Page 1 of Hearts at War

Chapter 1

Heather

Another bug hit the windshield. Slimy guts smeared on the surface, and I cringed at the blur on my view.

“Ugh.” It had to hit right there, right in my view.

I turned the wipers on, grimacing as the brown gunk spread and made it harder to see the highway road that looked the same as all the boring miles I’d already covered. Flat plains. Gray sky. Hawks perched like sentinels on fence posts.

Same old, same old.

I never planned on making this drive—again. The first time I pushed my car over this route, I did so in the opposite direction, toward Chicago in the east. That was two years ago, but it felt like an eon had passed.

When I moved out of the small town I was raised in, I did so with no goal to ever look back. To ever return. Yet, here I was, burning the rubber off my tires as I crossed the pavement leading toward Burton, Iowa. Or as it was better known as, the middle of freaking nowhere.

I sighed, my face still scrunched with disgust and annoyance at the newest obstacle in my view. The windshield was littered with goo from bugs and whatnot, but that was expected in a five-hour drive on the most boring highway of the Midwest.

Gone were the skyscrapers that all looked so unique and different, their lines cutting up into the sky with a variety of architecture and design. Bridges and waterways were absent, replaced with crops and grasslands dotted with farting cows. Pedestrians didn’t walk out here, commuting or keeping a city bustling. Only slow-poke farm equipment needed signs out here.

“But it’s for the best,” I muttered, reminding myself that even though this drive wasn’t fun or ideal, this move was mandatory. For the sake of my sanity, I had to come back home.

I chewed on my lip as I checked the speedometer. Keeping the car at a steady nine miles over the limit was my goal, but each time I let my thoughts gather and brew up another mini-storm of anxiety, it was a natural reaction to push the pedal down harder. Thinking of what I was leaving behind was another reminder to go faster and get away from Chicago as quickly as possible.

I didn’t want to have to go back home, to the one place I had wanted to escape so badly after graduation, but I had enough common sense to realize that I couldn’t stay in the city.

Near him.

Running from my ex was the only motivation that could steer me back to the small, closed-minded town I wanted to leave so badly when I was young.

Young and stupid. But wasn’t everyone? Didn’t all young adults make dumb mistakes that could contort the trajectory of their future?

All I’d wanted back then was to get out of town.

And look at me now.

I squashed the self-doubt and bitter reflections the best I could, but there was just no way I could smile about this drive to Burton. No one was excited from my return. Hell, I couldn’t be excited or optimistic about leaving civilization in the city. Only self-preservation had me accepting that this was my best option.

As I neared the highway roads toward “home,” I noticed the clues that nothing had changed. The rustic wooden sign hadn’t been updated, still showing that a few thousand lived in Burton. The tree with the split trunks hadn’t been cleaned up from the big storm that half of the old-timers claimed to be a “real” tornado. And as I steered my car around the last bend before the downtown Main Street area came into view, I raised my brows at the abandoned grocery mart that looked like the set of a low-budget horror movie.

“Why don’t they just tear it down?” I wondered aloud.

Burton, unsurprisingly, was the same old. It was still a little mark on the mark. Some could call it quaint if they wanted to project an idyllic vision of small-town America. Others would be more accurate to dub in a rundown ghost town, void of opportunities or excitement.

I spent four years in Chicago. Forty-eight months, I was away.

It hadn’t been long enough to sate my need for the thrill of a big city. Of being anonymous and blending in as one among millions. But it was long enough that I now felt like an outsider moving back here.

The drone and steady noise of traffic and people still remained in my mind, but this quiet stillness of Burton overrode it. The need to watch out for walkers, bikers, joggers, and commuters urged me to be cautious, yet aggressive at intersections, but not a single car waited opposite me at the slowly blinking red stoplight.

I wasn’t an outsider. I was born and raised here. Yet I had existed far from this bubble of no action for long enough that I didn’t feel like I belonged now. I wouldn’t fit in, even if I tried.

Quoted in my yearbook as the student who “can’t wait to get out of town” cemented my sentiments on this place. Everyone teased me at graduation for how stubbornly I insisted that I would be gone as soon as I got my diploma in my hands. And I had. I left the second I could.

Only to be forced right back here, at square one.

No welcoming party would be waiting for me, either. I supposed that if someone cared about my return, it would prompt me to be slightly obligated to arriving on time. To coming by and faking a smile that I was glad to see them again.

Only my cousin, Eric, lived here, but we weren’t close. We hadn’t gone without contact over the last two years, but I bet he was surprised when I called him about moving back home. Eric was twenty-three years older than me, and that gap resulted in him seeming more like an uncle than a cousin. He was also born and raised here, and with his age and holding the same job at the ranch that he had all his life, he likely saw no point to ever moving out. I appreciated that he hadn’t questioned me about wanting to leave so badly when I had. Now, though, I figured he was also indifferent about my need to return.