Page 16 of The Hometown Heartbreaker

I stepped off the parquet floor and rushed out of the barn, desperate for a breath of air that wasn’t saturated in body heat and nostalgia. I didn’t make it ten feet before I was stopped in my tracks. A man stood in my path. Not just any man. Dawson.

He was close. Maybe a foot away. The breadth of his shoulders and the way he stilled the air around him enveloped me. I could have reached out and touched the fabric of his shirt, or the tender skin at his throat, or the square cut of his jaw where a day’s worth of stubble caught the glint of lantern light. For a wild second I was seventeen again, he was mine, and I was his, and no time had passed at all. My heart was hammering so hard that I worried it might shake something loose in my chest.

All my senses lit up at once and assaulted me from every angle. His scent wrapped around me, warm, masculine, and dangerously addictive. The intoxicatingly sensual aroma was clean, earthy, and distinctly male, drawing me closer to him. Up close, the lines at the corners of his eyes framed them in a way that only made them look older, wiser, and somehow sexier. The flecks of gold swimming in his whiskey irises caught me off guard. I’d forgotten how they’d shift from hazel to honey as the light changed. I absorbed the information in less than a second, and still my brain managed to catalog the tiniest of details, the freckle on his left cheekbone, just above the faintest scar, the same spot I used to press my lips to when I needed to remember he was real.

“Hey,” he said.

Just that. Hey.

The word hit me like a sucker punch. His voice—lower than I remembered, rougher at the edges—rolled over me in a wave. I was so lost in him I barely registered how lightheaded and woozy I felt. If he’d touched me, even accidentally, I’m not sure I’d have made it. My knees were already telegraphing distress signals and my heart was performing escape artistry against my ribs. The only thing that kept me vertical was the determination not to let him see how much this reunion was affecting me. I had too much pride for that.

He stood staring at me, hands at his sides. He did not reach out for a hug or handshake. That was mercy, or maybe it was strategy. I watched the muscles in his jaw work as he searched for something to say, but it was clearly an effort. I wondered if he felt it too, the gravity, the magnetic draw to one another.

“You look…” he inhaled a shaky breath as his eyes scanned my face as if he couldn’t quite believe I was there, in the flesh, standing in front of him. “Good,” he finally finished. “You look really good.”

“Thanks.” I grinned, swallowing hard as butterflies threw a rave in my stomach. “You too.”

His gaze flicked up, lingered for a second, then dropped away. All the familiar rhythms between us—joke, tease, deflect—had evaporated. Only the raw, unsaid things remained.

He cleared his throat. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, um…” I was caught off guard by his question, causing me to stumble over my words. “Um, your, um, mom invited me. I ran into her downtown, and she sort of insisted I come back and⁠—”

“I mean in town,” he clarified.

The words echoed Damon’s question earlier, but this felt like more stakes were involved. Dawson’s stare was a searchlight, cutting through all pretenses. I found myself staring at his hands, remembering how they’d always found mine in the dark, how they’d steadied me when nothing else could. Now they were fists at his sides, knuckles blanched white.

“It’s Buddy,” I replied, once I trusted my voice not to crack. “He had a heart attack. And a stroke. I was in L.A. at a conference, and I got on the first flight.”

I wasn’t sure why I was telling him my entire life story. It’s not like he’d asked for it.

There was a pause, the kind that swelled until everything else in the room went quiet. Dawson’s tough-guy façade crumpled at the edges, his eyes filling with concern. He’d always had a very special relationship with my grandfather, perhaps even a stronger bond than I had with Buddy.

“Is he okay? I mean, is he going to be okay?” he asked, concern dripping from every word.

“I think so…I hope so. He’s in the ICU now. I saw him as soon as I got into town. I left so he could rest. I just spoke to the hospital, and they said he’s sleeping comfortably.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and the words sounded like he meant them. Like he’d been waiting a decade to say it.

I nodded, feeling suddenly exposed and unsure of what to do with my hands. “Thanks.”

The silence that followed was somehow worse than any argument we’d ever had. He looked at me, really looked, like he was taking inventory of all the years that had passed and trying to figure out where they’d gone. I couldn’t stand it.

Before I could form a coherent excuse, I noticed the woman from the dance floor—the beautiful one, the one with the effortless hair and blinding smile—floating toward us. Her walk was deliberate, all grace and confidence, and she was looking right at Dawson. For some reason, the sight of her made my stomach twist. Maybe it was jealousy, maybe it was relief, maybe something worse, but I knew I couldn’t bear to be introduced to her. I’d kept it together long enough, any longer and my mask would slip.

“I should go,” I blurted. “I need to check on Buddy. Nice to see you again.”

He opened his mouth—maybe to protest, maybe to ask more questions—but the woman was already at his side, hand on his arm.

“Dawson.” She said his name with practiced intimacy, and he straightened a fraction, turning toward her. He looked back at me, tried to say something with his eyes. I ignored it.

“Take care,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt. I turned on my heel and walked away, careful not to break into a run.

I made it all the way to the front of the house before the adrenaline ebbed and my hands started to shake in earnest. The evening air felt different out here—drier, sharper—and I gulped it down like water after a marathon. I didn’t look back. I told myself that if I just kept moving and didn’t think, eventually the ache in my chest would dissolve into something smaller, more manageable, like a papercut you stopped noticing.

I pulled out my phone from the pocket of my dress, thumbed it awake, and opened the ride-share app. My vision blurred slightly as I jabbed at the screen, only for a familiar voice to snap me out of it.

“You making a break for it?”