PROLOGUE
DAISY
SEVEN MONTHS AGO
My hands tightening on the steering wheel causes the leather to crack in protest beneath my white-knuckled grip as I pass the sign that reads ‘Welcome to Rosewater Creek, population 3000’.
“It’s just a visit,” I remind myself, blowing out a shaky breath.
It takes every ounce of willpower I can muster within me to keep my foot on the gas and not turn this car around and drive back to Montana, where I’ve been hiding for the past three years.
Three years, six months and thirteen days, to be exact.
That’s how long it’s been since I stepped foot in the town I grew up in.
Since I last saw my best friend.
Since I ran away fromhim.
Everything about this town is the same as it was when I left.
The same winding country roads.
Same buildings.
Same mountains.
Same people.
The only thing that is different, is me.
When I left Rosewater Creek, I was a broken girl barely out of her teens. I had no plan, no money and no destination.
I just knew I had togo.
The town that once held my fondest memories. The place I grew and played and fell in love in, now holds my greatest heartbreak. The streets, the creek, the sprawling green fields… all of it haunts me.
Because there isn’t an inch of this town that I didn’t experience withhim.
And that is why I had to leave.
I knew if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to walk away from him.
I wouldn’t have been able to give up the only man my mind, body and soul has ever belonged to; the man who taught me how to love and what it felt to be loved in return.
And he deserved so much more than I could give.
He still does.
But it wasn’t just him I left behind when I ran.
I left my parents and my best friend, too.
I severed connections with everyone close to me to protect the mostimportant person in my life.
The only people that knows my reasons are my parents. And the only reason I told them anything is because mymom threatened to report me missing if I didn’t tell her why I had disappeared from the bridal suite on the morning of my wedding without a word.
Yeah.
