AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I had a huge crush on him when I was a teenager.”
“Ohhh, forbidden love. Brother’s best friend is one of my favorite romance tropes.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Sorry. Sorry. Got lost in my writer’s brain again.” With a nod, she asks me to continue.
“Umm, well, my crush evaporated when he enlisted in the air force and barely came home. Made sense since his older sister moved a couple towns over and his parents followed. Though they did move back last year.” I stopped, taking a deep breath to fortify myself. “He’s back too.”
“Back with his parents?”
“No, likebackback. Back here, in town.”
“No way,” she drags out the words, totally stunned. “For good?”
“I’m assuming. He looked pretty cozy in his apartment. Settled.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
Giving her a bewildered look, I scrunch my lips together. “What are you talking about? Nothing. I’m not going to do anything. Just because Scott’s back home doesn’t mean I need to act on any of my”—one of my hands waves around as I look for the right word—“past crushes. That’s over and done with.”
“If you didn’t have a crush on him now, you’d never have brought him up,” Willa says with annoying accuracy.
Thankfully, I’m saved from having to respond when my mother hustles into the kitchen.
“What are you ladies talking about? Fill me up and fill me in,” she says, tapping a perfectly polished nail against an empty wineglass and giving me an expectant look.
“We’re talking about Elyssa’s childhood crush on Davis’s friend Scott.”
“Willa!” I cry.
“Oh boy, did she ever have a big crush on him,” my mother says at the same time.
My mouth opens in shock, my eyes darting back and forth between the two women I love the most—and I contemplate murder.
“Such an amazing thing he’s doing for those kids. Though it’s so sad what happened to his sister and her husband. I was talking to—”
“Wait. Go back. What happened to his sister?”
Mom blinks at me. She looks torn, like she’s deciding if she should backtrack or tell me the brutal truth. She puts her wineglass down and places a hand on my shoulder.
“Oh sweetheart, his sister and her husband died in a car accident a couple months ago. A drunk driver hit them and caused them to crash into a tree. Scott left his career in the air force to take over guardianship of the kids.”
I have to sit down. Blindly, I reach for a chair and pull it out. My entire body goes cold and I can feel my limbs begin to shake. How had I not known this?
As if reading my mind, Mom takes the chair beside me and continues. “Not many people in town know the full story—not yet at least—since Sara didn’t grow up here. But it’s only a matter of time. The town will rally behind him. Make sure those kids feel welcomed and loved.”
I nod, clinging to every word she says but lost in a haze of disbelief.
Recalling my memory of him from the other day, I begin to go over everything I’d seen and said. With this new knowledge, I’m able to take off the rose-colored glasses of a crushing girl and see Scott as he truly was that day.
He was incredibly handsome and fit, but there were also signs of stress I had ignored. The dark circles under his eyes, the strained smile he’d given me. The boxes in almost every corner. It hadn’t been crazy of me to think he was in a relationship, but I’d also jumped to my own conclusions. Trying to trick myself into believing my old feelings for him were long gone.
When really, they had always been simmering just below the surface.
“Shit,” I whisper, cradling my head in my hands. “That’s rough.”
“He’ll be okay,” Mom reassures me, giving my shoulder another pat. “The town will help him. He’ll find his way.”
