7. Three
Three
Jake
T oday is a good day.
Window down, hand coasting over the air as my truck flew along the highway, music cranked way the fuck up. Sun shining, my girl waiting at home, only a stiff ache in my back after pouring concrete.
Yeah, good day.
Yesterday, too. The day before that. Lots of good days since being back in Windmere.
As I drove into town, the loose change in my pocket clinked with each bounce over the potholed road.
I popped off at The Candy Shop to grab a couple of those suckers Fallon loved so much.
Inside, Mrs. Mathers chatted me up until I could take no more. I gradually retreated, my back against the door, and she waved me off. “Go, dear. Tell Fallon hello.”
“Will do.” I felt a smidge guilty for my impatience, but I’d make it up to her tomorrow and stop in with a coffee on my way to work when she pulled the cookies from the oven that she stocked in the shop.
Those crumbly and gross peanut butter pucks tasted terrible, but I made it a point to buy them.
I fed them to my best friend’s dog. Laughing at the image of Woofy humping my leg in gratitude, I nearly plowed down the runner when I swung open the door.
“Watch it!” he grunted, darting out of the way at the last second and not slowing.
A flash, but long enough to recognize the wavy brown hair and sharp cheekbones. The pinch of judgment in those sinking eyebrows. The cut of those broad shoulders, now more muscled. He’d bulked up, which made sense, I guess. Mr. Fucking Movie Man. His back flexed tight as his arms pumped to maintain speed.
Squinting, in case I imagined it, I hated that: one, I double-checked. And two, I recognized Beau Dalton from a brief glimpse.
Skin tanned like a man who’d spent the last decade in California. Late afternoon, hot as shit. Shirtless and running down the crowded sidewalk like a bronzed asshole, weaving through crowds with earbuds in, and couldn’t be bothered to consider others.
Beau continued on his way, passing beneath the striped awnings and zig-zagging between sapling trees spaced in garden beds.
Maybe he’d catch his shoe on a crack in the concrete and fall head-first into one of the garbage cans.
No, his thick skull might damage the metal, painted in bright colors by local artists to fancy up the main corridor. Ruining shit—Beau’s style.
The flash of golden skin and taut muscle slipped through the narrow alleyway between Bertie Belle’s and The Hat Shop.
Good luck, asswad. She’s not there.
Once in my truck, I scrubbed my hands over my face.
Beau was back in town. Fallon made no mention of it, which meant she probably didn’t know.
Right?
We didn’t do secret-keeping, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t omit information that would piss me off.
Not like it thrilled me to come home after months away, only to find out my girl was messing around with a guy who had crushed on her for years—a guy I detested for his unwavering commitment to antagonizing me.
Freight runs were hard on Fallon—on us. We’d broken up intermittently when I took extended trips, but I always knew we would come back together. We had to. There was no life for me without her.
I took those runs for her, for us, for our dreams. Filling our house with babies and love and a lifetime of happiness. A little extra for some vacations, maybe get a trailer for summer camping.
Blinded by a finish line, I got on the boat every time, swearing it would be worth it to buy us the life we wanted. Tug runs paid better than any job I could get in Windmere.
Fallon told me to go after years of asking me to stay.
It confused me, but I listened. I shouldn’t have. Something was off when she told me to take the trip and live my life, that our time had run its course. I didn’t believe it, but I went anyway.
Fucking killed me, but I left, thinking it would be like the other times she needed space. I would call her a week into the run, and she would tell me she missed me. I would tell her I was dying without her, and we would admit our foolishness in pretending we weren’t wildly in love.
But she didn’t answer my calls that first week—or any of the weeks after. I kept calling until I couldn’t take it anymore.
I came home at Christmas, decidedly not giving a shit whether she thought we’d run our course. She was wrong. Plain and fucking simple. She was mine, and I was hers, and nothing else mattered .
Fallon loved her family, but they weren’t close. Her sister was an utter nightmare, and her parents were emotionally distant. But we had each other.
And… I left her on her own when I shouldn’t have. I regretted my stupidity.
Beau Dalton had been there. And it killed me. It killed me because it killed her . She was sad. I saw it in her face. She cared about him, and my return disappointed her. It made me hate him even more.
I recognized the love blush, her pretty pink cheeks giving her away. Until that trip home, it’d only belonged to me.Whatever she’d done with Beau, it wasn’t to scratch an itch, and I’d have clawed out of my skin to peel away the hurt spreading over me like a blanket.
But somehow, shit got even worse.
Fallon’s endometriosis had progressed severely enough to damage her reproductive organs. She received an infertility diagnosis just days before my trip and broke up with me immediately and without telling me about her results. Not because she didn’t love me, but because she thought she wouldn’t be enough.
I came home, and she told me.
“I can’t ask you to give up your dreams for me. Not when I can’t—”
“You’re my dream, Fallon. You’ve always been my dream. The rest is just the details. ”
She was my family. I only needed her, and it crushed my heart that she carried her pain all alone.
Almost all alone.
I grunted at the memory, turning over the ignition and kicking on the gas.I would never leave her alone again.
I didn’t hate Fallon for her choice to have a good time; I hated that she picked Beau Dalton, of all people on the planet.
The guy walked through his easy life with a permanent smile. Nobody smiled that much, and it was unnatural and unnerving.
Living life like it was one big party. For Beau, it had been. He was effortlessly good at everything he did, whether sports or school or making friends. He had a good family, a good life, and a good escape to Hollywood.
I loved Fallon for years—even before my hormonal brain kicked in and registered how our parts could fit together.
We’d been friends and neighbors our whole lives. Flirted, hugged, and teased. We’d hung out in comfortable silence when I needed company but not conversation.
We spent nights on her roof, staring at the stars and telling stories. Hands inching closer, until one night, her pinky wrapped around mine, and I swear to god, I stopped breathing.
Seeing her at a party with her mouth fused to Beau’s when I was sixteen? Kicked my ass into gear. He kissed her first, but I planned to kiss her forever.
But there he was, the fucker running on the side of the highway now, probably circling back to his parents’ house. Idiot. Intensely hot with the sun overhead, he might stroke out. God willing.
Then again, with no shoulder on the road, he’d more likely get hit by a car.
Or a truck.
I slowed on the approach, his back to me as he sweated like a filthy beast. Fantasies of clipping his heels and forcing him faster until he collapsed from exhaustion and got caught beneath my tires filled my head.
Instead, I lay a palm on the horn, causing him to startle and trip as I flew by. Catching his middle finger and an angry grimace in my mirror, I tapped my hands against the steering wheel and cranked the radio.
Welcome back to Windmere, asshole.
It was still going to be a good day.