Shattered Vows (Rosewater Creek #3)

PROLOGUE

DAISY

SEVEN MONTHS AGO

“It’s just a visit,” I remind myself, blowing out a shaky breath.

It takes every ounce of willpower I can muster within me to keep my foot on the gas and not turn this car around and drive back to Montana, where I’ve been hiding for the past three years.

Three years, six months and thirteen days, to be exact.

That’s how long it’s been since I stepped foot in the town I grew up in.

Since I last saw my best friend.

Since I ran away from him.

Everything about this town is the same as it was when I left.

The same winding country roads.

Same buildings.

Same mountains.

Same people.

The only thing that is different, is me.

When I left Rosewater Creek, I was a broken girl barely out of her teens. I had no plan, no money and no destination.

I just knew I had to go.

The town that once held my fondest memories. The place I grew and played and fell in love in, now holds my greatest heartbreak. The streets, the creek, the sprawling green fields… all of it haunts me.

Because there isn’t an inch of this town that I didn’t experience with him.

And that is why I had to leave.

I knew if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to walk away from him.

I wouldn’t have been able to give up the only man my mind, body and soul has ever belonged to; the man who taught me how to love and what it felt to be loved in return.

And he deserved so much more than I could give.

He still does.

But it wasn’t just him I left behind when I ran.

I left my parents and my best friend, too.

I severed connections with everyone close to me to protect the most important person in my life.

The only people that knows my reasons are my parents. And the only reason I told them anything is because my mom threatened to report me missing if I didn’t tell her why I had disappeared from the bridal suite on the morning of my wedding without a word.

Yeah.

I’m that girl.

The runaway bride.

And now, I’m returning to the scene of the crime.

***

“Dais!” Bella squeals when I push through the doors of her café for the first time since she opened it.

Of all the things that have remained the same in this small town, this is one thing that has changed.

Guilt gnaws at me, and I’m confronted with the reality of what a shitty friend I’ve been as I look around the quaint little café, taking in my childhood best friend’s success.

Booths line the windows, each one filled with a customer sipping on coffee, reading a newspaper or eating a meal. A glass display case located next to the counter holds a variety of different baked goods ranging from cookies to cakes to pastries.

There’s a neon sign hanging on the wall behind the checkout, Bella’s glowing red.

A pang hits me in the chest as I soak it all in.

I should have been here. I should have been stood beside her on the day she opened this place. Should have been behind that counter whenever she needed the extra help. Should’ve stayed up late with my best friend while she spent hours in the kitchen coming up with new recipes.

The second emotion that hits me, is pride. Because she did it. She achieved everything she ever set out to achieve in life. Every plan she ever told me about have come to fruition.

“Wow, Bells. This place is amazing,” I say past the lump clogging my throat.

Bella rounds the counter and barrels toward me, throwing her arms around my neck and crushing me against her chest.

My body tenses for half a second before I release a harsh breath and return her embrace, holding her with just as much force.

“I’ve missed you so much, Dais,” Bella whispers in my ear and my eyes burn with tears that threaten to fall.

I sniffle. “I’ve missed you, too, Bells.”

She pulls back but doesn’t release me, instead running her gaze over my face as if she’s seeing me for the first time.

In a way I guess she is.

The girl standing before her now isn’t the same girl she knew three years ago. She doesn’t know this version of Daisy. The person she knew back then is so far in the past that I barely remember her myself. I may look like the old me, but I’m not that girl anymore.

So yeah, in a way Bella is seeing me for the first time. She’s seeing the hollow version of her best friend. The illusion, the mask I’ve worn for so many years, the facade I’ve created and perfected.

“You look different. Older.”

I snort. “Gee, thanks, Bells.”

Bella bats her hand through the air and rolls her eyes playfully. “You know what I mean. You look like a woman now. More mature.”

I smirk at her. “I should hope so.”

“So, where have you been? What have you been doing? How long are you home for?”

Home.

I almost correct her. This town hasn’t been my home for years. Hell, Montana isn’t my home either.

To me, home has never been a place. It’s always been a person.

And that person doesn’t belong to me anymore.

I plaster a fake smile on my face, choosing to ignore her first two questions, I answer the last. “I’m here another week, so I’m at your complete disposal.”

I’ve already been here a week, but I spent most of that time with my parents and reliving my teenage years in my childhood bedroom.

