“Nope. Zayn Blackwell is back in town.”
My fork slips from my fingers and clatters against my plate. The sound echoes too loud in the sudden silence. Everything narrows down to those three words, repeating on a loop in my head.
Zayn Blackwell.
Zayn.
Five years might as well be five seconds. Pressure builds behind my ribs, squeezing all the air from my lungs. My pulse explodes, so violent I’m certain they can see it hammering beneath my shirt. I’m drowning in memories I’ve spent yearstrying to bury—his dark hair falling across his forehead, those stormy eyes that saw too much, the ink covering his arms, his voice rough and sure when he whispered “always” against my skin.
One heartbeat. Two. Three.
I blink and force the world back into focus. I laugh, and it comes out too bright, too fake. “God, I haven’t heard that name in forever.” I grab my fork and swipe at the sauce I’ve splattered on the table. “That’s probably gossip. You know how this town is.”
My hands won’t stop trembling. I curl them tighter around my fork.
Harper and Sara look at each other in that way they do when they’re worried about me. Sara’s expression is gentle and sympathetic. Harper looks fierce and protective.
“It’s not gossip,” Harper says carefully, like she’s defusing a bomb. “Tara from the coffee shop saw him yesterday. Apparently he took a position at that law office downtown.”
“Oh,” I say, stuffing my mouth with food I can’t even taste. “Good for him.”
My ribcage feels two sizes too small. I’ve imagined this moment before—running into him at the grocery store, spotting him on the cliff path, hearing his name in passing. But the reality of it hits different. Harder. Real in a way my anxious fantasies never were.
“Sophie…” Sara starts, using that soft, careful tone that makes me want to scream.
“Hey, did you hear they’re finally breaking ground on that new dog park?” I interrupt, my voice suddenly cheerful. “Mia’s going to lose her mind. They’re doing separate areas for large and small breeds.”
Under the table, I trap my shaking hands between my knees, pressing them still. I smile. I nod along to whatever Sara saysabout her weekend plans. I compliment Harper’s cooking. I perform Normal Sophie while everything inside me cracks and splinters.
Five years, I think. Five years of putting myself back together, piece by piece, of learning how to function again, of training myself not to say his name, not to wonder what he’s doing, not to let myself imagine what might have been if he’d stayed.
And now he’s here.
Harper looks at me like she can see right through me. “You know we’ve got your back, right?” she says finally. “Whatever you need. Just say the word and I’ll slash his tires.”
I force out a laugh that almost sounds genuine. “Appreciate the offer, but unnecessary. Ancient history, remember?” I take another bite, chew, swallow, like a functional human being would. “So what movie are we watching this weekend? Please say something with explosions and zero romance.”
Just like that, I sidestep the grenade that’s rolled into our kitchen.
I wait until Harper’s music thumps through our shared wall and Sara’s shower hisses to life before I close my bedroom door. The click of the latch feels final. Now I’m alone with all the thoughts I shoved down during dinner, all the feelings I performed my way around. Zayn is back. Three simple words that shouldn’t matter after five years. Three words that shouldn’t make my lungs feel too small for my chest.
Mia lifts her head from her bed in the corner, brown eyes tracking my movements with that uncanny dog intuition.I sink onto my mattress and force myself to wait, listening to the symphony of apartment sounds—pipes groaning, bass thumping, the refrigerator’s steady hum—making absolutely sure no one will hear me before I move to my closet.
My hands know exactly where to go, muscle memory from doing this too many times. Behind the stack of shoe boxes, past the winter sweaters I won’t need for months, to the back corner where one floorboard sits slightly loose. I press down on one end and the other pops up with a soft creak. I reach into the hollow space and pull out a wooden box roughly the size of a hardcover novel. My brother, Reed, made it in high school shop class—plain pine with my name burned into the lid in wobbly letters. He told me it was for jewelry, but I’ve never been much of a jewelry person.
I set the box on my lap. It feels heavier than it should, like it always does. This box holds my past, all the pieces of myself I can’t seem to throw away even though keeping them feels like pressing on a bruise. Everything else in my life is neat and in order—I don’t let myself feel too deeply or dwell on what hurts. I keep moving forward, one foot in front of the other. But this box? These things I can’t let go of no matter how much they ache.
Mia hops up beside me, the mattress dipping under her solid weight. She settles against my legs with a heavy sigh, resting her blocky head on my thigh like she knows I need the anchor. I take a deep breath and lift the lid.
Everything is still there, untouched since the last time I looked six months ago after finishing a romance novel that wrecked me. Concert ticket stubs from The Anchor, the dive bar downtown where we watched terrible local bands and didn’t care because we had each other. A smooth beach stone with a natural hole worn through the center that he swore would bring me luck. A dried rose so fragile now that touching it risks turningit to dust. And at the bottom, turned face down like that might somehow lessen its power, the photograph.
My fingers hover over it, trembling. This is pathetic. I’m pathetic for keeping this, pathetic for looking at it, pathetic for the way my heart kicks into overdrive knowing it’s there. Heroines in romance novels always keep mementos from the men who broke their hearts. In those stories, he comes back and they get their second chance, their hard-won happily ever after. In real life, holding on to the past makes you look sad and desperate.
I flip the photo over anyway.
Five years dissolve like they never happened. There we are, frozen in what I thought would last forever. I’m eighteen, my dark hair whipping across my face, caught mid-laugh at something he said. And Zayn—God, Zayn is looking at me like I’m the only thing in his universe that matters. His arms wrapped tight around my waist, pulling me back against his chest. His hair is a mess from the ocean wind and from my fingers running through it. His blue-gray eyes shine with something I was naive enough to believe was love. The rose tattoos climb up his forearm and disappear beneath his rolled sleeve, dark ink against tan skin.
We’re standing on the cliff path where I walk Mia every morning. The ocean stretches endless behind us, the sky painted in shades of purple and pink by the setting sun. We look impossibly young, recklessly happy, completely convinced our always would actually last.
