Nineteen
Kase
Four months later…
Sometimes a soul needs time to breathe. To convalesce. To crawl around in the dark until it finds some light.
June would have never left Falls Edge. Leaving me and the farmhouse couldn’t have been easy, either. I saw the tear-stained paper she left. The note she couldn’t write. Edwin told me about her wracking sobs. The agony in her eyes when he told her the truth.
I wasn’t planning to stay away long. A week or so to give her space. She deserved that much.
Didn’t matter that every minute without her made me sick.
Didn’t matter that my future looked like a black path paved to hell without her.
Didn’t matter, because I knew how she felt.
I knew better than anyone how a blow like that could crumble all the walls around a person.
Crack the very foundation under a person’s feet.
And then rain misery and pain down like a never-ending storm.
I could have told her about her mother and Edwin.
I could have confessed that I’d been drawn to her before I made up my own version of the truth about Juliette chasing away my mother and wrecking my family.
I could have explained how I followed her up the falls that night in pure defiance of the line drawn between us by the people who’d raised us.
Because in a town as small as Falls Edge, you know pretty quickly who has the goods to break your heart.
June Bell was always the one who did it for me. Smart. Beautiful. Forbidden…
She was all those things, and for a few precious days, she was mine too.
I could have told her everything, and I would have.
One day, when I wasn’t bleeding out with the love I had for her.
When I wasn’t fucking drowning in the indisputable truth that June Bell owned me.
If I’d suspected it before, I knew it now.
She held the power to make every dream I’d ever had come true.
And in my utter selfishness, I convinced myself that I deserved all of that more than she deserved the truth.
I gambled it all on the chance at her heart.
I manipulated the hell out of her and Edwin and her father, which, at the time, I figured was better than letting everyone keep hating each other for no other outcome than more hate and hurt.
I never considered the hole in my heart she could leave me with.
I went up to the hotel the next day ready to fight for her, but June was as good as a princess locked in her tower.
She didn’t want to see me, Gerald said. She needed to process everything that had happened.
I wanted to pummel the man and tear through every room in the hotel until I found her and could beg her for a chance to make things right.
But even through my anger, I understood that she deserved time to heal. A chance to forgive.
But what then? What if she healed and never wanted to speak to me again? What if she decided to take back the love she gave to me so freely and give it to someone else, someone more deserving of her heart?
So I left. To give her space. To protect myself. I wasn’t going to hang around Falls Edge to witness the utter ruin of my heart. I was barely living when she came back into my life as it was.
I’m not a better person for the distance. I’m still sick over her. She haunts my dreams. I curse the day I let myself believe I could be the one to change the course of our family, win the girl, and carve out a life at the farm. Everything about those broken dreams still hurts like hell.
A couple weeks turned into four months. I went back to my part-time gig tending bar near the university.
I crashed with old buddies, believing it was all temporary.
Until I woke up one morning hating myself for all the alcohol I’d consumed after a long shift, and realized this was becoming my life.
My silence and self-imposed exile wasn’t getting me any closer to a dream.
No closer to getting over June. No closer to moving on.
All that’s about to change.
I scale the steps of the Falls Edge Hotel.
It’s fall and the veranda’s closed, but I can’t ignore a vision of June there with a tray in her hand, hair up in a ponytail that’s never totally right, apron slung around her hips, and sunshine in her smile.
And her eyes, those stormy green eyes that always made me want to press her against the wall and do things to her…
I blow out a frustrated breath and head for the reception desk.
“Hi there,” I say.
Martha, the older woman at the front desk of the Falls Edge Hotel, blinks up at me. Last time I saw her, I could barely hold a pen to tell June that I loved her. That I always would. And I always would…
“Kase McCasker. Good seeing you. How can I help you today?”
“I was wondering if June was around.”
She shakes her head. “Afraid not.” Every line in her face communicates genuine disappointment.
She has no idea how hard and fast my heart is already plummeting.
“I can give her a message if you’d like,” she says, new light in her eyes.
I hesitate. This is déjà vu all over again. “No, thanks.”
