Cross Your Heart (The Sweetbriar Mountain #6)

Prologue

Levi

A Few Months Ago

The whiskey had been a mistake. Not the first glass—that one was fine.

Not even the second. The second was just the night settling in, the familiar weight of a Tuesday at Holloway’s, my brother Jude’s voice carrying across the noise, the jukebox cycling through something old and slow.

The third was where things started to tilt.

By the fourth, I’d stopped keeping count.

The problem was Travis. The problem was always Travis, or more specifically, the problem was me sitting at a corner table, slowly losing my mind as I watched my childhood best friend, Becca, have dinner with Travis.

This time, it was the way she’d leaned slightly away from him, the way his hand covered hers on the table, and her fingers didn’t curl back the way they used to, that was driving me out of my head.

I’d been watching her all evening without meaning to.

That’s the thing no one tells you about loving your best friend is, you don’t get to stop.

She’d been three tables away all night, and I’d felt it like a splinter working its way deeper—every time she tilted her head, every time she reached up to tuck her hair back, every time her mouth pressed into that flat, patient line that meant she was deciding whether or not to say something she’d regret.

I knew every version of her face. That was the problem.

I’d grown up with her, I’d loved her before I knew what love was, and then she’d gone and chosen Travis in tenth grade, and I’d spent the years since then on the outside of something I didn’t have a name for yet.

Watching her from a careful distance and telling myself that I was fine, that friendship was enough, that I was grateful for whatever I got to keep.

But tonight, something was different. I could see it from across the room.

The way she held herself—shoulders slightly turned, spine straight.

She’d made up her mind and was waiting for him to catch up.

I’d watched her with Travis for years, watched the slow erosion of all the brightness in her, and I’d done what I always did—kept my mouth shut, been a good friend, waited.

And somewhere between the second whiskey and the third, I’d started hoping, the way I always tried not to hope, that this was the last time.

That she was finally done with him. That whatever door had been closed to me for all these years was about to open, and I just had to be patient a little longer, just had to hold on—

This time was different. I could see it from across the room, even through four whiskeys, even through the self-deception I’d spent years perfecting. She was done. He just hadn’t accepted it yet.

She didn’t see me. Or she did, and filed me under background the way she had for a while now.

Either way, I watched her stand up, gather her jacket, and say something short and final.

Travis’s face shifted to a familiar entitled fake smile, the one that meant he wasn’t going to make it easy.

I’d seen it time and time again back in high school. He stood too. She didn’t wait for him.

I should have stayed inside. My brother Jude was saying something behind me. I didn’t hear it.

The parking lot air hit, tasting of rain and pine, and the bite that came off the mountain when the air had turned cold.

I saw her first—standing beside her car, keys in hand, shoulders set, watching Travis follow her out with the expression of a woman who had run out of patience a long time ago and was just waiting for the other person to notice.

I also saw her best friend, Harper, standing near the pub entrance, holding a bag of takeout with her seven-year-old daughter Bella pressed against her side, both of them watching the Travis situation unfold with the focused attention of people who had been keeping score for a while.

Harper saw me at the same moment. Her eyes flicked from my face to the whiskey I was still holding, and something in her expression shifted to worry. She was my friend too. We’d all grown up together.

I should have gone back inside. This was none of my business.

“This isn’t over,” Travis said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“It is,” Becca said. “It’s over forever, and I won’t answer this time.”

He drove off too fast, too loud, needing the last word even when he’d lost the argument.

Becca stood there a moment after his taillights disappeared.

I watched the tension leave her shoulders one degree at a time, the long exhale, the way she pressed her palm flat against her car door like she was trying to keep her balance.

I crossed the lot before I fully decided to. With no thoughts in my head except getting to her.

She turned when she heard my footsteps. “Levi.” Her voice was careful.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Fine.” The word was automatic, worn smooth from overuse. Her eyes moved over my face and stopped at the glass of whiskey in my hand. “How much have you had?”

“Some.”

“More than some.” She wasn’t unkind. She was correct. It was obvious.

I stopped in front of her. Close enough that I could see the parking lot light catch the fine strands of her hair, the faint smudge of mascara at the corner of one eye.

She’d been crying earlier, or trying not to.

My chest pulled tight in the way it always did around her, that old familiar ache.

Fifteen years of being careful around her.

Fifteen years of telling myself I was just glad she was okay.

Fifteen years of watching her choose him, and telling myself it was fine, it was fine, it was fine.

“He’s not right for you,” I said. The words came out more coherently than I expected.

She huffed a breath. “I know that.”

“You’ve known for a while. Haven’t you?”

“Levi—”

“I know.” I held up a hand. “I know, it’s not my business. It’s never been my business. I’ve been very respectful of that boundary.”

