Once we were both ready, and Madison had a robe covering her surprise outfit, I sank to her bed, my stomach clenching in a terrible way as my thoughts spun. “Madi . . . what would you do to be with Hunter?” At her impish look, I tossed a pillow at her, a huff dancing across my lips. “I mean be with him. Like, in a relationship. Always.”
“Anything,” she said immediately, not even taking time to breathe or blink. “I’m marrying him someday.”
“I know.” The corners of my mouth lifted, but the action took effort. “You’ve been telling me that since the week we met.”
“Pretty sure I’ve been telling Hunter since the day we met,” she added, trying to sound amused but coming up short. “Why do you look so . . . not Savannah?”
“I have this feeling,”—I gestured to my stomach—“and I know it sounds super ridiculous and typical teenage drama, whatever. But I mean, I have a really strong feeling my parents will try to stop me from being with Beau. More than they already have.”
Madi worried her bottom lip as she studied me, looking all kinds of concerned and apologetic. “I might just think you’re crazy if I didn’t know your parents. But . . .”
“Yeah. But,” I said with a pathetic laugh. “After last summer and then how quickly they set all those rules tonight. And when they showed up here, I asked them if they would be doing all this if it was Philip Rowe I was dating instead of Beau. My dad said, ‘Do everyone a favor and find out.’”
Madison’s eyes went wide. “He didn’t.”
I just lifted my brows in response.
“What did you—but you aren’t going to, right?”
“What? No. Of course not,” I said quickly, shocked that she would even ask. “But then he said if not, what happens is up to me. And I had this feeling when he said it that he was threatening me. Not with more restrictions than they’re already trying to put on us, but—”
“With sending you away again,” Madison finished for me.
“Right.”
She looked to the side, her fingers twisting together in worry. After a while, she asked, “What are you gonna do?”
I don’t know, I don’t know.
“I—” A shocked breath ripped from me when knocking sounded on the window behind me, my heart taking off in a painful sprint as I turned and saw Hunter’s face. “Jesus.”
Madison giggled and rushed to the window, opening it soundlessly to let him in. Their mouths already fused together before he was fully in the room.
“Okay, okay,” I said softly as I hurried over to them in case their kissing led to something worse—like Hunter falling. “Let him get in first and let me get out.”
A low laugh left Hunter as he pressed another firm kiss to Madison before finishing climbing over the windowsill.
Madison grabbed my hand as I passed her. “See you soon?” But the squeeze of her hand and the way her eyebrows drew together in sympathy told me so much more.
She was sorry about my parents.
It would be okay.
Love you, I mouthed.
“Love you back,” she whispered.
Hunter glanced from her to me, then hurried to stop me before I could climb onto the large oak tree’s branches that were perfectly positioned outside the window. “Hey, I need to warn you . . .”
My stomach bottomed out.
My heart ached and twisted and reached for the boy I knew was waiting for me down below.
“What happened?” I asked, voice shallow.
“Beau’s in a bad way tonight.”
Hunter dragged the hand that wasn’t holding on to Madison through his hair, his face creasing apologetically. “When I got inside after y’all left, our parents were getting into it. Yours said that ours were trying to undermine their parenting—their rules and wishes for you.”
Embarrassment from the events of that night swirled through me so intensely that I felt sick from it.
“They got on Beau for dragging you into things he shouldn’t, for putting you in positions and situations you shouldn’t be in. Said he had you trapped in a toxic relationship. Told him if he cared about you at all, he’d let you go.”
My stare shifted to Madison, to the sorrow there that only scratched the surface of what I felt for Beau. With everything they said about him, with every horrible word said to him, it opened another wound, slowly bleeding me out.
I reached for the windowsill, but Hunter stopped me again. “Savannah, he punched a wall as he was leaving the kitchen. Your parents saw him do it.”
“Oh,” I breathed, my hand coming up to clench at my stomach as my soul begged to get to Beau.
“He hasn’t said a word all night.”
As soon as Hunter released my arm, I carefully swung my leg out onto the branch that rested just outside Madison’s window, then looked back at him. “What did your parents say?”
Hunter gave me a helpless look. “They were arguing, Savannah, they said a lot.”
“When mine told Beau to let me go.”
“They about lost it,” he said, the corner of his mouth lifting with pride. “Mom started yelling then, asking why Beau wasn’t good enough for you. Dad told them they should probably leave for the night if they were ‘gonna be spoutin’ that shit in his house.’”
A soft smile tugged at my lips. “Thanks, Hunt.”
He nodded and helped me out the rest of the way. “Be careful.”
I snorted my amusement as I deftly descended the thick branches that we’d been using for the past couple of years to sneak in and out of Madison’s room. For years before that, we’d climbed it just to prove our fearlessness. I could get down that tree in my sleep.
Especially when Beau Dixon was waiting for me at the bottom.
I jumped from the last branch to the ground and was immediately swept into a pair of warm, muscled arms. His hands curling tight against me and holding me close as he buried his face into my neck, breathing me in.
I wove my fingers through his hair and let my eyelids close as I felt his anger and pain clash with his relief. “I love you.”
“Why?”
My spirit wrenched at the self-loathing pouring from him and wrapping around that simple, terrible word. Leaning back to look into his darkened stare, I said, “Because you’re good and—”
A harsh breath fled from him as he looked away, his jaw straining.
“You are.”
“Savannah, the last thing I am is good.”
I pushed against his chest. “That is not true. I know your heart, and I see beneath that bear of a surface you show everyone else. You’re kind and patient and gentle.” I gripped his shirt in my hands to keep him as close as possible. “And the way you love me? The way you treat me? Beau, you are good.”
Disbelief rolled from him, his brows pulling low over his anguished stare. “You deserve the world,” he said, voice thick, then hurried to amend, “Everything. You deserve everything.”
His tone had acid rolling in my stomach and my arms falling heavily to my sides.
“And everyone knows I can’t give you that. That I’ll drag you down.”
“They’re wrong.”