I shook my head, choosing not to believe his words. “I would’ve ruined us. I don’t know how to have a healthy relationship.” My mother taught me to yell and scream and throw things when times got tough. I’d never ruin Riley that way. “I needed to get away from Pelican Bay and you love this town. You’re a staple in the community.”
The Jeffersons practically founded the place. I couldn’t be the whore—his aunt’s words—who stole him away.
I took a step onto Henry’s grass, but Riley stayed on the sidewalk, not following me. It was better this way. The conversation was getting too heavy. “I would’ve left for you,” he said, staring into my eyes and showing me he spoke the truth.
But I knew it back then, too. It didn’t make a difference. “You love your family. I couldn’t steal you from them because I never wanted to come back to this town.” In time, the selfish act would have led to resentment between us.
“But don’t you understand, Cassandra? It wasn’t your choice to make alone.”
This was where Riley was wrong because I got to make the choice. I couldn’t sacrifice him for my happiness.
“Yes, it was,” I said, standing my ground in the middle of my brother’s yard. It was my choice to determine how I started my future, and I did it without Riley. I left this town which caused me so much heartache, and he stayed with his family to make many more wonderful memories.
“Well, I’m sorry you see it that way,” he said and then, without another word, Riley left. I stood in my spot until he passed three houses and turned to head back toward Main Street. It felt as if Riley had opened a hole in my chest cavity. My heart plunged, but no matter how much that moment hurt, saying goodbye again was the right choice. Even if my heart and chest hurt with every breath.
There wasn’t a future for Riley and me—not then, not now, and not in the future.
Still, I couldn’t ignore the fact that my steps were lighter when he walked beside me. The shone sun a little brighter. I bypassed the front door and made my way to the side using one that connected to the driveway as I let myself into my brother’s home. Except the door opened too easily.
I stepped back outside and closed the door. And then opened it. Something was missing from the equation.
Like the fact I didn’t have to use the key or jiggle the handle ten times to get it to work. I most definitely locked the door earlier. Before I left out the front after catching Riley and Katy wrestling in the yard. The door should have been locked from the last night. Right?
Did I sleep with it unlocked all night? I mean, even if I did, it’s not like there was a huge crime spree in Pelican Bay. Most people never locked their doors. Even with the knowledge no one murdered me in the night, the door thing gave me a weird feeling in my spine. The tingly not good part.
I scanned the kitchen where I came in but nothing looked out of place. Whiskers, the cat meowed at me from her perch on the living room sofa, obviously irritated I left her alone for even a short time. Henry wasn’t lying when he described Whiskers as high maintenance.
Unease tickled my senses, and I hurried through the home on high alert, searching for something missing, but everything looked exactly the way I’d left it.
I must have forgotten to lock the door. Next time before I left, I’d stop and double check it to make sure Henry never heard. No point in telling him I left his place unlocked where it could have been robbed. It hadn’t happened. I didn’t plan to let anyone vandalize my brother’s place while I slept inside, so we’d be fine. One mistake no one needed to hear about. Ever.
I’d just be more vigilant in the future.
5
RILEY
Icompleted my last curl and set the weight on the ground in my hurry to read the new text on my phone. It was a requirement. We needed our phones available to answer when on call with Ridge’s team. Considering my status as being one of the last of us unattached, Ridge put me on call basically twenty-four hours a day.
Even though I trained myself to grab my phone, lately I’d been even faster than before, especially after I left Cass yesterday standing alone in the front yard. It was a stupid move for me to make—the leaving her alone in the yard not the jumping to get my phone.
Even though it was impossible because she didn’t have my number, I couldn’t help myself wishing each time my phone rang or beeped I’d find a new message from her.
Or was the guilt eating away at me? I wouldn’t get better until she and I hashed out our past. We might not have a future, but we needed to put our previous differences behind us. I shouldn’t have stormed off without getting to hear more of her side of the story, but I never understood how she left so easily all those years ago. Like I meant nothing.
In the middle of the night, hours before we were to meet at the bus stop together, she snuck off on her own without even a goodbye. She certainly never looked back, not once in almost ten years.
Not for me, her family, or anyone in the town.
I thought I’d come to terms with her disappearance, but then to stand a few feet away from her and hear I suffocated her and how my family was too nice hurt me in a way no one else could. Cassandra had been the only woman to cause me pain—then and now. I couldn’t stand there in the open and allow her to expose those previous wounds, so I left.
It was cowardly but necessary.
Except now, every single one of my thoughts referenced seeing her again.
I finished my workout, waiting on my bench seat. Then I scrambled to find my phone, my heart beating quickly, my chest hopeful it’d be a message from Cass.
It wasn’t her name on the screen, but I read the message anyway.
