Page 33 of The Hometown Heartbreaker

“Thanks again.” I stepped out into the chilly night, the damp air immediately curling around my ankles, and closed the door with a gentle click. I glanced back once, and saw Gio’s silhouette in the driver’s seat, his head bowed in what I would assume was disappointment, although it looked like he was saying a prayer.

I took a deep breath and climbed the steps to the little guest cabin. I opened the door and paused at the threshold. When I looked back down the long drive, I saw Gio’s taillights turn at the main gate. I couldn’t help but notice the illumination of the main house, windows blazing against the inky black night sky like a beacon of golden light, a living diorama of the perfect family I’d never quite belonged to. It looked like some kind of fairytale—one I was only allowed to visit as a guest, never a resident. That’s how I’d always felt at the Lockhart Ranch, no matter how much Selma, Chuck, and Dawson’s brothers had tried to make me feel like family.

All my life I felt like an outsider looking in. Even at Buddy’s, I never felt like I really belonged, especially after my mom got sick and then was gone. I felt like an inconvenience more than anything else. I do have some memories of being close to my mom, but when she was sick, which was a lot of the time, I just needed to let her rest and stay away from her.

The only time I ever felt truly accepted was with Dawson. When I was with him, I never felt out of place or on the edges of things. It was one of the biggest things that had attracted me to him. His roots. His stability. He was my anchor in every storm, until he was the storm that is.

Trying to shake off those thoughts, I turned my attention to my surroundings to try and ground myself in the present. The cabin smelled like cedar and fresh linens. This was the cabin that I’d lost my virginity in. I wasn’t sure if Dawson had arranged for me to stay in it in hopes that I’d remember, or if it was just a coincidence. The place had definitely been upgraded since I’d been there as a teen when the ranch had more of a rustic vibe, now it was luxury. A king bed with one of those fake-fur throws, a stone fireplace that flickered on with a wall switch, even a little sitting area with an espresso machine.

After kicking off my shoes, the silence pressed in on me, a little too full after an evening of loud voices and clattering glasses at Cupid’s Arrow. I wandered from room to room, aimless and restless, picking at stray threads on the plush towels and reading the labels on the spa-sized shampoo bottles. I had this stupid nervous energy twisting through me, as if I’d just run a marathon instead of sitting in a bar all night actively avoiding speaking to the one person I actually wanted to talk to.

I checked my phone—two new messages, neither from Dawson. One was Abby Baxter saying it was good to see me, and the other was from Peter.

Out of all my friends growing up, I’d have to say I was probably closest to Abby. We’d bonded over the fact that we both lost our moms at a young age. She told me tonight that it felt like we’d Freaky Friday’d our lives.

Growing up, she’d always talked about wanting to move to New York, and I always talked about wanting to stay in Valentine Bay, run my family farm, get married, and settle down. She stayed in our hometown, was running her own business, and was engaged to be married. I moved to New York and had no prospects of settling down any time soon.

Case in point, Peter. I’d dated him for nearly a year and was in the process of breaking things off. He wasn’t taking it well. Or at least not giving up easily. I found that happened a lot with men who were used to getting their way, or who weren’t accustomed to rejection. I’d told him in no uncertain terms it was over, but it was like his brain couldn’t compute that someone would no longer be interested in him.

I set my phone down and tried to clear my mind and meditate. Lorenzo, my Uncle Ronnie’s partner used to do guided meditation, and whenever I felt over-stimulated or stressed, I did my best to follow his lead. Unfortunately, I sucked at it. My mind wandered to the girl talk I’d indulged in at the bar tonight.

The conversation at Cupid’s Arrow replayed in my mind, warped out of proportion by the silence of the guest cabin. I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled my knees up, hugging them tight, trying to squeeze some sense or comfort out of myself. Still, the words kept coming back to me—what Abby, Gen, and Ella had said, not in a single unguarded confession but in the little half-truths and loaded glances that women use when they’re protecting a friend. Growing up, I used to think the Lockhart brothers were more myth than men, like they were genetically engineered by the gods and set loose on the world to break hearts and then just keep walking, even in elementary school.

