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“Oh, you drive my boy nuts,” Connor had laughed when I finally got the courage to ask him about it one day, “Paisley, there are only other girls around because you stopped talking to him years ago. I think it will always be you even if you don’t want it to be.”
As I sail through town and past North Motors, his words haunt me. I always wanted it to be me. For a brief time, it was. We had our shot, and we took it, but we fumbled. I decided when we couldn’t recover that we were never meant for the end game, like Connor and Hailee who just celebrated a decade together with their two babies and his Superbowl ring. We were never going to go the distance, and I guess sometimes that is just how it goes.
I tell myself I am over it, I am not here to remember the good old days.
But I slow the jeep down as I see the dealership Bran owns and manages. A dozen feelings twist up inside of me. Longing for a life I thought I would be living now, with him. Anger at both of us for giving up. Fear that I will see him, and we won’t even recognize one another. We bridged the distance once before, and we fell in love, but I know it won’t ever be that way again. As I pull away from the lot, swiping at my tears, I know he is not the only one to blame.
Once we finished college, I booked a one-way ticket out of Harmony Hollow. I loved it here, but I wanted to see the world. Art was my love, my passion, and I wanted to see it in all forms. I wanted to go to France and Italy and visit the Louvre and the Uffizi. I wanted to see street art in New York and Brazil and I wanted him there with me.
Bran never wanted to leave, even if it was to live a life with me. His father handed down the dealership to him even though he admitted to me he never wanted it. He wanted to play ball alongside Connor. When he did not get drafted and scouts told him he was not the best on the field, he accepted what he had was good enough and he gave up on any other dreams.
Including dreams of the two of us.
“It is over, you ended it five years ago, Paisley,” I remind myself again.
We went our separate ways and started new lives. I never took his calls or read his letters or came back for visits. I left town and never planned to come back again. Not after everything we had put each other through. I hoped to never see him again, but that was impossible, and I knew it.
Not only were our very best friends husband and wife—but we were the godmother and godfather to their firstborn. The last time I saw Bran was at the baby’s first birthday four years ago. They threw a party at their place and led me to believe Bran would never come out to their place in The Pillars for an infant's first birthday. I figured I was safe. We were all wrong.
We were both there but only one of us had gone alone. He was there with a woman who had once been a close friend of mine. The woman I walked in on him giving his virginity to in college. A woman who had baited me with that fact, and their ongoing flirtations for years. Seeing him with someone else on his arm should not have hurt me as badly as it had, but seeing him with her, and there with our friends, it had been the final knife in my heart.
I told myself I would never come back here again. Not for birthday parties or weddings or funerals. Never again. Whatever life I had led here with Bran, with Hailee and Connor, it had ended a long time ago. I loved all of them when we were here. Once I left and Connor and Hailee spent most their time gone for his games, there was no reason to come back.
I pretended for the past five years that I never wanted to come back. That I never wanted to open those letters he sent, or take his calls, or see what he was doing with his life. That I was fine with us closing the door on us and all we had been once. But the raw spot on my heart tells me different—and so does the battered tattoo on my hand.
I can tell myself I erased my past with Bran, erased what we were and what he made me feel—but that tattoo on my hand is always there to remind me of what I can never erase.
I marked him on my skin because he was marked on my soul—and it is not a mark I can wash away.
CHAPTER 2
Bran
* * *
“She is home, Bran,” Hailee’s voice repeats—because I dropped the phone before I foolishly asked her to repeat herself.
Paisley Story is back home.
Mumbling something to Hailee, I end the call and sit down at my desk. Setting my phone down before I break it in half, I take a calming breath. Closing my eyes, I lace my fingers together at my desk, bowing my head against them. My chest thuds beneath my expensive suit, my tie feeling too tight at my throat.
Fuck a calming breath, I need a goddamn drink.
Pushing away from my desk, I go to the window overlooking the lot. Outside it is breezy and warm with a bright buttery sun in the sky. In here it feels like a storm cloud is following me, threatening to ruin my good day. It’s a Friday and I was going to head up to The Pillars this weekend for a visit with my best friend and his family.
Now I know I cannot do that.
Not when I know Paisley is back in town. Hell, I don’t want to leave my damn office for fear running into her. Not after last time. Last time I blew it like I always seem to blow it with her. It was different though, and we both knew it. I did not just stutter-step the last time we saw one another—I fumbled and could not recover.
“Just did not want to be alone,” my voice from that night plays in my head, just above the sound of our hearts fracturing.
“Me either, Bran,” her voice was broken, and her stunning hazel eyes brimmed with tears, “but here I am, alone. Without you. Without anyone.”
Her words felt so final, not just for the two of us, but for her. As if she was telling me she felt alone because she wanted to be alone. Because after me wrecking things between us, she could not even think of being with someone else. I can’t say I felt bad about that, because after her, I couldn’t really be with anyone else either
Even if I pretended I could for her sake.
Showing up to my godson’s first birthday with another woman, knowing she may be there, it was a dick move. It was more about protecting her than myself, even if I said otherwise. I wanted her to go find the life she had been looking for when she left and never looked back. Even if it killed me, I wanted her to have whatever she wanted, without me getting in her way.
