AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He doesn’t need to tell me whosheis. I already know. The whole fucking town knows about the girl who tore my heart to shreds because I’ve never been the same. We were the town’sitcouple. Hell, even at sixteen, only a few short months after officially becoming an item, we had Bessy from Blushing’s grocery market and Julie who runs the town’s dance school planning our eventual wedding.
Blair fucking Wilder—the ghost who will forever haunt me.
She can’t be back.
Keeping my gaze locked on the box, I shove it onto the shelf, holding my back toward Oxley, not wanting him to see how the blood has drained from my face or the way my fingers have dug into the side of the cardboard. “So?”
“So?” he scoffs, and I can imagine the way his eyes bulge out of his head. “She’s back.Blair is in Blushing, just down the fucking road in that old cottage of her nana’s, and after the past six years of pining for her, that’s your response?”
I shrug, trying to hide the agony ripping through my chest. “What did you hope I’d say? That I’d run over there and beg on my knees for her to take me back?” I bend down and grab another box, shoving it onto the shelf with far too much enthusiasm that I hear the contents inside rattling around. “She left six years ago without a single fucking thought for the people she left behind and hasn’t been back since. She’s not interested in having me walk back into her life, and in case you haven’t figured it out, I’m not interested in having her chew me up and spit me out again.”
Oxley scoffs, crossing his arms over his chest before leaning back against the drywall. “You’re not even going to pretend to care?”
“Don’t see why I should.”
He shakes his head, and I feel the judgment wafting off him in waves. “You know why she’s here, right?” he questions.
I roll my eyes, grabbing another box. Of course I know why she’s here. Does he think I’m a fucking idiot? Hell, I’ve been expecting her to come waltzing back into town sooner or later, and honestly, considering it’s already been a month since Olivia passed, I’m disappointed. Blair didn’t even make the effort to fly in for her funeral. But that leaves Olivia’s estate, and assuming there’s nothing else in this small town to entice her to return home, I can only assume that’s why she’s here.
The question is, how the fuck does Oxley know?
I turn my gaze on his blue eyes, eyes so similar to mine that it messes with my head sometimes. Hell, we could be brothers . . . if he wasn’t such a pretty boy, of course. “Of course I know why she’s here,” I mutter. “But how the fuck do you know?”
I know Blushing is a small town and all, but it’s not small enough that everyone shits in each other’s pockets. Oxley knows of Blair through me, and while I’ve made an effort to look out for Olivia these past few years, especially after Blair’s pop died, Oxley never really had much to do with her. Though the handful of times they spoke, Olivia wouldn’t be able to stop bragging about her hotshot granddaughter living out in the big city and conquering the world.
“I, uhhh . . .” A sheepish expression crosses his face, and as he cringes, I narrow my stare in silent warning. “I got a call from Sarah. She said a friend was stranded at the airport and needed a lift back into town. I was close by so of course I picked her up, and it wasn’t until we were halfway back to Blushing that I realized who she was.”
Clenching my jaw, I nod before letting my gaze fall back to the boxes, and it seems the more information he relays, the harder my heart booms in my chest. “So, she’s only here for a little while, then?”
Oxley shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t think she’s thought that far,” he says, and I quickly realize it was the wrong question to ask because the second the words come out of his mouth, a small beam of hope pulses in the pit of my stomach—a beam of hope that I need to crush as soon as I can.
“Cool,” I murmur, feigning indifference, but fuck, I know he doesn’t buy it. Apart from Blair, Ox is the only other person who’s ever been able to read me.
“Uh-huh,” he says, choosing not to call me out on my bullshit as he picks an invisible piece of lint from his stupid flannel jacket. “I just figured I’d warn you instead of letting you get blindsided when you inevitably run into her in town. You know, because we both know if that happened, you’d stand there gawking at her like a fucking idiot. But now that you know, you can practice your pleasantly surprised reaction in the mirror like a normal hung-up loser.”
“I’m not hung up on her.”
“Uh-huh. And I’m not my mother’s greatest disappointment,” he says, trying to make some stupid point. “Look, I’ve gotta go, but do yourself a favor and go say hi. Who knows? There might just be something still there worth exploring. And if not, you might just get the answers to the questions you’ve been needing to ask for six long years. Hell, you might even get the closure you’ve needed to move on.”
I scoff and shove another box onto the shelf. He couldn’t be more wrong.
Me move on from Blair Wilder? Fucking impossible. I’d have better luck trying to shoot myself into outer space using a slingshot and a homemade propeller. But he’s right about one thing—I have a shitload of unanswered questions, and every one of them revolves around how the hell she could walk away so easily.
Ox makes his way toward the door and pauses, glancing back and demanding my attention. “She looked fucking good, Nick,” he tells me. “Gorgeous. You’d be a fool not to at least try.”
With those parting words, he’s gone, leaving me to stew in a world of self-destruction. I finish stacking all the boxes in easy-to-manage rows for when John inevitably rearranges everything late tonight. I’ll have to be sure to stop by in the morning just to make sure he doesn’t need a damn ambulance.
After striding out of Hardin’s Hardware, I drop my toolbox into the bed of my red pickup before driving myself home. It’s fucking lonely here. I bought this property for me and Blair back when she was in her final year of college. It was going to be a surprise, our chance to start our lives together and build a home for us to raise a family, but she was gone before I could even tell her about it.
I still went ahead and built a home—a fucking brilliant one if you ask me—but it’s always been tainted by the ghost of her. Of what could have been, whatshouldhave been.
It took nearly four years to build, but the two-story modern farmhouse home is everything I dreamed it could be. I live on the outskirts of town with enough property to do whatever the hell I want. High ceilings, open living space, a roaring fireplace with a wraparound porch so I can take in the expansive view from every corner of my home. But no matter how beautiful or elegant it is, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s the loneliest house in Blushing.
After getting myself fed and showered after a long day, I find myself sitting out on my deck, my gaze locked on the snow-covered hills in the distance, the moonlight barely casting enough of a glow to see. During the day, I’d be able to see the lake that runs along the border of my property. It’s frozen solid by now, and if I were the kind to care about the usual Christmas traditions, I’d have figured out how to smooth it out and break out my old hockey skates from high school.
My knee bounces, and it’s impossible to keep still.
Ever since Ox muttered those two words, I’ve been a mess.She’s back.