Dawson most of all. The oldest, the one who always knew the rules and how to bend them. The first to ride the wildest colt, the first to jump the highest fence, and—according to legend—the first to claim more than a few small-town girls’ first kisses under those old-growth oaks at the edge of the ranch’s horse pastures. In middle school, I’d been flattered when he picked me to be his girlfriend. I’d felt special every day, right up until the day it all fell apart.

But apparently, I wasn’t the last girl he made feel that way, or even the last in a very long, meticulously curated line. According to everything I’d heard tonight, he’d more than lived up to the “heartbreaker” moniker stamped on his letterman jacket at seventeen as a joke, but was apparently a warning label. Since I left, he’d apparently dated every single age-appropriate woman within a hundred-mile radius, including, but not limited to, Ella herself. They dated briefly five years prior. The way Gen had said it—“you’d think he was working the census”—made everyone laugh, but there was a nervousness beneath it too, like they were all waiting for me to react, to confirm that I wasn’t as destroyed by it as I maybe should have been.

I tried to imagine it: all those first dates at the Doyle’s Crab Shack, the slow dances at Harvest Festival, the inevitable parade of heartbreak and awkward run-ins at the grocery store, the lingering eye contact at the farmer’s market when Dawson strode in with his dog and his unshakable confidence and acted like nothing had ever gone wrong in his entire life. I pictured him with Ella, with her effortless beauty and easy laugh, and I could almost see it. I could see how simple it might have been for him to slip into someone else’s arms and build a new story from scratch, just like he’d built fences and barns and a future out of the unforgiving land.

But then I thought about the way he’d looked at me tonight—like he was starving, but also like he was angry at himself for still being hungry—and I wondered if he’d ever really let himself feel anything at all. Maybe all those dates were just more distractions, more proof that even after all this time, he was running from the same storm I was.

The thought made me feel special, in a way that was both pathetic and thrilling. I’d never wanted to be the girl who pined away for someone who didn’t pine back, but I also didn’t want to be the kind of person who pretended she was numb when really she was just bruised all the way through. I remembered the last time I saw Dawson before I left, the sick tension in his jaw, the way he’d refused to look me in the eye. Back then, I’d convinced myself it was guilt, but maybe it had just been self-preservation for both of us. Maybe we were just two people who didn’t know how to stop wanting each other, and so we did the only thing we could: we burned everything down and ran away from the ashes.

I wondered if he ever thought about me at all, or if I was just one more ghost haunting the ranch, a memory he’d boxed up and put away in the attic with all the other artifacts he accumulated in his life. I wondered if, when he ran his fingers over the smooth grain of a new fence post or surveyed the land from the back of a horse, he remembered the way we used to ride out together in the blue gold light of late summer, racing each other down the vineyards until our legs shook with the effort. I wondered if he ever stood at the edge of the creek and thought about the time we jumped in fully clothed, on a dare from Damon, and laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe. Or if he’d buried it all in the same place he’d buried whatever it was that kept him from calling me, from apologizing, from trying.

It was a dangerous line of thinking, but I couldn’t stop. I let my head drop back onto the pillow and stared up at the darkened ceiling, feeling the old familiar ache set in. I told myself I didn’t care about his dating history, that it didn’t matter if he’d moved on or not, that I was only here for a few days and then I’d be gone again, back to New York and my real life, where I was no one’s ghost and no one’s heartbreak. But every time I tried to let it go, it stuck in my mind like a splinter: the idea of him with someone else, the idea of him not being haunted at all. It was like there was a version of the story where the pain had all been mine alone, and I had never once considered the possibility that the scale might tip the other way.

My phone vibrated with a message, and my heart jumped into my throat. I grabbed it and saw another message from Peter telling me he needed to speak to me face-to-face.

