There it is, the trailer Calum asked Malachi Turner for when they were newlyweds. It had been meant to be their marital home. Rett coughs at the memory of moldy carpet and rotting wood. She hated fixing up the trailer. Leaving for college had given her a welcome reprieve from the efforts. The rest became history.Theywere history. Are.
Despite her better judgment, she walks closer and examines the outside.
It’s in impeccable shape, if a bit stained from the elements. The porch leading to the front door is solid, and no rust eats at the metal of the door handle. Her fingers wrap around the latch, pulling the door open. The hinges squeak quietly, and she draws in a steadying breath before crossing the threshold.
She’s walked into a time capsule. That’s the only explanation. As she stands in the doorway, her mind recalls the first time she and Calum had stepped foot into the trailer. The carpet absorbs the impact from her shoes as she walks down the hallway.
“You did good,” she says, her voice quiet from where she stands in the doorway to the bedroom, and footsteps shuffle behind her.
“Yeah. I did it for us.”
“Calum, please…” She closes her eyes, pressing her palm to the wood paneling. Calum moves closer. “Please don’t do this, Cal. Just sign the papers so I can get out of this dead-end town.”
He lets out a soft, strangled sound. “Why? Rett, what do you really have out there that I can’t give you? What does your fiancé have that I don’t?”
“A future!” she shouts as she whirls to face him. Her soon-to-be ex-husband—if he will only do what she’s been begging him todo. “He has so much ahead of him, and so do I. This town can’t provide what we got.”
“It’s got me, though.”
“Cal—”
His face screws up; his eyes darken, widen, fill with a desperate sort of gleam. “Let me show you, Rett. Let me show you there’s still something between us,please.”
Before she can answer, his lips meet hers. His hands cradle her jaw, hold her still, as he crashes their mouths together. Heat sizzles up her spine at the contact—much the same as it always did before. The kiss is graceless, too hard and desperate and demanding, and she has a fiancé. She has someone waiting at home for her.
Home isn’t Oak Creek. It never will be again.
Rett yanks away from Calum, hands scrabbling against his chest before she manages to put inches between them. “I’mengaged.”
“But still married to me,” he points out. His voice lowers as he pleads, “Tell me you didn’t feel something still. You know there’s still something between us.”
“I felt nothin’.” The words slip from Rett’s lips as easy as water, crushing her heart beneath its weight. “We’reover, Cal. Just sign the papers.”
She leaves before he can reply. The words still sing as she storms her way through the woods; she takes a second to kick the tire of his old pickup before going on her way. The mild violence does nothing to ease the ache, the fire, in her chest. Her stomach roils at the fact that Calum’s kiss elicited something from her. Some sense ofrightthat is so wrong.
He will never be right again.
twenty
Calum
CALUM WATCHES RETT DISAPPEAR down the path. His heart follows her, pleads for her to turn around, but he’s frozen where he stands on the porch. The dim shadows swallow her whole, and he finally blinks. A wet trail snakes its way down his cheek, and he closes his eyes to stem the tide of tears.
He can still feel her lips beneath his, the curve of her jaw between his hands. The heat emanating from her body in the summer morning. There was no cherry lip balm or the smell of coconut. He doesn’t recognize her silver-rimmed glasses.
She might as well be a stranger.
Calum drags in a ragged breath.
A stranger, that’s all Rett is now. A stranger just like she’d been when he first came to Oak Creek when he was seventeen.
No,worsethan a stranger, not like then. Because he never knew her love then. Now…
Now he knows what it’s like to fall asleep next to her, hear her sleepy giggle at four in the morning as they sneaked back in through his bedroom window, taste cherry and coffee and pot all at once. He knows what she looks like when she cries. He knows—knew—all this.
Now he knows nothing of her. She’s not his anymore.
Calum loathes the admission.
