Page 44 of The Hometown Heartbreaker

My statement filled the hush of the barn.

“Yeah,” he said, finally. “She stopped by with donuts and coffee.”

Donuts and coffee. That sounded familiar. It was the same thing I’d brought when I discovered Dawson and Vicki.

I nodded, pretending to be fascinated by a coil of lead ropes hanging on the wall. “Did she…does she know about…”

“Yes.”

My eyes lifted to his. “Was she… upset?”

He shook his head, lips pressed into a line. “No. Not really.”

I tried to process that, tried to believe it could be true. Dr. Chang was everything I wasn’t, practical, driven, beautiful in a way that required zero maintenance and even less self-doubt. She was also, apparently, disposable. Or maybe I was projecting.

Dawson must have caught the doubt in my expression, because he added, “It’s not what you think. It wasn’t serious.”

“That’s not what it looked like from the end of the driveway,” I said, immediately wishing I hadn’t.

He turned then, crossing his arms over his chest. “What did it look like?”

I shrugged, suddenly wishing for a black hole to swallow me up. “I don’t know. Like maybe she thought it was serious.”

He let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “She didn’t. We weren’t exclusive. She was seeing other people.”

“She’s beautiful,” I blurted out, I’m not sure why.

“So are you,” he said, and the way he said it—like it was the only fact that mattered—made something inside me start to fray at the edges. “We weren’t exclusive, but it doesn’t matter because I told her I’m not interested in seeing her anymore.”

“I hope you didn’t do that for me,” I lied. It shouldn’t make me happy thinking he called things off with Angie for me, but it did. It absolutely did. Which made zero sense.

Inevitably, I was going to leave again, once I got Buddy settled into whatever the next chapter of his life looked like. Dawson shouldn’t be making life decisions based on me, or what happened between us the night before.

“You didn’t, did you?” I followed up.

“What?” Dawson asked.

I couldn’t tell if he was truly clueless about what I was asking or if he was pretending to be for some reason that wasn’t immediately apparent to me.

“Break things off with her because of me,” I spelled it out.

He stared at me for a long moment. I found myself holding my breath in anticipation of his response. When he finally spoke, it took a second for my brain to catch up to what he’d said.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Sadie.” His voice was quieter now, but no less intense.

I wanted to say: I don’t know, either. I wanted to say: I need you to tell me that you didn’t just torch your whole life because of last night. Because of me.

I needed to know that I wasn’t the problem. Or, at the very least, that I wasn’t the only one.

He watched me for a long time, the silence ringing louder than any argument we’d ever had. Finally, he gave a little shake of his head, like he’d reached the end of himself.

“I ended it because it wasn’t going anywhere,” he sighed. “And because it wasn’t fair to keep seeing her when I couldn’t give her what she wanted.” He paused, then looked directly at me, his eyes so steady it was almost unbearable. “You know how that feels, right?”

I did. I absolutely did.

He looked down at the pile of alfalfa, then back at me, the mask slipping just for a second. “It’s not about you,” he assured me. “But it is, too. I can’t pretend she’s even in the same universe as you.”

I felt my cheeks heat, but inside, every nerve ending was on high alert. I didn’t want to care this much. I didn’t want the complicated tangle of relief and hope and guilt that twisted through me at the thought of him being single. But it was there.