I told myself I’d call tomorrow. Next week. After midterms. But the longer I waited, the harder it got. What was I supposed to say?Sorry I’ve been ignoring you for months, I was too scared to admit I’m drowning?
Every day I didn’t reach out made the next day harder. The shame piled up until it felt insurmountable. I’d ruined it. I’d broken us.
And I was too much of a coward to face what I’d done.
So I just... didn’t.
At the bottom of the box, there’s the note from Lucas. The date on it mocks me.
I shove the lid back on, stuff the box in the closet, close the door like that’ll contain anything.
My phone buzzes. My agent.
Book 7. Six weeks. NO EXTENSIONS. Your readers are feral.
Right. The book. The one about a woman who returns to her hometown and faces the three alphas she?—
I bark out a laugh. Borders on hysterical.
I plotted this book three months ago. Before I knew I was coming back. My subconscious has been processing my life through fiction for a decade, and I’m only now catching up.
I’m still laughing, the kind that means you’ve completely lost the plot of your own story, when headlights sweep across my window.
I freeze.
It’s past eight. Snow falling thick and silent. Grandma didn’t mention expecting anyone.
A truck pulls into the driveway. Big, practical, the kind that belongs to someone who works with their hands.
My heart slams against my ribs before my brain catches up.
Iknowthat truck. It’s newer than the one from high school, but I know it the way you know things written into your bones.
The driver’s door opens.
He’s bigger than I remember. Broader through the shoulders. The lean teenage boy grown into a solid man. He moves the same way though. Easy and unhurried. Comfortable in his own skin in a way I’ve never managed.
And then the wind shifts.
His scent hits me through the crack in the old window frame, and my whole body goes tight.
Sun-warmed earth and honeysuckle. Rich and golden even in the dead of winter.
It cuts through me. Warmth flooding my chest, breath catching, hands suddenly unsteady on the windowsill. Ten years of carefully constructed distance, and one whiff of Theo Holt’s scent has my pulse racing like I’m eighteen again.
I grip the sill. Try to steady myself.
It’s just a scent. It doesn’t mean anything.
My body doesn’t believe that. My body remembers what that scent means. Remembers falling asleep wrapped in it, remembers tasting it on his skin, remembers the way it would deepen and go rich when he was turned on and pressed against me in the dark.
He’s carrying a casserole dish. One of Grandma’s, being returned in person.
Because that’s who Theo is. The kind of man who returns dishes himself. Tends gardens for ten years without being asked. Does thoughtful things because it never occurs to him not to.
The kind of man I didn’t deserve then and definitely don’t deserve now.
He walks toward the porch, and then he stops.
