s going on with you.”
It’s Sully, it’s Sully, it’s Sully. His hand doesn’t mean anything. He’s just checking on you. You’re his little sister’s best friend. He’s a good guy.Yep, all the reasonable thoughts in my brain were drowned out by the feel of Sully’s hand on my thigh. My nether regions were practically shoutingyippee,and the devil sitting on my shoulder suggested oh so sweetly that I should move up and let it hit me a bit higher.
Good grief. Down, girl.
I met his whiskey eyes, just like Emma’s but smoldering. Damn, I could look into those for some time. “Sully, you’re a good guy. Thanks. Nothing was wrong, not really. Promise. The waterworks were thanks to a perfect storm of memories: bitchy teenage girls, being happy for Emma, the evil mistress Tequila, and the beauty that is Christina Aguilera.”
Sully looked at me, then back to the road. He nodded his head once. “If you’re sure, Mags. You know you can always talk to me, right?”
I leaned back in the seat, looking out the window again and thinking over the past few weeks or, hell, the past year. Emotions warred just under the surface, threatening to pull me under, telling me that I wasn’t as copasetic as I thought I was. “Sull,” I whispered.
“Yeah, Mags?”
