He turned toward me again and placed a hand on the side of my head, fingers in my hair. “Yeah.” He leaned forward to take my bottom lip in his. A small contented sigh escaped me as he pulled back. “Bren, can we keep this—”
My stomach plummeted. “You don’t want to tell anyone?” My instincts screamed to pull away from Nathan before my heart cracked in two.
He raised an eyebrow. “Wait—is that what you want?”
“No, but you said—”
“I don’t want to tell ourparents,” he clarified. “They’ll start making us keep the door open and always want to be around when we’re together.”
A relieved sigh escaped my lungs. “Oh. Yeah, good thinking.”
“Something is weird with them right now.”
Those words were like a plunge into ice-cold water.
I considered telling Nathan what I saw when I came home early from a friend’s house one night this summer. His dad and my mom, in my kitchen, flying apart from each other when the door opened, guilt written all over their features.
They swore it was a onetime mistake, that they had dinner together, drank too much wine. Mr. Sharpe rushed out of the house, leaving my mom and me alone.
She told me to stop being dramatic. She said it would never happen again because Mr. Sharpe was married to her best friend.
I chose to believe her.
Besides, I didn’t want to mess with Nathan’s baseball camp. He’d worked his ass off to get in front of scouts. If I said anything now he was home, it could make his parents’ situation worse.
They’d sort it out. They had to.
“Why do you think I don’t want anyone to know, Bren?”
I looked away from him. “I’m not the kind of girl Nathan Sharpe is expected to date.”
“Fuck that noise,” he said, tilting my face toward him. “You’re the only girl I want, Brenna.”
No sentence in the history of my life ever sounded so good.
4
NATHAN
Now
We turned onto themain road that traversed all two and a half miles of downtown Middlebury.
The first time I came back here after high school, I’d nearly doubled over from the onslaught of memories. Expecting it this time, I leaned my head against the car window and closed my eyes, ignoring locations that held some of the best times of my life. And some of the worst.
“Sir,” my rideshare driver said, as if he’d repeated it more than once. “We’re here.”
The Sunshine B&B was a typical Middlebury house, not unlike the one where I grew up. Two stories, white siding, blackshutters, wide front porch. The aging interior didn’t resemble my childhood home though—a rickety wooden staircase, tuxedo floor tiles, green carpet, and so many floral patterns. I didn’t mind the delicious smell of baked goods wafting into my room, which made the aging building feel cozy… like home.
Collapsing on the bed, I flipped through channels, finding exactly nothing to hold my attention. I considered calling my mom, but I didn’t want her to know I was here. My parent’s divorce traumatized her enough, so I tried to limit mentions of my dad. She’d come to the funeral to support me, but she didn’t need to bother with the will.
I closed my eyes for a few minutes, hoping sleep would find me, but my ping-ponging thoughts wouldn’t stop. After ten minutes, I knew it was a lost cause.
The basement of the B&B had a small gym, something the owner told me when I arrived. I slipped in earbuds and cranked my music, keeping my head down to avoid inadvertent eye contact as I descended two flights of stairs. The pounding of feet on the treadmill belt sounded louder with each step down.
When I reached the bottom and finally looked up, I nearly stumbled over my feet. The woman jogging on the treadmill wore black leggings and a familiar Middlebury Tigers baseball T-shirt. Her blond ponytail swung with each step.
She was still the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
