Page 34 of The Hometown Heartbreaker

That’s when I heard it: the knock.

It was soft, hesitant. The sound sent a jolt right through me, and for a brief moment I considered hiding, pretending I’d gone to sleep. But instead, I moved toward the door, my heart beating so hard I could feel it in my teeth.

I opened it, and standing on the porch, looking more handsome than should be legal was the man I’d spent the entire night avoiding, Dawson Lockhart, my personal heartbreaker.

12

CONFESSIONS OF A RECOVERING IDIOT

Dawson

“Hi.” Sadie’s voice registered a full octave higher than usual, and her eyes went wide, like she wasn’t sure if I was real or a hallucination conjured by the night. She was clearly surprised to see me. I didn’t blame her. I was surprised that I was here.

I’d tried to go home, to not think about Gio giving Sadie a ride home or whether or not she’d invited him in to hang out, but it had proved to be impossible. I only made it about ten minutes pacing in my house. The next thing I knew, I was in my truck heading over.

On the short drive, I’d half-convinced myself to turn back at every stop sign, every fork in the road. I had to admit I’d been relieved that Gio’s SUV wasn’t parked outside when I pulled up.

“Can I come in?” I asked, my voice barely audible over the distant crash of the surf.

She hesitated just a nanosecond—a blink, a catch of her breath—before stepping aside, pulling the door open enough for me to edge past. Her eyes tracked me the whole way, and I could feel the tension winding tighter with every step.

“Sure,” she said, “yeah, come on in.” Her tone was breezy, but there was an undercurrent to it. I tried not to read into it, but I read into everything. Always had.

The inside of the cabin was a thousand times nicer than it was pre-renovations. My mom had made serious upgrades, she couldn’t stand anything that looked lived-in for more than six months. There were fresh-cut flowers in a vase on the table, a new rug, scented candles flickering on the mantle. I could even smell something baking in the air—cinnamon? Cardamom? It felt less like a vacation rental and more like a spread from a home-and-garden magazine.

“Sorry for just showing up,” I apologized, my voice thick and raw with the magnitude of what I was doing. “I know it’s rude at this time of night.”

Sadie’s half-laugh slipped out before she could catch it, and for a split second we were sixteen again, sneaking out after curfew and thinking we were untouchable. “I think we crossed that line about fifteen years ago.” Her attempt at levity was so familiar it hurt.

I nodded, smiling along with her, though there was no humor in my chest, just a sort of trembling anticipation. I tried to act casual, glancing around the cabin, running a knuckle along the slick banister that led to the sleeping loft, pretending I wasn’t hyperaware of everything in this space. My mother’s decorating assault was almost a comfort, it was easier to focus on the new blue velvet couch, the cluster of plants on the coffee table, than the fact that I was now in a room alone with Sadie for the first time in years.

There was a silence, heavy and unyielding, like the kind at the end of a funeral—where you don’t know if you’re supposed to say something or just let it settle. I tried to fill it by clearing my throat. “I haven’t been in here in years,” I said, gesturing around as if it were a neutral topic.

“It’s beautiful,” she observed, looking around.

“Yeah, my mom’s a menace with Wayfair.”

That got a real laugh out of her, which relaxed my shoulders just enough for me to unstick my feet from the floor. I took a step deeper into the room, and my eyes drifted, almost inevitably, toward the big four-poster bed in the far corner. The bed was new—white linen, mountain of pillows, half the size of a trampoline—but the bones of the room were the same. The memory of the old mattress, the creak of the headboard…

Sadie caught me looking. Or maybe she was already looking, and we’d just met eyes at the same moment, both following the same thread of memory. Her cheeks flared red, so fast and so deep it made her freckles stand out even more. “Wait… is this the room… the room that we—” I started, then stopped. The words were too much, too direct, but they were out there anyway.

She had the grace to finish the sentence, eyes fixed on the rug. “Yeah. It is,” she said, and the words heavy as a lead blanket.

She drew a breath that seemed to hurt on the way in and glanced up at me through lashes so long they threw shadows on her cheekbones. The air between us shifted, all the oxygen turning to something bright and dangerous. For a second, the years between us just—evaporated. All I could see was us, back then: two people who didn’t know they could ever lose each other.

When people say a room is charged, I don’t think they know what it’s like to stand in a place where someone you loved once stripped you down to your bones. Where the walls themselves remember, even if you try to forget. The bed wasn’t the same, but the energy was. My heart was pounding so hard it felt like my ribs were going to crack right through my chest. It was like the air had gone from fog-chilled to white lightning, and all I could smell was the ghost of Sadie’s skin from that night years ago.

“I thought you—so, wait, you didn’t…” Her voice trailed off, like she was embarrassed to ask.

“No, I had nothing to do with putting you in here,” I said. “That was all my mom.” I tried to sound casual, but every word was a test of willpower. “I swear, I didn’t plan this. But, uh… she always liked having you close by.”

“You don’t think she knows, does she?” Her face was so red now I thought she might actually faint.

“No, there’s no way.” Our first time was a secret. My parents had been at a wine growers’ conference in Napa, my younger brothers were at baseball camp, Dean was at a computer camp, and I’d managed to convince Sadie to tell Buddy she was staying at Abby’s. I’d set up the whole place with candles and cheap wine from the main house, thinking I was the world’s most romantic guy. I’d never felt more alive or more certain about anything in my life.

Thinking about it now, I wanted to crawl into the floorboards and dissolve. But also, there was a part of me—buried deep, under all the layers of pain and regret—that just wanted to rewind to that night and do it all again. Only better. Only with a future.

“Listen, I just wanted to—” I started, trying to steer this somewhere, anywhere.