I didn’t know why I expected Dawson to be texting me. Even when we were together, he wasn’t a texter. He was never the guy who poured his guts out in words. Maybe part of me was grasping at straws for proof that tonight had happened the way I experienced it. If he messaged me, then I would know I wasn’t delusional, and the charge between us was real and not just something I’d conjured out of nostalgia and cheap whiskey.

Gio’s text he’d sent letting me know he was off work was the third down on my screen, a silent reminder of what I could have chosen: comfort, history, simple friendship. But I could never do that to Dawson. Even though his actions had caused our breakup and he’d clearly moved on, I could never date his best friend. That would just be too weird. I put the phone back down and I flipped on the fireplace for ambiance, plugged the phone into my charger on the nightstand, and flopped onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling beams and fan, counting blade’s rotation hoping it would calm me.

The longer I lay there, the more it felt like the walls were closing in, so I got up and started pacing. Once, twice, then a dozen times from the window to the tiny kitchenette. I pulled open the fridge, found it crammed with sparkling water and those tiny cartons of half-and-half, and smiled to myself. Selma probably stocked it herself—she was always making sure everyone else was taken care of. I grabbed a can, popped the tab, took a single sip, then left it sweating on the counter. Nothing could touch the thirst I had tonight.

I wandered to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face, trying to study my own reflection. My skin was flushed, eyes a little glassy. I looked like a shell of myself, the girl who used to live in this town, drive these backroads, sneak kisses with Dawson behind the barn after chores. I didn’t recognize her, and I didn’t know if I missed her or not.

I unzipped my jeans and peeled them off, feeling the fatigue in every muscle as I pulled my shirt over my head. My clothes smelled like bar smoke and citrus, like the inside of a teenage dream gone sour. I tossed them into the hamper and stepped into the shower stall, turning the handle as far hot as it would allow. The water hammered down, steaming up the glass, the mirrors and my lungs. I stood there for a long time, arms wrapped around myself, forehead pressed to the cool tile, letting the spray raise goosebumps all along my arms and legs. I scrubbed my skin until it tingled, I washed my hair twice, stubbornly, as if I could rinse out everything I’d ever done wrong by sheer repetition.

But nothing washed away the way Dawson’s voice still echoed in my ears, the way his knuckles had grazed my wrist at the bar, or the way he’d looked at me across the heads of his brother and best friend—a look that felt like falling, like every rational bone in my body dissolving into want. It didn’t matter how many times I tried to convince myself otherwise: I was still that girl, the one who would have done anything for him, and maybe still would.

When I finally turned off the water, the silence was immediate, absolute. I toweled off, rubbing a little too hard, as if I could sandpaper myself into something new. I twisted my hair into a knot and shrugged into sweats and an old NYU t-shirt—one I’d snagged from Uncle Ronnie in New York before he moved to Florida. It still smelled faintly of the detergent my uncle used, all lavender and lemon, and the scent was so familiar it stung.

The little cabin was quieter than I remembered. The logs that made the walls were so thick they muffled every outside noise, turning the world into a soft, padded cocoon. I wandered from room to room, opening cabinets, touching the spines of the stacked books on the built-in shelves, smoothing my thumb over the worn leather of the armchair. There were touches of Selma everywhere—extra throw pillows, a half-melted pillar candle, a basket of magazines tied with twine. Even the fridge was full: a pitcher of cucumber water, mason jars of pre-cooked oats, and a tray of chocolate-dipped strawberries. The kindness of it made my chest ache.

I paced, restless, as if the cabin were a cage and I was trapped within it, unable to settle. I checked my phone again, as if by some trick of will I could conjure a message from him, a sign, anything. There was nothing new—just Peter’s increasingly desperate texts and a text from Janine that she’d email me in the morning.

I set the phone on the nightstand, screen down, and tried to focus on breathing, on letting my mind go blank. But the memories didn’t stop pressing in. I heard the echoes of laughter from the bar, the clink of glasses, the way Gen and Ella had eyed me sideways when Dawson’s name came up. I thought about how many women he’d been with since our last night together, and tried not to care, but the knowledge stung like a mouthful of salt.