Aston, unfortunately, didn’t feel the same.
I felt blindsided by both the breakup and the revelation that she was always planning to move halfway across the country. Suddenly, the adorable little girl who grew up following my every step and who had effortlessly stolen my heart with her sweet, cheerful, innocent demeanor seemed like a total stranger who never cared about me the way I cared about her.
It was easy enough to argue with her when she said we weren’t a good match.
It was impossible to fight against her when she told me she wasn’t happy being with me and needed a change.
I wanted to tell her we just needed some time apart. I had faith in my ability to change her mind and prove to her that we belonged together. But the look in her eyes when she ended things was definite. This wasn’t a rash decision on her part. It was something she gave a lot of thought to and she had clearly made up her mind.
She didn’t want to be with me anymore, and I was left adrift and discombobulated.
Heartbreak wasn’t something I had a lot of experience with.
I was the kind of guy who typically got what I wanted and excelled at whatever I put my mind to. I graduated at the top of my class in high school, got into my first choice of college, and was in the starting line-up of my first college football game. My parents had a wall full of trophies and accolades I’d earned over the years. They were always proud of what I’d accomplished, even though they had never pushed me to be perfect. All they wanted was for me to be happy, so they supported me regardless of how hard I pushed myself.
I was popular and well-liked among my peers. As one of the oldest members of my tight-knit inner circle of relatives and longtime family friends, I was often the voice of reason and the most responsible member of the group, even though we were all similar in age and life experience. I never had a problem getting close to members of the opposite sex, but there was only one I wanted to keep and call mine.
But she no longer wanted me, and I wasn’t sure what to do with myself now.
It was my first time being rejected, and I could admit I wasn’t handling it well… at all.
I glanced down at my phone, which had been ringing and pinging with messages nonstop for the last several hours. I wanted to turn the damn thing off, but there was a part of me that refused to believe I’d been dumped, so I waited for each call to show my ex’s info. She never popped up on the screen, but my mom called close to twenty times. My dad called no less than ten. And my best friend, who also happened to be my cousin, was sending a text every fifteen minutes like clockwork.
I avoided them all, but eventually, the one and only person I couldn’t ignore even if I wanted to called, and I finally caved and answered the phone.
“Ry Archer, where in the hell are you? Mom and Dad are worried sick about you.” My little sister’s voice was shaky and sounded like she’d been crying. She was normally a pretty tough cookie but could be overly dramatic and emotional. Part of that was because she was a teenage girl. But a huge chunk of it was that she took after our father in pretty much every single way except in her appearance. She looked just like our mother, with her white-blond hair and pretty green eyes.
However, she was reckless and rebellious just like our old man. She was as outspoken and opinionated as he was. She was as bold and as colorful as he was. She was fearless in everything the same way he was. And she felt everything in the same extreme way he did. Both of us grew up knowing without a doubt how much we were loved and cherished by our parents, but especially by our dad. The opposite was also true. Whenever we disappointed him or did something he didn’t approve of, we felt his displeasure down to our bones. It was a lot to take in and balance out, but luckily our quiet and mostly even-keeled mother kept our household and our father in check. I wished I took after her the way Daire took after Dad, but I was kind of the odd man out in our family.
I’d heard more than once from my grandparents and my uncle that my personality and behavior were almost a mirror image of my dad’s twin brother, who was no longer with us. It was a sore spot with my dad whenever someone made the comparison, but he didn’t deny that there were many times that I reminded him of his twin brother. No matter how much time had gone by since he lost his twin, my dad still very much missed his other half and felt the loss of not having him in his life. Sometimes my mom told me stories about the two of them when they were growing up, and I could sense the similarities in myself and my uncle. For so many reasons, it sucked he died so young, only one of which was I had no one to really relate to in my family. I was kind of the darkest sheep in a flock that was already mostly shades of black and gray.
I sighed and squeezed the steering wheel between my hands.
I loved my little sister with everything in me. We were extraordinarily close and rarely kept secrets from each other. We were close enough in age that it had often been the two of us against the world, no matter what. She was my favorite person and my most trusted confidant. But she was also my ex’s best friend. They were only a few months apart in age, and where one went, the other often followed. When I first started showing interest in Aston Wheeler, my sister was totally against the idea of us being anything more than good friends. She told me she never wanted to be caught between the two of us. She never wanted to have to pick a side or have to keep something from either one of us. I waved the concerns off because I was sure Aston and I were meant to be. I’d grown up surrounded by true love and examples of young love maturing into happy, healthy, long-lasting marriages. I thought staying with my first love through thick and thin might be the only way I might manage to take after my parents.
I didn’t want to think that it was possible that Daire knew what would happen to my relationship before I did. Or that she kept something so huge from me. But any way I looked at it, she had to have known things were going south before I did.
“I’m going for a drive. Tell Mom and Dad not to worry. I’ll be fine.” I would be. Eventually.
My sister sighed on the other end of the line, and I could hear her pacing around. She was the type who was constantly in motion. She never sat still, and her mind was always going a mile a minute. I knew if I didn’t convince her I was okay, she would venture out aimlessly into the night trying to track me down, even though she had no idea where I was or how long I’d been in my truck.
“You’ve been driving for the last four hours? Are you even in Colorado anymore?” Daire’s voice rose sharply.
I looked at the clock on the dashboard and blinked when I realized how much time had passed. I was still in Colorado, but just barely. I was almost at the southern border. I didn’t have a plan when I climbed in my truck and started to drive. Subconsciously, I started heading toward the one person no one would ever suspect me of turning to when I was hurting.
“Give me some time, Daire.” I wanted to close my eyes and make the world disappear until I could fully deal with the empty ache in the center of my chest. Since I was driving, that wasn’t an option, so all I could do was shake my head and blink my eyes, which alternately felt like they were wet with hot tears and yet still dry as the desert. “I have to get my head on right before I try to talk to anyone, especially you, about what went down today.”
She made a distressed sound, and I could clearly imagine her putting her brightly painted nails to her mouth. She always wore a bunch of rings and bracelets that clinked and banged together, making so much noise. My little sister was anything but subtle, and you could always hear her coming. She knew how to make an entrance, but she also knew when it was time to back down and fade into the background. She knew all my buttons and when to push them. I would always answer her when she called me, but I had limits to how much I would let her poke and prod at me when I was hurting.