Noticing Natalie (Second Chances in Indigo Falls #3)

Prologue

I turned off the music and rolled my windows down as I passed the beautiful brick sign that announced I was welcome in Indigo Falls.

I hadn’t been here in more than a year. For good reason.

Still, in some ways it was good to be home.

I breathed in the thick, summery scent of gardenias and honeysuckle and felt the humidity seep into my car.

I took a deep breath, loving the way it almost felt like I was breathing in water, the air was so heavy and moist.

The only place I even needed a straightening iron was the South. My hair never remembered it had a bit of curl to it until that thick air wrapped around me until I suddenly looked like I had a perm. I hadn’t missed that part of living here.

I enjoyed the thick canopy of oak trees that stretched so high on either side of the two-laned road it felt like you were in a tunnel.

It was beautiful here. I’d never doubted that for a minute.

Some great things had happened here, too.

Memories made me smile as I took a mental walk back through time.

And then my smile faded. I sighed, the weight of the bad memories dragging my shoulders down. The worst things in my life had happened here, too. The accident. The way my dad reacted after it.

And then there was what Tim did. The way he’d been able to take our friendship and rip it apart like it had never meant anything at all to him.

God. Part of me wanted to pull a U-turn in the middle of the road and get out of here as fast as I could.

But responsibility had brought me here. And it would keep me here, at least until my father passed away and I settled his affairs. Mom would’ve expected that of me, no matter how much my dad had shirked his own responsibilities.

And then there were Lynne, Pete, and the girls. The rest of the Summers family didn’t deserve to be treated like pariahs just because of what their son had done. No, they’d been my family for years and years. They deserved better than what I’d been able to give them over the past year or so.

I squared my shoulders. I could do this.

I could face the things that happened here, and I could overcome them.

I would learn to drive past that particular stretch of road without hearing the horrible gasping sounds of my mother’s dying breaths.

In his dying days, I would give my father the peace and comfort he never gave me.

And I would look Tim Summers in the face and forgive him for what he did. Our friendship deserved that much, even if he didn’t. I glanced in the backseat to check on Anne and Gilbert, the Russian tortoises Tim had given me when we were fourteen. They were doing fine back there.

They were doing a lot better than I was.

Because in some ways facing Tim and trying to move forward with a friendship that had died a painful death a year ago was going to be the hardest thing I’d ever done.

But I had to try. I couldn’t let the bad memories drive me away from a town I’d loved.

Not anymore.

***

Tim, 25

“Guess who’s back in town?”

My head whipped away from the stunning, stacked blonde friend Alexis had brought home from graduate school. I stared at Sadie and Mom, barely daring to hope. Had she come back? Had Natalie returned to Indigo Falls?

“Finally,” I heard Mom say as she finished setting up the huge picnic table Dad and I had carried under the shadiest trees in the yard years ago.

“I was starting to be afraid I’d only ever see her when I flew to Baltimore.

It’s just sad that it took her father’s illness to bring her home.

” She stood back, hands on hips, to survey the spread she’d laid out for the first part of our Fourth of July celebration.

“I always wondered if she’d be able to forgive and move on.

She and Tim were inseparable their whole lives, and then poof, nothing. ”

“Well, I think you and I both know there’s more to the story than what those two are telling us,” Sadie snarked, jolting a little when her eyes landed on me and realized I was listening in. “Anyway,” she continued more quietly, “I saw her at the Piggly Wiggly this morning and invited her today.”

“Is she going to come?” I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard more hope in Mom’s voice.

“She said she would. Mr. Martin is in hospice now, and I heard he’s mainly unconscious. She said he’d already had the house packed up except for her things, so she doesn’t have much to do.”

“Well, that’s the least he could do after the kind of father he was to her after the accident.”

Sadie nodded. “I never understood it. I guess I never will. Anyway,” she glanced at her watch, “she should be here any minute now.”

What. The. Fuck.

I practically leapt away from the chick I’d been talking to and jogged towards the house.

I needed a moment to myself. My hands were starting to shake.

I hadn’t lived here in years, and I knew Alexis was using my old bedroom as a guest room for her college friends.

I didn’t care. I needed a retreat to collect my thoughts.

To get myself together before I saw her.

I took the stairs two at a time, almost bowling over my youngest sister in the process. “What the heck Tim?” Wyn said, lurching for the railing.

I didn’t bother responding to my little sister.

I just headed for my old bedroom, went inside, and locked the door behind me.

I dropped to the bed, not caring about the smells of suntan lotion, hairspray, and perfume that lingered in the air.

I was a man with three sisters. This wasn’t my first rodeo.

I dropped my head to my hands, elbows on my knees, as I took deep breaths.

The way I’d treated Natalie, my best friend in the world, was inexcusable. I knew it. She knew it. What we’d never figured out was how to get past it.

My decision had been to get on my goddamn knees and beg for forgiveness.

Her decision had been to leave me the hell alone and do her best to forget I ever existed.

She didn’t just ignore my texts and calls for a few days.

She blocked me so completely I felt erased.

I’d resorted to sending letters. They came back unopened labeled return to sender.

When I drove up to Baltimore to see her, she wouldn’t let me in.

I sat on her porch as a peaceful protest, and she’d threatened to call the police.

I thought that was more than a little excessive. But it worked. I left.

When the rest of my family, who’d become her family, too, after the accident, went to visit, she’d banned them from talking about me.

I’d had to spend the past year completely without the person who’d been… well, my person. Since birth, basically.

And now she was back and coming to a family cookout without any warning.

I couldn’t take this kind of emotional roller coaster.

What if I said something stupid and she left again? What if I looked at her funny and she told everyone what I did? They already fully blamed me. They just didn’t know how bad it had been.

I swiped a hand over my face. My breaths were coming in shallow gasps. I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing Nat again.

In short, I was terrified.