Chapter 2 Knox
Iknew she was coming back.
Small town and word travels fast. Mae mentioned it three days ago while I was picking up coffee, casual as anything, like she wasn't dropping a grenade into the middle of my morning.
"Daisy Taylor's moving back for a bit. Staying with Cal. Heard her engagement fell through."
I'd kept my face blank. Nodded and said something like "that's too bad" and got the hell out of there before Mae could read whatever was happening behind my eyes.
Three days to prepare. Three days to remind myself that eight years was long enough to kill anything that still lingered in my thoughts about her. That I'd made my peace with it. That seeing her again wouldn't matter.
Three days of lying to myself.
Then I pulled into Cal's driveway to talk about the search and rescue training schedule, looked up at the cabin, and saw her standing in the window.
Damnit, she was still gorgeous. Hair longer than I remembered, tumbling past her shoulders. Curves I could trace from memory even at this distance.
Every lie I'd told myself crumbled.
She looked the same and yet she looked completely different. She looked like the woman I'd spent eight years trying to forget and failing every single night.
Our eyes met and the world went quiet.
I couldn't read her expression, but I didn't need to. I knew what she saw when she looked at me. The guy who'd made promises he didn't keep. The guy who'd let her wait alone in the dark while he walked away without a word.
The guy who'd broken her heart and never explained why.
She didn't know the truth. She couldn't. If she did, she wouldn't be looking at me like I was dirt under her shoe.
But that look was better than the alternative. Better than her knowing what I'd sacrificed. Better than her feeling guilty for a choice I'd made with my eyes open.
I'd rather have her hate than her pity.
"Knox." Cal's voice cut through the fog. "You hear me?"
I blinked. Looked away from the window. "Yeah. Sorry. What?"
Cal studied me with those cop eyes, the ones that missed nothing. I kept my face neutral. Years of practice.
"I said the water heater's acting up again. Can you take a look tomorrow?"
The water heater. Right. Because I was Cal's go-to handyman now.
The irony wasn't lost on me. Eight years ago, he'd threatened to destroy my life if I didn't stay away from his niece.
Not that I blamed him. I was angry at the world and got into every fight I could and ended up in the back of his cop car more times than I could remember.
He had every right to warn me off his niece.
I was trouble and had no future then. Now he called me for plumbing problems.
Funny how things worked out.
"Yeah," I said. "I'll come by in the morning."
"Appreciate it." Cal glanced toward the cabin. Toward the window where Daisy had been standing. "She's had a rough time. Try not to give her any trouble."
My jaw tightened. "When do I ever give anyone trouble?"
Cal almost smiled. Almost. "I've got a list."
He clapped me on the shoulder, the same way he'd done a hundred times over the past few years. Like we were now friends. Like he hadn't once held my future in his hands and crushed it without blinking.
I didn't blame him. That was the worst part. I understood why he'd done it. He'd been protecting her, the same way I'd been protecting her when I walked away.
We'd both loved her enough to let her go.
The difference was, she knew about his love. Mine, she'd never believe.
I got back in my truck and drove home on autopilot.
Home was a cabin on the north side of town, smaller than Cal's but mine.
I'd bought it four years ago with money I'd saved working construction, guiding, and every odd job Hollow Peak had to offer.
It wasn't much, but it was proof. Proof that I wasn't the waste of space everyone had expected me to become.
I parked in the driveway and sat there for a minute, hands on the wheel, staring at nothing.
She was back.
Daisy Taylor was back in Hollow Peak, and I was going to her cabin tomorrow morning to fix a water heater like it was nothing. Like seeing her wouldn't rip open every scar I'd spent years stitching shut.
I thought about that summer. The one that had ruined me for anyone else.
She'd been twenty, just about to start college, working at the clinic for extra cash. I'd been twenty-one and already known as trouble, already on Cal's radar for fights I couldn't walk away from and a mouth that didn't know when to quit.