The barely healed scars on my heart painfully reopened the second I pushed open the door to my room when I arrived last week.

Apparently, my parents held onto the hope that I was going to return home and continue living as though nothing had happened. In all honesty, I think leaving my room the exact same was their way of reminding me exactly what I walked away from the day I left.

Instead of taking down the hundreds of pictures and letters that adorned my walls, I tortured myself with them.

Every night this week, I’ve lain in my childhood bed and forced myself to relive every memory, every moment.

I let myself feel the hurt, the guilt, the shame. It’s what I deserve, after all.

“Well, as much as I need the help, I need girls’ night more. So, we’re going out tonight.” Bella’s voice brings me out of my own head and back to the present.

My stomach sinks. “I don’t know, Bells.”

“Come on, Daisy. I haven’t seen you in three and a half years. We need to go out and have fun. I’ll invite Savannah and Liv,” she pleads with hopeful eyes.

“Who are they?” I ask, gnawing on my bottom lip.

“They moved here a few months ago. Savannah is Hunter’s girlfriend.”

My eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Hunter has a girlfriend?”

Hunter is one of three, and the oldest of the Calloway brothers. Bella and I spent a lot of time with them growing up because her older brother, who happens to be the very person I’m running from, is best friends with the youngest brother, Noah.

She nods. “Yep.”

“Wow. Never expected him to settle down.”

“I know, right? But he’s obsessed with Sav. And I think I’m obsessed with her best friend.” Bella sighs and a pang of jealousy hits me in my chest before I can stop it.

I have no right to be jealous that Bella has other friends. I left her high and dry without any kind of explanation.

I cut her off because I couldn’t face her after I left her brother.

It’s just another thing that’s my fault.

“Liv?” I question, barely concealing the envious tone in my voice.

“Yeah. You’ll love her. So, girls’ night?”

The pit in my stomach tells me I should say no. That I should suggest we do girls’ night at her apartment instead, but the guilt outweighs the doubt, and I find myself nodding. “Sure, let’s do it.”

Bella beams at me, bouncing up and down on the spot. “Yay! I’m so excited. We’re gonna have the best time.”

Her over excitement rubs off on me, and I feel myself smiling widely at my best friend as she does a little dance on the spot in front of her customers.

One night.

I can deal with one night.

KILLIAN

Hunter is fucking whipped.

That’s the only thought circling around in my brain as I mindlessly roll a paintbrush up and down the wall of his new girlfriend’s house.

Well, I say girlfriend, but the dude only met her a few weeks ago so it’s hard to be sure. If she isn’t his girlfriend already, she will be by the end of the night judging by the deep furrow that has been between his brows ever since the three of us informed him that he is in love with the girl.

I think he’s processing.

The rest of us – Noah, Grayson and me – have worked in a comfortable silence for the last few minutes to allow Hunter that time to admit his feelings to himself.

Poor bastard.

He’s so fucking whipped, and he doesn’t even realise it.

I don’t envy him one single bit.

Love is bullshit.

It isn’t patient and it isn’t kind.

It pulls you in, chews you up and spits out a lesser version of your former self.

Yeah, no. Don’t recommend.

Like some kind of fucking cosmic joke, Noah chooses that exact moment to open his mouth, the words spilling from his lips only solidifying that love is in-fact, bullshit. “Oh hey, Kill, I hear Daisy’s coming back to town. You hear ‘bout this?”

My paint brush freezes against the wall as every single muscle in my body tenses and my heart comes to a screeching halt in my chest.

There is no way I heard that correctly.

I inhale a deep breath and turn to look at him. “What?”

Noah doesn’t stop his task or even look at me as he responds. “Yeah man. I heard her mom talking to Bells the other day in the café.”

My eyebrows shoot up, betrayal and anger simmering within me. “Bella knows about this?”

Hunter and Grayson stay silent while I glare daggers in the side of my friend’s head. Noah must pick up on the tense silence that has fallen over the room because he finally turns to me. “You didn’t know?”

No, I didn’t fucking know that the woman that disappeared on me three and a half years ago has returned.

I’m certain I resemble a less friendly version of Casper the fucking ghost. My hands begin to shake, a pit forming low in my stomach as a million memories and feelings that I thought I had buried, threaten to rush in all at once.

Fuck. This cannot be happening.

I swallow past the thick lump in my throat. “Does it look like I knew?”