Her words resonate with me more than she knows. The only difference is I know what I need. I just can’t have it.

“Well, when I saw you inside the park just before,” she tells me, “—and recognized you—I felt like we’d found it.”

We?

Why would she need me?

“Sticks is still the place to be,” she sing-songs. “The best pizza.”

“No.” I shake my head. “Not there. I don’t want…”

“To be seen?”

Pizza sounds good. And lots of margaritas sounds fantastic. My lonely hotel room back in the city seems dreadful now, but…

“I just don’t want to run into anyone,” I tell her. “Thanks, though.”

She holds my eyes for a moment. “He’s not in town right now. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

I look at her just long enough for her to take that as an affirmative and run around the front of the car to climb into the passenger seat.

He wasn’t in town? Where was he?

But it was none of my business. Whatever.

I sit down, seeing her pull on her seatbelt. I start the car, a little weirded out, but I have a feeling she doesn’t like the word no, and I’m not a fan of confrontation.

“Where do you live?” I ask.

I can give her a ride home, I guess.

But she just pushes her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose and replies, “Margaritas first.”

By the next morning she was dragging my hungover ass to the airport so I didn’t miss my flight. We had started at Sticks and taxied to Meridian City where we drank more at Realm, and then crashed in my hotel room.

I hated her and her amazing body and her pretty face and all the times I couldn’t help but think about how he’d touched her and held her. Yet I couldn’t hate her, because she was absolutely splendid despite how she’d struggled in life.

I’d woken up with a splitting headache, and then I hated her more for the hangover, but… she texted, she called, she checked up on me over the months until I was convinced that I might actually be likable.

Until I remembered she was Will’s good friend, and I was keeping a secret she might hate me for.

Will stood in the foyer facing me, his eyes on fire, and I wanted to take him to my room, close the door, and hold him forever, but he knew how this would end tonight.

I wouldn’t grovel, and I was leaving.

I shoved Alex away and darted for the door, but she caught me and threw me to the floor.

I crashed, my body wracking with pain as I caught my breath and glared up at her from the marble floor.

I didn’t waste another second. Blasting off the ground, I lunged for her, ready to tear right through her if I had to, because…

Because the only person I knew how to fight for was myself.

Emory

Nine Years Ago

I folded the tie slowly and stuck it in the Ziploc bag, followed by my Cove Ride-All-Day bracelet from last night, and the collapsed, empty box of Milk Duds he got me at the movie theater.

Squishing the air out of the bag, I sealed it, tears hanging at the corner of my eyes as I dropped it into an empty coffee can and capped it, setting the whole thing in the two-foot deep hole.

I couldn’t keep him close, but I couldn’t throw him away, either. Maybe someday I’d dig up my little time capsule and be able to laugh at how little any of it meant anymore.

I hope.

An engine roared to my right, and I looked up from where I knelt on the foundation of the gazebo and saw Damon’s BMW slide into a spot in the alley next to Sticks.

He jumped out of the car and walked inside, the whole place booming with activity.

My brother came home for a while this afternoon, finding me where I said I’d be and with my homework done and dinner ready, too. He barely said two words as he ate, showered, and redressed to go back out for another shift.

Tonight they’d need all the hands they could get, so he was pulling double duty. It was a blessing.

Grand-Mère assured me she was fine, I had a live feed of her on my phone, so I snuck out for the short walk to the village to get some work done.

Just needed to take care of something first.

I turned back to my hole, barely able to see the ground in front of me as I grabbed the gardening shovel and started filling it in. I was making the right decision, and thank God he said the awful things he said today, because I was about to break, and I needed the hurt to push through it.

I hoped he did replace me.

Tonight.

He should dance with her and slip his hands inside her clothes and love her crazy, because after that, I wouldn’t be able to look back. It would shatter my heart, so there’d be nothing left to hold him with me anymore.

Tossing the shovel, I gathered the rest of the dirt with my hands and scooped it into the hole, covering the coffee can and pressing the soil firmly. I took a brand-new floorboard and lined it up next to the last one, grabbing the nail gun and securing it to the frame. I moved quickly, all eight posts rising from their anchors around me as the floor came together, each board cut to my specs.

A loud whirring sound ripped through the air, and I looked over again, seeing Damon straddle a motorbike as Winter Ashby stood next to him, fastening a helmet.

I tensed, about to wonder what the hell he thought he was doing out here with the kid.

But as she climbed on behind him, he looked over his shoulder at her, something written in his smile I’d never seen in him before.

Tenderness.

She wrapped her arms around his waist and she squealed as they sped off out of the square, disappearing down a street.

I had to smile a little, remembering the pirate ship and how I’d sounded exactly the same last night.

I loved that feeling too, Winter Ashby.

It wasn’t the ride, though, honey. It wasn’t the ride.

• • •

Hours later, the square was empty and quiet, and I headed home for the second time, already having tread the shortcut through people’s yards and across streets to look in on my grandmother and collect some more supplies earlier.

Sawdust coated my hands, and I stuck them in the pockets of my jean overalls, the wind breezing through the knitting of my sweater.

“Up!” someone shouted.

I stopped in my tracks, almost to the back door, and set my bag of tools down, looking through the window at the back of the house.

Red and blue lights flashed, and I stopped breathing, quickly unlocking the door. Pushing through, I ran across the kitchen, dropping my tool bag on the table and casting a glance up the stairs before racing through the front door instead.

My brother stood on the porch in his uniform and thick, black jacket, and I stopped, watching paramedics load my grandmother on a gurney up into the back of an ambulance.

“Grand-Mère!” I shouted, racing down the steps. “Grand-Mère!”

They closed the doors, some guy in dark blue pants and a light blue shirt sitting with her in the back.

I pounded the doors, but he barely spared a glance before turning back to her.

I whipped around, facing Martin. “What happened?”

I had my eyes on her nearly all night. I came home earlier for a few minutes just to see if she needed anything and she was fine!