Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll probably see her at the grocery store or the Honey Crumb. And I’m supposed to walk away. Keep my distance. Not engage.
I can do that. I can ignore Cara Donovan.
Probably.
Maybe.
The snow has stopped, I realize. The silence outside is complete. That particular hush that only happens after a storm, when the whole world is buried in white and waiting for morning.
She’s half a mile away right now. Lying in her childhood bedroom. Maybe staring at her ceiling too.
Does she think about us? Does she ever wonder what happened to the three boys she left behind?
Does she regret it?
I don’t know. I’ve spent ten years not knowing, and the not-knowing is almost worse than any answer could be.
Tomorrow I’m supposed to pretend she doesn’t exist. Pretend seeing her doesn’t make my chest crack open. Pretend I don’t still love her after everything.
God, I hope I’m strong enough to walk away.
Chapter 3
Cara
Iwake up smelling like stress.
Not the subtle, suppressant-masked stress of yesterday. Full-blown, my-body-has-betrayed-me anxiety seeping through my pores like I’m a broken humidifier of emotional dysfunction.
The honey-citrus base of my scent has gone sharp and sour. Broadcasting “woman having a crisis” to anyone with a functioning nose within a fifty-foot radius.
Which, in this town, is basically everyone.
I lie there for a minute, staring at the ceiling of my childhood bedroom, mentally listing all the ways this trip has already gone wrong.
The bakery ambush.
Grandma’s book club knowing about my books. Which means Mrs. Patterson knows. Which means the whole town will know by Thursday.
Grandma’s knowing smiles.
And, oh yes, Theo Holt standing in the driveway last night, looking at me through the window like I was a stranger.
That nod. That single, polite, devastating nod.
I press my palms against my eyes and groan.
I came back for Grandma. That’s what I told my editor when I pushed back my deadline. Grandma needs help. Family obligation. And yes, I knew I’d probably run into the three alphas I haven’t spoken to in a decade, but I figured I could avoid them. Keep my head down. Help Grandma. Leave.
That was the plan, anyway.
Except Grandma seems completely fine. Sharp as ever. Poker on Tuesdays, book club, baking enough cookies to feed the whole town. Not exactly a woman who desperately needed her granddaughter to drop everything and drive across the country.
So why did she ask me to come?
I don’t have an answer for that. But then I saw Theo through that window, and everything changed.
I can’t keep pretending. Can’t keep writing books about them while refusing to face what I did. They deserve answers. They deserve an apology. They deserve to hear why I disappeared, even if the truth is ugly and complicated and doesn’t make anything better.
