CHAPTER 2
BLAIRE
O ne of the very first things my grandmother taught me was that men ain’t shit.
I considered getting those exact words tattooed across my forehead since, somehow, I kept needing the reminder.
But I hadn’t really believed her then or when she told me I’d be back home someday.
She hadn’t fought me when I packed my bags at seventeen, tears in my eyes and a fire under my skin, chasing the escape only a dumb, brokenhearted girl believed in.
After months of resisting, I’d finally given in to my father’s demand to go live with him, and she’d watched me go, steady and sure, while muttering, “You’ll find your way back when you need to. ”
I’d laughed then, but I wasn’t laughing now. Not with the Tennessee heat pressing in through my cracked windows, thick with the smell of honeysuckle and bittersweet memories. Memories that, no matter how hard I tried to forget, always found their way back.
My knuckles ached against my grip on the steering wheel as my car hugged each curve of the road I could have driven with my eyes closed. Willow Grove had always moved slower, softer somehow, and from the looks of it, not much had changed.
But I sure as hell had.
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, the weight of my whole life rattling in the back seat in two overpriced suitcases my father had gifted me as an engagement present.
It had only been a little over a week since I found out about Grant’s affair, but I’d already boxed up my life and handed in my resignation.
My father had told me that I was making a mistake, that I was making foolish emotional decisions because I was hurt.
Maybe I was, but the anger felt cleaner and safer somehow.
There had been so many times when I’d let my anger with him and with Grant dissolve into forgiveness, but I clung to it now, tight enough to make up for all the times I swallowed it down.
My mama had always said I was as stubborn as Grandma June, and that one day, it would come back to bite me. But I wished I’d held on to it tighter, so I didn’t feel so lost.
Back with Mama and June, I’d never had to guess where I belonged. They’d carved out a space for me that fit just right, and the realization that I’d traded that certainty for empty promises left a gnawing pain beneath my ribs.
The urge to call June and tell her never mind clawed at me every hour of the last week.
When I finally did, her, “Hello, my girl,” knocked the wind clean out of me.
I opened my mouth to beg her to tell me what to do, then closed it again, but June had always seen right through me anyway, straight to the parts I hid from everyone else, including myself.
She let out a breath, tired but knowing, and I pictured her sitting in that old kitchen chair, phone cord twisted around her finger like it used to be.
“Sometimes you gotta face the music, even if it ain’t your favorite tune,” she said, and I both resented and clung to how she made it sound like the simplest decision in the world.
Like I wasn’t headed back to a town that was not only haunted with memories of my mama, but of him .
The urge to ask her about Colt was a relentless itch beneath my skin, but I’d clenched my teeth and willed myself into silence before the words could tumble out.
Because asking would’ve made it real.It would’ve admitted that I still thought about him, that I could still feel him in the cracks I couldn’t quite close, and that his voice still echoed in my mind on nights when I drank too much and let myself remember.
It had been years since I said his name out loud, years since I heard the deep rasp of his laugh or the quiet hush of his voice in the dark, but my body refused to forget.
It was impossible to abandon the memory the way we fell into one another after years of easy friendship or the way he had touched me as if he’d been starved for me his entire life.
But it was how he’d pushed me away that lingered the most, the way he had told me to leave, his voice cold and final, when my father came for me.
I told myself he didn’t matter anymore. That I could steel myself if our paths crossed. But ever since I’d made the call to June, I’d been bracing for him.
Bracing for the anger, for the ache, for the boy that haunted my memories, and for the man he might’ve become that I no longer knew.
So when the town sign passed by in a blur, my breath caught without warning.
Welcome to Willow Grove. Population: Too damn small.
Small enough everyone would know my business by morning and have an opinion on it by lunch. They’d know I was back after years of running with nothing but a busted-up heart and a canceled engagement to show for it.
And Grant wouldn't be the only reason for the whispers that would follow me. This town had a long memory. They all knew I’d been broken before I ever left, that I was already damaged goods when I accepted Grant’s ring.
I didn’t slow down when I hit the split in the road. Right would take me to Main Street and left would take me past the Calloway Ranch, then to my grandmother’s. I flicked on my blinker and veered left.