We shouldn't have worked. Good girl, bad boy, all the clichés I hated. But Daisy had never treated me like a cliché. She'd looked at me like I was worth something. Like the parts of me everyone else saw as broken were parts she wanted to understand.
We'd kept it secret. We had to. Cal would have killed me, and Daisy's future was too bright to let me cast a shadow on it. So we met at the overlook after dark, swam in the lake when no one was watching, and spent hours talking about everything and nothing while the stars wheeled overhead.
I fell first and fell hard. I fell in a way I'd never recovered from.
By the end of the summer, we had a plan. She'd finish her degree and I'd save money, get my shit together, prove I could be more than Hollow Peak's favorite screw-up. Then we'd leave together. Build something real.
The night before she went back to school, we were supposed to meet one last time.
Our spot at the overlook. Midnight. I was going to go back with her for a few months.
Get my act together and get some skills away from the town that wouldn’t give me a chance.
It would be a fresh start for me and a chance for Daisy and me to be out in the open with our relationship.
Hell, I wanted to marry her. Have a family.
Be the man she wanted with her forever. She did that to me.
I never showed.
I could still see it. The way I'd imagined her waiting, checking her phone, watching the road for headlights that never came. Three hours, Cal told me later. She'd waited three hours before she finally gave up.
I'd been two miles away, parked on a logging road, white-knuckling my steering wheel and trying not to put my fist through the windshield.
Cal had found out. Someone had seen us at the lake, and word got back. He'd shown up at my place that afternoon with a choice.
Stay away from her, or he'd make sure I went away for my fuck ups.
He had enough on me to do it. A fight from the year before where the other guy had pressed charges, then dropped them.
Cal could bring them back. Could add things.
Could make my life a nightmare I'd never wake up from. I deserved whatever he threw at me for my mistakes, so they didn’t scare me.
What he said next was what made me walk away.
"She's got a future," he'd said, calm and certain. "A real one. Degree, career, a life that doesn't involve this town or anyone in it. You drag her into your mess, and she'll throw it all away for you. She's that kind of girl. Loyal to a fault."
He'd been right. That was the thing I couldn't argue with. Daisy would have stayed and would have fought for me. Given up everything she'd worked for and burned her future to the ground if I'd asked her to.
So I didn't show up or call. I let her think I was exactly what everyone said I was. A guy who made promises he couldn't keep. A guy who wasn't worth waiting for.
She left and went back to school and built a life.
I stayed. Kept my head down and stopped fighting, mostly. Poured everything I had into becoming someone who deserved better than this town's assumptions.
Not for me. For her. So that if she ever came back, if we ever got a second chance, I'd be worth it.
That was eight years ago.
Eight years of waiting for something I'd convinced myself would never happen.
And now she was here, looking at me through a window like I was a stranger she wished she'd never met.
I went inside and poured myself a whiskey, but didn't drink it.
My phone buzzed. Mason.
Heard Daisy Taylor's back. You okay?
Mason was the only one who knew. The only one I'd ever told, years ago, when I'd had too much to drink and the weight of it got too heavy to carry alone. He'd listened without judgment, which was more than I deserved.
Fine, I texted back.
Liar. Beers later?
Maybe.
I set the phone down and stared at the whiskey.
Tomorrow I'd walk into Cal's cabin and pretend seeing her didn't gut me. Pretend I didn't remember every sound she made, every way she laughed, every spot on her body that made her shiver. Pretend the last eight years hadn't been one long exercise in surviving without her.
I was good at pretending. I'd had practice.
But standing in that driveway, watching her watch me, something had cracked. Something I'd kept locked down tight for years.
She was back. She was close. And every instinct I had was screaming at me to fight for her this time, to tell her the truth, to make her understand that walking away had been the hardest thing I'd ever done.
She had her own pain to carry, and adding mine to it wouldn't help either of us.
But God, I wanted to.
