Watching him walk away broke something inside me.
Before I’d even reached my SUV, I was wiping away tears.
Ifanythingcould have kept me in this town all those years ago, it would have been Zane Thompson.
As I drove back to my parents’ house, my mind kept drifting back to Zane.
He’d been a senior when I was a freshman, and I’d spent those years nursing a hopeless crush on him from afar.
After he graduated I’d caught glimpses of him around town, and my heart would do that same stupid fluttering thing every single time.
But he hadn’t even known I existed.
Not until I turned eighteen and started waitressing at the Hungry Rooster. That’s when I’d finally had the chance to talk to him.
Zane came in for lunch almost every day, and our quick daily chats slowly turned into long conversations in his booth.
The more we talked, the more I started to hope he’d finally ask me out.
But he never did.
And when his father died in a logging accident, Zane had transformed almost overnight. His easy smile had dimmed as he shouldered the weight of taking over the logging business.
He carried responsibility the way other men carried ambition. And romance didn’t seem to fit anywhere in his life.
My heart ached. Not from the divorce or losing my career, but from the oldwhat-ifof Zane Thompson.
But he was with Tina now. I’d heard about the marriage years ago, not long after my own wedding to Wade, and I’d tucked that information into a small locked room inside my chest where I didn’t have to look at it too often.
I’d missed my chance… if I’d ever had one at all.
The farmhouse was quiet when I let myself in.
I opened a few windows to let the evening air through, then wiped down the kitchen counters just to give my hands something to do. When I crouched to grab a fresh sponge from under the sink, I touched something wet.
I reflexively pulled my hand back, then looked.
Shit.
Water was dripping from the pipe connection, a slow but steady drip that had already formed a dark puddle on the cabinet floor. I grabbed an old towel and mopped it up, then went to the garage and came back with my father’s wrench. I positioned it carefully around the fitting and tightened it the way I’d seen my dad do a hundred times.
The drip became a trickle.
No.
“No, no, no, no.Stop that.”
But it didn’t stop. The trickle became a thin, steady stream that ran over my fingers and soaked the cuff of my interview jacket. I took the jacket off and sighed.
I’d made it worse.
Water pooled on the cabinet floor faster now, seeping out onto the kitchen tile, and I grabbed every towel within reach and shoved them under the pipe.
By the end, my silk blouse was soaked through and clinging to my skin.
My pencil skirt was damp at the knees from kneeling on the wet floor, and my hair had come loose from the careful twist I’d pinned it into that morning. I was a woman in a ruined suit kneeling in a puddle in her parents’ kitchen, and the tears I’d been holding back all year pressed against the backs of my eyes with a force I couldn’t fight anymore.
I wanted Zane. The thought came unbidden and absolute.
