Page 48 of Pick Me This Time

22

DAPHNE

While I was sure I wasn’t sick, my heart hurt. When my parents had come by earlier to ask if I wanted to drive over to the school with them for the parade and the game, I’d turned them down. I just couldn’t face seeing Sterling today—and I knew for a fact he would be there.

I didn’t know if he’d rejected me last night or if he’d just felt too guilty to kiss me again, but the things he’d said had cut into me. Sliced into the core of my being.

Allisburg wasn’t holding me back. I wasn’t trapped here. I’d left for college and I’d made the choice to come back because I loved it here. I’d never intended on staying anywhere else. I loved our town. I loved its people. I loved our community and our way of life.

Suggesting anything different was absurd, and so was the insinuation that I was somehow trying to keep him here.

No one was more aware than me of the fact that Sterling North had left to seek out greener, greater pastures. No one knew better than me that he’d never belonged here. A guy like that?

He was never going to be happy with the small, simple life Allisburg had to offer. I’d made my peace with that as a freaking teenager.

Watching him and my brother from a distance, I’d always known that people like Sterling didn’t stick around. Eric had been a toss-up. He was either going to leave and love life in a big city somewhere, or he was going to throw himself into life in Allisburg and love it.

It had come as something of a surprise when he’d chosen the latter, but in the end, I’d been right. My brother wasn’t bitter or angry about the choices he’d made. He might have had an arrogant streak about a mile wide, but he’d never needed fame or fortune to stroke his ego.

He was happy here. He loved coaching and his garage. He loved his cabin and being a big fish in a little pond. Like me, Eric had chosen Allisburg and neither of us had ever regretted it.

Sterling had chosen Stanford and New York City. It hadn’t surprised anyone when he’d left and it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t come back until their twenty-year reunion once he did it again. I was beyond hurt that he’d implied that I would ever try to hold him back. To keep him here, in a place he claimed to love but very obviously couldn’t stand.

Blowing out a heavy breath, I finally got up off my couch. I hated sitting still, and with those ugly words constantly tearing up my insides, it was driving me nuts doing nothing but obsessing. Everyone in town was at the football game, but I still wasn’t going there.

Instead, I headed out and climbed into my truck, deciding to go to the bakery. I wanted to see the damage for myself and start helping with the clean-up if I could, and besides, being there was strangely soothing to me.

This life—that bakery—was what I had chosen. It made me happy. It fulfilled me and I didn’t need Sterling North judging me for it.

As I drove to the farm, I blinked back my tears and squared my shoulders. That kiss had really been something, but at the same time, it had been nothing.

Simply a release of adrenaline after we’d endured a traumatic experience together. Sterling and I weren’t star-crossed lovers. We were just two people who happened to have grown up in the vicinity of one another and who had crashed together in a momentary lapse of sanity.

Parking outside the bakery, I did my best to ignore its connection and significance to him, and focused on what it meant to me instead. It had given me the freedom to spend more time with my parents. It had provided me with the opportunity to hone a craft I’d always had a passion for and, moreover, it allowed me to connect every day with the community I loved so much.

Lost in thought, I walked in, my heart breaking at the sight of the place. It was all torn up, with big fans running to dry the water soaking everything. We would never get the place running again if we let black mold take over.

“What are you doing?” a voice suddenly spoke up, startling me.

I jumped, spinning toward the source. Sterling’s dad was sitting at one of the tables. I blinked hard, my hand flying up to press against my rapidly beating heart. “John. I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you there.”

I smiled at the older man, my heart giving a pang at the sight of him. He was old and grumpy, but I’d always liked him.

In his own gruff way, he was a good man. Every year, he poured his heart into the fall festival, always driving the tractor for the hayrides for the kids and making sure they had the best time ever.

“It’s not safe to be in here with all the ash and soot clinging to the walls,” I said gently. “Can I get you something? I might be able to coax a cup of coffee out of the machine if you’d like one to go?”

He shook his head, giving me a soft smile that eased some of the tension off of his features. “When I first married Andrea, she nearly burned down the house trying to bake cookies for the first time.”

I frowned but returned his smile as I walked over to join him at his table. Clearly, he wasn’t leaving, and if he wanted to tell me a story, the least I could do was listen. “Oh? I was always under the impression that she was born baking.”

He chuckled. “Not quite. When we met, she could barely slice bread, let alone bake a loaf.”

My eyes widened. “Really? I loved her bread. It’s kind of hard to imagine a time when she was learning how to make it.”

He shrugged, turning his dark eyes back to the window that looked out over the farm. Rolling greenery stretched up a gentle slope from here, the part of their property that edged on the main road, all the way up past where I could see right then, to where the pumpkin patch, the farmhouse, and the fields were.

“You know, I didn’t want to be a farmer,” he said as his gaze scanned the land he’d dedicated his life to. “My dad and my grandpa loved it, but I didn’t feel the same way.”