Page 47 of The Hometown Heartbreaker

I slid off my horse and ran my palm over the patch of bark, worn smooth by years of sun. There, just above eye level, a shaky heart was carved, with D.L. + S.S. in uneven letters.

She slid down beside me and traced her finger over the old heart on the trunk, and for a second it felt like the whole world shrank to just the two of us, standing there in the long shadow of the tree. The sun painted her face gold, highlighting the exact line where her mouth twisted up in that impossibly sexy way.

I remembered the day I’d carved it, mid-July, the kind of afternoon where the air felt alive with sun and aimless, sticky heat. She’d brought a pack of grape Bubble Yum and chewed through half of it before even reaching the trail. I showed off by pulling out the Swiss Army Knife I’d “borrowed” from my dad’s drawer. After I finished carving, I told her I loved her for the first time, and she said it back. We were only thirteen, it was the summer before our freshman year.

Now, all these years later, she ran her nail over the crooked “S” and shook her head, grinning. “You had the penmanship of a serial killer,” she teased.

I shrugged. “Could be worse. Could’ve used a branding iron.”

She smiled a smile that stole my breath. “Wouldn’t have put it past you.”

I wanted to say something—some line about how I’d have done anything to impress her, or how I’d always meant to come back and fix it—but the words caught in my throat. I watched her instead, the way she squinted up at the leaves, the exact set of her shoulders that meant she was either about to run or about to tell me something that mattered. I took the gamble.

“I meant it, you know,” I said. “Back then. Every word.”

She didn’t look at me right away. She pressed her palm flat to the worn spot, like she could feel the old summer heat through the wood.

“We were kids,” she spoke softly. “Everything feels real when you’re a kid.”

“Not everything changes just because you get older,” I reasoned. The words came out rougher than I meant, like I’d been holding them in and they’d rusted at the hinge.

She laughed, except it wasn’t really a laugh. “Some things do, though.”

“But not that. I still love you, Sadie. I never stopped. I’ve been trying to shake it all these years, but it’s still there, stubborn as hell.”

I wanted her. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to take her face in my hands and make her believe it, to close the distance and kiss her stupid, the way I’d dreamed about for a decade—the way I had last night. But I could see in her eyes that it wasn’t that simple. Maybe it never had been.

She pulled her hand away from the tree and wrapped both arms around herself, like she was cold even though the sun was still hanging hot above the bluffs. I knew that look—half defense, half retreat.

I’d told her how I felt last night, in the cabin, but this was different. This was in the light of day.

“You don’t have to say anything,” I said, because the ache on her face was more than I could stand. “I just wanted you to know. That’s all.”

She shook her head, quick and sharp, like she was shaking off an argument with herself. “It’s just—” She broke off, pressing her lips together before lifting her eyes to meet mine. “This town is like a fishbowl, Dawson. I hear things. I hear a lot of things.”

My ears burned. “If you mean the gossip, most of it is bullshit. You know how people talk around here.”

She shrugged, and her eyes went back to the hearth. “Some of it’s more than gossip. There’s a lot of stories about you and half the eligible women in the county. You Lockharts are heartbreakers. You have a reputation, and I hear you’ve been living up to it.”

I winced at the nickname and reputation I’d only ever “lived up to” because she was gone. I remembered every failed attempt at numbing myself, every mistake I’d made trying to fill the black hole she left behind. If only she knew how little any of it meant, how hollow it felt waking up next to someone else and wishing it was her. But I also knew it sounded like the oldest excuse in the book—the dog ate my homework, my heart’s really somewhere else, I’m not ready for a relationship. I hated that I’d become the villain in her story.

I wanted to tell her that none of it meant anything, that I’d been trying to outrun the ache and failing spectacularly. But I’d done this to us. I couldn’t blame her for being skeptical. I’d torched every bit of trust we had.

“I tried to move on,” I admitted, quietly. “But every time I thought maybe I could let you go, I’d see a place we’d been, or hear a song, or just close my eyes and you’d be there, and it just…I couldn’t. You were always there. It’s always been you.”

She chewed the inside of her cheek, staring off at the horizon. “You make it sound like I’m some kind of curse.”

“I don’t believe in curses,” I said. “I just believe in you. In what I feel for you, in what we had. Yes, we were young, but it was real. I loved you, I still love you, I never stopped.”

She stared at the carved heart, eyes tracing the lines over and over. I could almost see the gears turning as she weighed her next words. What I wanted, more than anything, was for her to believe me. To see that the stupid, impulsive kid who broke her heart had finally grown up, even if it was too late to matter.

But just as she opened her mouth, her phone started ringing, the chorus of “Material Girl” cutting through the moment like a bad joke. She fumbled it out of her back pocket and glanced at the screen. “It’s Janine, my assistant. I—I have to take this. I’m sorry.”

I nodded, and she walked away toward the edge of the clearing, talking in a fast, clipped voice. I leaned against the old oak and listened to the distant sound of her laughter, rougher and less certain than I remembered. The horses snuffled at the wild grass and the wind picked up, but I just stood there rooted to the spot like nothing had changed and nothing ever would.

Sadie clicked off her phone and slid it back into her pocket with a practiced flick, her mouth set in a line that could have been determination or just the effort of swallowing down whatever she didn’t want to say to me.

“I have to get some work done before I head to the hospital,” she relayed, her voice returning to its professional, clipped timbre, no evidence that three minutes earlier I’d cracked my ribcage open and set the contents on display between us.