CHAPTER 1
I was never meant to come back.
It’s been a year since I’ve been in my hometown of Harlan Grove, Alabama, and the night I left I vowed I’d never return. So I have no idea why I have. I have no idea why I’ve left the bright city lights and busy lifestyle I’ve become so accustomed to.
I know it’s not for my alcoholic mom or my absent dad.
And it’s definitely not for Reese Pembleton or the misplaced dream of a fairytale love that still holds onto me no matter how hard I try to forget it.
Harlan Grove still holds the same old sting of want. The want for more and want for everything I can never have. This place is full of memories; his house, the park, the all-night diner we used to sit in talking endlessly about anything and everything. All of them are full of those damn memories and all of them places that are unavoidable. Not that it would matter if I could avoid them, because every part of last summer with him is burned into my memory.
I tap my fingers across the steering wheel. Who invented summer break anyway? Who’s bright idea was it to send us home at least once or twice a year? Home. This place doesn’t feel like home. It feels like a shackle I can’t break free from.
I really need to rent an apartment opposed to living in a college dorm - at least then I wouldn’t have to come back to Harlan Grove for the summer… Even if New York doesn’t feel much like home, either.
One year. Has it really been that long? Almost, I guess. One year and Reese still haunts me. His voice is still an echo in my mind. I still feel his touch whenever goose-pimples snake across my skin, because the feelings are one and the same.
Senior year was a year of mutual glances, little knowing smiles and flirty touches. Graduating summer was eight weeks of laughter, stolen moments and building a relationship against all my reservations. All of it ended in one night of crazy passion that will never leave me. All of it ended when I let my fear take over and I ran. Everything we’d built shattered the second I made the decision to get in my car and make the stupidly long drive across country instead of wait for my flight the following week.
And that one night is part of the reason I didn’t come home for Christmas. It’s why I left my car parked outside my best friend’s apartment block and stayed with him for the holiday. Honestly, we probably had a better holiday than we would have apart.
I turn onto my road, making a mental note to call Jay before he kicks my ass. My house comes into view, and for a second it could almost pass as a welcome sight.
Only in the empty, soulless house am I safe from memories of him – and that’s only because it has memories of its own, and those memories are stronger even than the ones of Reese and a blissful summer love.
I pull into the driveway and kill the engine. The front yard is no longer full of bright flowers, the pots outside the door now empty of anything but soil. The paint on the front door is slightly weathered and chipped without Dad here to keep it fresh, and the windowsills look the same. Pathetic. Dreary. Unloved.
A flash of my red catches my eye in the rear view mirror. My heart stops and panic claws up my throat. Looking through the mirror, I see the one thing I hoped to avoid. A cherry red truck is parked four houses down on the opposite side of the road.
His red truck.
The door of the house opens, and the first thing I notice is that his brown hair is the same as always, still spiked to hide the waves he hates so much. The waves I once threaded my fingers through and grasped onto. His skin is still tanned; his face is still perfectly shaped, and his hazel eyes are the same ones that have haunted my dreams for months.
A bottled blonde girl steps out and beams at him, making my heart clench. I curse myself, grabbing my purse, and push the door open.
One summer, Kia. That’s all it ever was and all it ever can be. I need to get that into my thick head, because being back here won’t change the fact I ran out on him when I needed him the most.
I can feel his eyes on me as I shut my car door casually, hiding the nauseating rolling of my insides. I glance over my shoulder, and my eyes meet his over the top of his truck door. Everything else fades away as our eyes search each other’s, and even from this distance, I can see the gold flecks that thread through the warm hazel in his irises. Or maybe I’m just remembering that. Maybe I’m only remembering a time when I was so close to him I really could see them.
He raises his hand in acknowledgment, but I turn away without returning the gesture.
He’s so good looking he should be illegal in all fifty states.
I make my way to the front door. Locked. I dig in my purse for my keys and slide them into the keyhole as his truck roars down the street.
The door opens with a shove, and deafening silence hits me. I glance into the front room, kicking the door shut behind me, and I realize nothing really has changed. A glass on the coffee table… Scattered cushions… An empty bottle left carelessly on the rug. Same old shit, and I’ve barely been in town for ten minutes.
I won the first battle against my heart where Reese Pembleton is concerned, even if I know it’s only one of many. Even if we never speak for the whole time I’m here, I still have tiny reminders of us everywhere I go. I’ve seen him once. I can deal with seeing him again.
But I still have a bigger war to fight. A war nothing to do with him and it’s the same battle I’ve fought for the last six years. The war against the addiction that consumes my mom entirely. The same war I have no energy left to fight and even less desire to fight.
I ignore the rest of the house and go straight up to my room. It’s the one place untainted by her. I unlock the door and look around. Everything is as I left it; my drawers are still open slightly, a hairbrush is still in the middle of the rug, and pens are scattered across the surface of my desk.
I nudge the door shut with my foot and walk over to my window. I open the curtains to let sunlight spill into the room and crack one of the glass panes open. And I obviously haven’t looked around the room that well, because I only just notice the shoebox-sized box sitting on my bed. I definitely didn’t leave that there.
I feel my features move into a small, confused frown, and I push off from the windowsill. I crack the top of the box open and stare at the beaming faces of me and my best friend, Luce, at our high school graduation. The box is full of photos, and I flash back to last summer, remembering her with her camera perpetually glued to her hand. I flick through the images, perching on the edge of my unmade bed, and find myself smiling a little.
There are photos from almost every day – at the beach, bowling, in her pool. There’s even some silly selfies of us pulling stupid faces in the diner and everywhere else we thought to snap them.