Page 94 of The Promises We Were Never Meant To Keep

“People say you loved him. That he loved you more than anything.”

“Holt loved hockey, Owen. Hockey to him is soccer to you.”

“I don’t know.” Owen lifts a shoulder again. “I think if I loved a girl like people say Holt loved you, I’d probably pick her.”

“Who talks about how Holt loved me?” I peer at him. “It was Grandma, wasn’t it?”

I love Elise, but right now…

“Not just Grandma. Kids at school talk about you two. Especially this week since he came back. Their parents remember, you know?” Owen’s eyes, dark and hard like his grandpa’s—like Holt’s—stare at the garage door. “He’s famous so everyone talks about him.”

Sometimes I hate small towns.

“We were kids, bud.” I stroke his thick hair, dark again, like his grandpa’s. Like Holts. But he looks like Tate, too—in the way he carries himself. In the good that pours out from the innermost parts of him to brighten the dull in this world. I sniffle back the sting in my nose. “It was a long time ago.”

“Yeah, but how did Dad win?”

“They weren’t fighting for me, Owen,” I say gently. “Life just—it’s how our cards fell, I guess.”

“But they hated each other.”

“Your father never hated Holt.” It hurts to think that. Hurts to think that Tate was out there on that ice because it was something he’d done so many times with Holt.

Every year, Tate would go out ice fishing. And every year he’d write Holt a letter about everything Owen had done. About who Owen was, and the man Tate felt he was turning into. About how much he loved him. How proud he was of his son, his boy.

I didn’t know that’s what he was doing until he died, and I found the box of letters buried in the back of his side of the closet, behind the old work pants I’d never been able to talk him into tossing.

He never sent the letters, but I think it helped to ease Tate’s guilt to write them. To write out in black and white the wonderful son we’d created. The boy who wouldn’t exist—not the way we knew him—if I’d made another choice.

And Holt wouldn’t be the man he is now, either. The truth is, if I’d made another choice, Holt would have chosen us. That scares me more than anything else. Playing out the future that could have been, and the way it would have soured.

I shake my head. “I was with Holt for a long time. You’re right when you say that I loved him, and he loved me. But we were kids. Some kids have really big dreams, Owen. The kind of dreams that power everything they do. Holt was one of those kids. He left to chase that big dream, but I wanted to stay here. When Holt was gone…” I shrug. “Tate was there. He’d always been my friend and we were always close in the way that friends are. But we grew closer. Your father confessed that he’d always loved me, but that he’d kept his space for Holt. But when Holt left, and I decided I was staying…” I drift off. “Well, you know the rest of our story.”

“That’s why he hated Dad?” Owen asks. “Because you chose Dad over him?”

“I chose life in Rubble Ridge.” Everything inside my chest hurts right now. “It’s complicated, Owen.”

Owen nods. “Yeah.”

I shove from the car, done talking about a past that has haunted me for years. Sleep is already going to come difficult considering the over-exposure to a certain grump that I’ve suffered today. I don’t need to make it harder on myself than it already is.

11

ARE WE DOING THIS?

APRIL 2023 – PRESENT DAY

“All right.” Andy throws her hands up. “We’re two glasses of wine in and no one has mentioned a thing about Holt Wilder being back in town.”

I blink. Shy gives Andy big eyes, tilting her head just slightly to the side as if to say, ‘for real?’

Andy, being Andy, just shrugs. “I drove all the way from the city for the scoop. I’ve downed two glasses of wine, and I’ve got a night on a lumpy couch to look forward to and no scoop to make it worth it.” Andy pins her eyes on me. “Give it to me, babe.”

I groan. “There’s nothing to give. He’s—he’s kind of a dick.”

“Do you blame him?” Quinn eyes me over the rim of her glass. Her other hand rests on Willow’s thigh.

The two are like yin and yang. Light and dark. Yet they fit seamlessly together. You’d never know it by Willow’s sugary sweet appearance, but the woman is a shark. Her mind is dagger sharp and that’s why she’s the top real-estate lawyer in town. The city wept when she left. Seriously. But she wanted a slower pace to life. A view to unwind with after the grind of her day.