Page 71 of The Hometown Heartbreaker

“Why not?” I could feel my hands balling into fists in my lap, a righteous anger that didn’t even make sense. After all, Jeremy had drugged him, not me. But it felt like an offense against the whole world, like the crime was bigger than just the sum of its parts.

“If I was going to do anything about it,” Dawson sighed, “I’d handle it myself. No way I’d trust Gary Williams to actually follow through.”

That made me laugh, and not in a nice way. “Gary Williams is a police officer?”

Gary was the hall monitor and I could see him being mall security, but an actual police officer with a gun and authority, that just didn’t track.

His eyes cut to mine before looking back at the road. “Lieutenant Williams is second in command at Valentine Bay P.D.”

I squinted through the windshield, imagining Gary Williams in a cop uniform. I couldn’t do it. “But isn’t Donovan a cop? And the roofie was meant for him?”

Donovan Valentine had spent six years on the East Coast in D.C. working in the Secret Service. We’d met up a few times when he was in the city. He came back home a couple of years ago and married his childhood best friend Ella.

“Yes, he is.” Dawson’s fingers tightened on the wheel.

“So why not go to Donovan?” I asked, not out of loyalty to the badge, but because someone should have done something.

Dawson’s knuckles flexed, pale and bloodless on the steering wheel. “Because Jeremy’s life is shit enough. He’s been in and out of prison, three DUIs, the last one put him in a wheelchair. He’s in a halfway house now.”

That stopped me. I thought I’d feel vindication, or at least relief, but instead there was just this empty, hollow ache. “So, nothing’s going to happen to him.”

I didn’t love that Jeremy wasn’t going to answer for drugging Dawson, but since it wasn’t me, I didn’t really have a leg to stand on. Something about the logic of it—that the world’s most glaring injustices could slide by, as long as you weren’t their direct target—clanged around in my ribcage as the truck slowed, then stopped altogether. I surfaced from my thoughts, expecting the familiar sight of the cedar-shake cabin at Lockhart Ranch, the one with the two-burner stove, fireplace, and rainfall shower head that I had been calling home for the past month.

But that wasn’t where we were.

The landscape outside the window was a freshly mowed lawn hemmed in by white-washed fences. It overlooked the little cove at the edge of Valentine Bay, the one with the driftwood pile and the scraggly pines. In the midst of all that was a house so familiar it made my breath catch, the one-story, sugar-cookie-colored cottage with the powder-blue trim and the wraparound porch. The ‘seashell cottage,’ as we’d once called it—at twelve, at fifteen, at seventeen—because the scalloped molding around the window frames reminded us of the conch shells we’d dig out of tide pools on day trips up the coast.

I blinked at the sight of it, half expecting the next inhale to bring a rush of cinnamon like the old owner’s baking, or the woodsmoke that always seemed to hang in the eaves. Instead, all I got was the plasticky new-car scent of Dawson’s truck and a metallic tang at the back of my throat.

He’d put the truck in park but didn’t kill the engine. He just stared straight ahead, his hands still wound tight around the steering wheel. I was so thrown that at first I couldn’t speak. The cottage had been our private fantasy, something we’d built together out of late-night promises, long before either of us had a credit score or any idea how thirty-year mortgages worked. It was, for lack of a better word, our dream house, the one where we’d raise three imaginary golden retrievers, and a couple of kids, and maybe plant an apple tree in the side yard.

I cleared my throat, not trusting my voice. “What are we doing here? I think someone is living here.”

When we’d fantasized about this being our dream home, it had been vacant. But now, it looked renovated. Updated. The paint was fresh, there was a wraparound porch and the shrubbery was well maintained.

Dawson hesitated, which was rare. He was a man of action, historically allergic to even a two-second pause. “I know the owner,” he said, which was not what I expected. Then he turned off the engine, unbuckled his seat belt, got out of the truck, came around to my side, opened my door, and shot me a look that was a challenge and an invitation at once as he offered me his hand. “Come on.”

Before I could protest, I was out of the truck, and he was shutting the door behind me with a soft, decisive thunk. Dawson and I walked up the flagstone path that led to the porch, his stride purposeful but not rushed, shoulders squared as if braced against a headwind that only he could feel.

When we reached the porch steps he nodded toward the swing at the far end, its ropes sun-bleached but perfectly intact.

“Oh my gosh.” My voice went all soft and wonderstruck. “Just like we talked about.” The porch swing was exactly where we said we’d put it. I could see us clear as day like déjà vu, two teenagers with hands intertwined and heads on each other’s shoulders, rocking back and forth under the big indifferent sky.

“Yep,” he concurred. No smile, but his eyes flicked to me and then away, and I could feel the pulse of a memory pass between us.

The sound of the screen door hitting the side of the house falling was so ordinary, so domestic, that for a second I thought I might pass out. He put the key in the lock and turned it, then opened the front door. I’d been gone from this town for nearly a decade, and yet here was a piece of my old life, not just preserved but waiting, like something out of a time capsule.

The door swung open on a draft of cool, slightly salty air. I stepped inside, and the first thing I noticed was how much bigger it looked than I remembered from the time we broke in to look around. The ceilings were low, but the rooms opened up in a surprising way, a trick of design, or maybe just the absence of all the clutter that used to fill them. The walls were painted a calm, neutral off white, and the baseboards gleamed as if they’d just been installed. There were no photos on the side tables, no muddy shoes by the door, no evidence of who might live here. The only art was a pair of watercolor prints above the mantel: one of the Valentine Bay pier at sunset, the other of the lighthouse that stood at the north end of the harbor. Both places were very sentimental to us.

I drifted through the living room, trailing my fingers over the arm of a caramel-colored leather couch. The furniture was all top-tier—Pottery Barn, maybe Crate & Barrel—but so generic it could have belonged to anyone. I peered into the open-concept kitchen, where a single bowl of fruit sat in the center of the marble island. The fridge was stainless steel, the stove a six-burner gas range, the kind of thing you’d see on a cooking show. The place was spotless, almost suspiciously so. There was no sign of personal life: no dishes in the sink, no magnets on the fridge, not even a coffee mug left on the counter.

“So is this an Airbnb?” I called over my shoulder, trying to keep my tone light, as if it wasn’t the most crucial question I’d ever asked.

“No.” Dawson’s voice was closer than I thought, he’d followed behind me.

I pivoted toward him, arms crossed. “Then who owns it?” I demanded, but I already knew.

“I do,” he said, and it was so unadorned, so completely unfussy, that for a moment I wondered if I’d misheard him.