I wanted to cross that driveway and climb those porch steps and put my hands on her face and tell her I'd never stopped. That there had never been anyone else. That every woman I'd tried to want had turned to ash because none of them were her.
I picked up the whiskey and set it down again.
I'd see her tomorrow, and I'd keep my distance, and I'd fix her water heater like a professional, and I'd walk away without breaking.
I'd done it once. I could do it again.
I repeated that until I believed it.
***
The next morning, I pulled into Cal's driveway at eight.
His truck was gone, so his shift must have started early. That was fine. Better, actually. Easier to keep my mask in place without Cal watching.
I grabbed my tools from the truck bed and headed for the front door. The morning was cool, mist still clinging to the trees, the mountains sharp against a pale blue sky. Hollow Peak at its most beautiful. The kind of morning that made you forget why you'd ever wanted to leave.
I knocked.
Footsteps inside. A pause. Then the door swung open.
Daisy.
She was wearing a thin robe, pale pink, tied loose at the waist. Her hair was damp, like she'd showered recently. No makeup. Coffee cup in her hand. Bare feet on the hardwood floor.
She looked soft and warm and completely unprepared for me to be standing on her porch.
That made two of us.
"Knox." My name in her mouth. Flat. Cold. Nothing like the way she used to say it.
"Daisy."
We stared at each other. The silence was thick enough to choke on.
"Cal said you'd be coming by," she said finally. "I didn't realize he meant this early."
"Water heater's in the basement. Won't take long."
"Fine."
She stepped aside to let me in and I caught her scent as I passed. My hands tightened on my toolbox.
The cabin was warm, fire crackling in the woodstove, smell of coffee heavy in the air. I'd been here a hundred times over the years, but it felt different now. Charged. Like the air before a storm.
"Basement door's in the kitchen," she said, already turning away. "You know where it is."
I did. I headed that direction without another word.
The basement was cool and dim, the water heater ancient and temperamental. I'd fixed it twice in the past year alone. Cal needed to replace the damn thing, but he was stubborn about spending money on himself.
I set down my tools and got to work.
It took me twenty minutes to find the problem. Sediment buildup. Easy fix. I drained the tank, cleaned it out, and had everything running again before nine.
Now was the time to pack up my tools, say goodbye, and get the hell out of there before I did something stupid.
Instead, I went upstairs.
Daisy was on the back porch, curled up in one of Cal's old wooden chairs, book in her lap, coffee cup refilled. She didn't look up when I stepped outside.
"Fixed," I said.
"Thanks."
Every rational part of my brain was screaming at me to move, to leave, and to put distance between us before the cracks in my control got any wider.
But I’m a sucker for punishment.
"How long are you staying?" I asked, wanting to hear her voice again.
She looked up. Her eyes were the same. Brown with flecks of gold, the color of whiskey in sunlight. They used to look at me like I hung the moon.
Now they looked at me like I was a stranger.
"A few months," she said. "Maybe longer. Why, is that a problem?"
"No problem."
More silence. The tension was unbearable. I could feel it pressing against my skin, hot and tight, demanding release.
"Daisy."
"Don't." She cut me off, her voice sharp. "Whatever you're about to say, don't. We don't need to do this. You're here to fix things for Cal. I'm here to get my life together. We don't need to be friends. We don't need to be anything."
The words were designed to hurt.
They worked.
"Got it," I said.
I turned and let myself out the front door without looking back.
My truck was waiting in the driveway. I threw my toolbox in the bed and climbed behind the wheel. I sat there for a second, breathing hard, hands shaking with everything I couldn't say.
She wanted nothing to do with me. Fair enough. I'd earned that.
But I wasn't going to disappear either.
She was back in Hollow Peak. And whether she liked it or not, our paths were going to cross.
When they did, I'd be ready.
I started the truck and drove away.
I didn't look in the rearview mirror.
If I had, I might have seen her standing at the window, watching me go.