I turn on my heel and walk toward the door.
“Kase, wait a minute.”
I halt and look over my shoulder.
“If you were wanting to see her, you could head over to the farm. She’s been overseeing the new development there.”
I swallow hard and nod. “Thanks, Martha.”
She smiles and waves as I disappear through the door.
I jump into my truck and head for the farmhouse.
Anxious, I drum my fingers on the steering wheel, trying not to feel miserable about the transformations that have taken place since I left.
As soon as I heard the words “new development” pass Martha’s lips, I knew June had signed off on it.
I feel like a damn fool for holding on to some hope that she wouldn’t jump at the chance, that her time at the farm had changed her heart.
Truth is I would have burned the damn house down to have her. Instead I put Falls Edge in my rearview without the girl, and I left my dream for the future in the smug hands of her father. Salt on the wound, and it hurts now more than ever.
Gripping the steering wheel tighter, I catch sight of the farm up ahead.
I brace myself, already regretting this whole thing.
I should have picked a better way to move on.
Reconnecting with June is like pulling on a thread that’s been unraveling my life for years. What good can possibly come from it?
But when I roll up, it’s as if nothing has changed.
Edwin’s truck is parked in the drive. The farmhouse is still there.
The wood siding has been whitewashed. Fresh mulch lines the lily plants along the path up to the front porch, which is littered with construction materials.
Half a dozen cabinet doors are lined up on saw horses, and every variety of sander is plugged in to a power strip that snakes back into the house through the front door.
I climb the stairs just as Edwin swings open the door, another cabinet door in hand. He tosses it down and pulls me into a tight hug.
“Kase! My God, son. Where the hell have you been?”
I close my eyes and hug him back. I haven’t been able to call him Dad since he broke the news to me.
I’m not sure that’ll ever change, but times like these, I always seem to say it silently in my head.
I might even squeeze him a little tighter, because I feel like such a shithead for leaving him alone again when he made me his whole world for eighteen years.
“I needed to get away for a little while,” I say, my words muffled into his thick work coat.
We separate, and his eyes are misted. “Well, I’m glad as hell you’re back. Not complaining, but you could have called and given me a heads-up. Things are kind of turned upside down right now.”
He gestures to the materials littering the porch.
“What’s this all about?” I wasn’t expecting to see the farmhouse, let alone Edwin in it, upon my return. Everything on the farm should be flattened by now.
“Oh, just a little home-improvement project. June has been pecking at me about tuning things up in here. She wants to bring in a contractor, but the work keeps me busy, so I’m doing it myself, little by little.”
I’m about to be outraged that she’s putting Edwin to work remodeling a house he no longer owns. “Let me get this right. June Bell wants you to remodel this house?”
“She’s got an opinion about everything these days. You’d think she lives here.” He rolls his eyes and chuckles.
My eyes grow wide. My muscles tense. “She all but does. She owns the damn house. Now they’re putting you to work on your way out the door?”
He frowns and laughs again. “No, Kase. It’s not like that. Come on. You missed a lot.”
He waves me in the front door, and I follow him into the kitchen.
“I guess so,” I mutter, sizing up the construction debris on nearly every surface.
Paint cans are everywhere. The wooden trim has been stripped, along with the face of every cabinet in the room. At least the old pine floors have been refinished and given a generous coat of shine, restoring them to their original glory.
“Is there a home-improvement project you haven’t started yet?”
He lifts an eyebrow and rubs the back of his neck as he looks around, surveying what can only be characterized as a midmakeover tornado.
“You know what they say. It has to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.”
I meet his tentative look. “That sounds about right.”
He cracks a smile and slaps my arm. “Lighten up, Kase. We’ll get there. Maybe you can help me finish something before you disappear on us again.”
I’m already mentally mapping out a to-do list, if only to minimize the number of power tools on the kitchen counters. Except I still don’t understand why the hell he’s bothering with all this.
He grabs a couple beers from the fridge and hands me one. “Come on. The back porch hasn’t changed a bit. Promise.”
I follow him out back, only to stop in my tracks one step outside.
“Whoa.”