I didn’t let myself look. I kept my eyes on the road, but I already knew what was there—the weathered fence line, worn soft from years of storms and sun, the fields that seemed to never end, and the glint of the lake in the distance.
Acres of land that had been built with blood, sweat, and generations of work. Land that Colt Calloway would never leave. I tried to force myself to forget what it was like to be loved on that land, but it was impossible.
A cluster of horses grazed in the distance, their dark shapes moving slowly across the fields. My stomach knotted at the sight that was too tied to him and every summer we’d spent on horseback. The Calloways had been our neighbors for my entire life, so I knew that land as well as I once knew Colt.
June’s farmhouse appeared over the next hill, hunched beneath ancient oaks and weeping willows that were bigger than I remembered, their branches almost touching the ground.
The old mailbox came into view with Cates still painted on the side in June’s messy handwriting, and a smile curved my lips as I pulled onto the long gravel drive.
The house hadn’t changed a bit. Four rocking chairs lined the wraparound porch, though the wood was fading and the cushions flattened thin. Tangles of battered wind chimes hung from the eaves, tinkling in the breeze.
June was already waiting there, leaning against the doorframe.
She wiped her hands on the apron tied around her thin waist, and she looked exactly how I remembered. Her skin was kissed by the sun, and her gray hair was tied in two long braids with curls framing her face she couldn’t quite tame.
She greeted me with a warm smile, her eyes crinkling at the corners, and waved like I’d only been gone for the afternoon.
Even from my car, I could see the way she watched me with a fierce, steady gaze that was full of the strength born from years of loving deeply, enduring loss, and shaping the world around her with her bare hands.
I cut the engine and left the car door hanging open as I crossed the yard as quickly as I could. The screen door groaned with a creaky protest as she nudged it open with her hip, and I climbed the steps two at a time.
June caught me in a hug, and all at once, I was a kid again, skinny, barefoot, covered in dirt, and wrapped around her legs as she hulled strawberries.
She smelled like flour and lemons, and beneath it, a faint trace of a day spent with her hands in the dirt. I held on as long as she let me, until she pulled back, hands framing my cheeks and her eyes roaming over every inch of my face.
“There’s my little strawberry.” Her voice was like warm honey, but I heard the threads of worry that were stitched into her words where she thought I wouldn’t notice.
Only three people ever called me that nickname, my mama, June, and Colt, and for a long time, I had hated it.
But today? It felt like coming home, and I clung to the way it fell from her lips.
“June.” I sighed my grandma’s name, which I’d started using when I was twelve.
I still remembered the day I got my first period, and she told me I was a woman.
And women, apparently, called her June. I’d felt so grown then, but I was nothing like the woman she raised me to be anymore.
I placed my hands over hers and tried to take in every subtle change.
“I’m twenty-eight years old. Don’t you think I’ve outgrown that? ”
Her eyes sparkled with mischief as she reached up and gently tousled my hair, now more muted auburn than the copper fire it used to be. “You’re never too old to be my little strawberry.”
For a moment, I let myself believe it, that I could find my way back, that I could be the girl I used to be, but then my phone vibrated in my pocket.
I ignored it, rolling my eyes at my grandmother as if that vibration didn’t course through every part of me until my stomach twisted.
I already knew who it was without pulling my phone out of my jeans.
I wanted to ignore Raleigh and everything that came with it.
But the weight of what I’d left behind tugged at me like an undertow.
I’d have to face it all eventually, the broken engagement, Grant’s betrayal, and my father’s disappointment.
Just not yet. I’d already called off the wedding and sent my resignation, but the fight would come anyway.
My father and the Chandlers always turned “no” into a negotiation, but standing on June’s porch, I wanted to pretend I could start over.
“If I’m old enough for Botox,” I muttered, pushing my hair out of my face, “I’m too old for that nickname.”
“You’re still as stubborn as a mule,” she said as her eyes scoured over me, and I did the same to her. The lines around her eyes were deeper, and there were new crinkles around the corners of her mouth, proof of a life well lived and well loved.