Page 44 of Don’t Go Breaking My Heart

“Do you ever think about the old days?” I asked, glancing at her.

“Of course. It feels like a lifetime ago sometimes.”

We started reminiscing, trading stories about our high school antics and the trouble we used to get into.

“We were always up to something,” she said, her voice tinged with nostalgia. “Remember when we stole Mr. Hargrove’s mower that one summer?”

“How could I forget?” I laughed, remembering how wild Merritt had been. “He had no idea what hit him.”

“You were so terrified you would get caught,” she recalled, giggling in that infectious way that was so typical of her.

“Only because you were the mastermind behind it all, and I was your willing accomplice,” I responded, laughing along. “We were going to mow lawns and make enough money to go see that movie.”

“We were always going to return it,” she said with a giggle.

“Of course we were.” I chuckled. “But not before we used it. You always did like to live on the wild side.”

“And now look at us,” she said. “You’re the rebel and I’m the uptight one.”

“You’re not uptight.”

She was silent for a moment. “I miss those days, Kannon. We were just kids, and everything seemed possible.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “We had our entire lives ahead of us and it felt like we could do anything.”

“Back when we were immortal,” she said with a sigh.

She had no idea how true that was. We had both been touched by loss. She lost her mother at a young age. I remembered wondering how she even got out of bed. But now I understood grief. You just kept living. You just kept moving forward. One foot in front of the other.

We lost ourselves in the silence for a while as we both stared at the ceiling. I didn’t know what was going through her head, but for me, it was a whirlwind of emotions and memories. A bittersweet tension filled the air between us.

There was one memory I didn’t bring up. One I didn’t dare touch, even though it was burning in the back of my mind like it had happened yesterday.

Graduation.

I could still see her in that stupid cap, all askew after she’d tossed it in the air. Her nose was pink from crying with her friends, her hair wild and her lip gloss smudged. She’d been wearing those strappy white heels that made her ankles wobble and a pair of sparkly earrings her dad had given her.

I’d been shaking like a damn leaf when I held her hands, looked into her eyes, and asked her to make me a promise. I knew she was going to college, and even back then, I think I understood our lives were never going to be the same. I felt the change mingled with the loss in the air as we stood in our caps and gowns.

“Promise me you won’t go breaking my heart by falling in love at college and forgetting about me.”

She had promised.

But she hadn’t kept it.

I never forgot our promise.

Even when I tried to move on—when I married Leah and tried to build a life with her—Merritt was always in the back of my head. Always there, a shadow I couldn’t shake. Leah knew it, too. It drove her crazy. We fought about it constantly. My friends couldn’t even mention Merritt’s name without Leah seeing red. I went out of my way to convince Leah I was long over Merritt, but I clearly didn’t do a good job of it. She knew. She had always known.

“What are you thinking about?” Merritt’s voice pulled me back to the present.

I turned my head to look at her. Looking into those pretty green eyes made greener when passion was pumping through her veins. I sure as hell couldn’t tell her what I was really thinking about.

“That time you used eight cans of shaving cream to fill Joe Sully’s locker after he cheated on Stacy,” I lied, a grin tugging at my lips.

Her laughter burst out of her, loud and obnoxious, just like it used to be. “Oh my God, I forgot about that! He was so mad, he couldn’t even see straight.”

“Mad at me,” I reminded her. “Because I took the fall for you.”