Something crossed her face—amusement, sadness, I couldn’t tell which. “You have,” she said. “You’ve been a very good friend.”

“I’ve been patient.” The whiskey was talking now, allowing me to say things I’d spent years keeping inside. “I’ve been so—” I stopped. Let out a short breath. “God, Becca. I’ve been so patient.”

She went still.

I looked at her—really looked, the way I only let myself do when I thought she wasn’t paying attention.

Brown eyes, dark hair, the stubborn set of her mouth that meant she was bracing for something.

She’d been my best friend since we were little kids.

But she’d been something I didn’t have a word for when it was too late for me to do anything about it.

And I’d spent fifteen years being careful, being good, being the person she could count on in a way that never asked anything back.

The pavement was cold when my knee hit it.

From somewhere behind me, I heard Harper make a small, sharp sound—not quite a gasp, not quite a word. Then silence. The kind of silence of someone who has decided not to interfere.

“Marry me,” I said. “I’ll make you happy. I swear it.” It came out low, rough, and embarrassingly earnest.

Becca stared at me. One heartbeat, two. Something moved through her eyes that I was going to spend a long time trying to define.

“Say yes!” Bella’s voice rang out across the lot, clear and certain. “Say yes, Becca!”

“Bella,” Harper hissed.

“But she should say yes!”

“I know, baby. Shh.”

Becca’s expression cracked, and I couldn’t tell if it was a laugh trying to escape or something else entirely. Then she smiled, the kind of smile that meant no without saying it.

“Come on,” she said softly.

She reached down and took my arm. “Let’s get you home.”

I let her pull me up. I didn’t say anything else. There wasn’t anything else to say—or there was; there was so much more, but the moment had passed, and I was sober enough to know it. Sober enough to know, already, what I’d done.

She drove me to her place because she was Becca; she was kind, and that was what she did—she took care of people even when they didn’t deserve it. She made me drink a glass of water and steered me toward her bed with the patient efficiency of someone who was good at managing disasters.

I was mostly asleep before my head hit the pillow. I heard her settle onto the couch, and in the morning, she was gone, and I was a wreck.

Here was the thing I couldn’t drink away, argue with, or reframe.

She hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d ended a relationship that wasn’t working and walked out to her car alone in a parking lot at night, and I had followed her out and made it about me.

She’d been through something hard, and I’d made it harder.

I’d chosen the worst possible moment—drunk, in a parking lot, while she was in the middle of grieving a different ending—and some part of me had probably known that.

Had known she wouldn’t say yes, not like that.

Had known I was choosing a moment where I could claim I’d tried without having to sit with the risk of actually trying.

That was the part that sat in my chest like a stone all the way home.

Not the rejection. The cowardice underneath the gesture.

She’d left a glass of water on the nightstand and a travel pack of Tylenol beside it.

I took both before I left.

I knew she wouldn’t mention it, and I probably wouldn’t either. We were good at that—the careful quiet. Along with the things that lived in the space between us. Things that neither of us had found the right words for yet.

Harper would mention it. Most likely repeatedly. But that was Harper’s prerogative, and I knew she would exercise it with enthusiasm.

I told myself it would be fine.

Even though I knew it wouldn’t.

The cold came off the mountain in long, slow waves, and I walked into it with my hands shoved deep in my pockets and my eyes on the pavement.

Sweetbriar was empty at this hour, just the sound of my boots and the occasional car passing on the highway.

I had nothing to do but think, which was the last thing I needed.

She hadn’t said yes. That was the fact I kept turning over, not because I didn’t understand it—I understood it completely, which was the worst part—but because I couldn’t figure out what to do with it.

You spend fifteen years carrying around feelings that heavy, and then you drop them in a parking lot, drunk, in front of her best friend and a seven-year-old, and the answer is, come on, let’s get you home.

The answer is water, Tylenol, and the couch, and gone before I woke up.

What had I expected? What had I actually expected?

The honest answer was nothing. I hadn’t expected anything.

That was the part I couldn’t stop dwelling on—the small, shameful truth that I’d knelt in that parking lot knowing she’d say no.

Knowing the moment was wrong. Knowing I was handing her something she’d have to be kind about, and Becca was always kind, and I’d let that be enough of a safety net.

A real ask would have required a real answer.

A real answer might have been no in a way that meant no forever, sober and clear-eyed and final, and I hadn’t been ready for that. I still wasn’t.

So I’d done it drunk, at the worst possible time, in a way she could gently set aside and never mention again.

God, I was such a coward.

The light was coming up pale over the ridge by the time I reached my street, and somewhere a bird had started in with its morning noise, oblivious and relentless. I stopped at my front steps and stood there for a moment with my hand on the railing, looking at nothing.

I’d been patient for fifteen years.

I was going to have to be a lot smarter about what came next.