“Yet,” I agreed.
“Now, if county shows up at your wedding, I can’t help you there.”
A breath of a laugh bled free. “Understood.”
“Well, you sure have been busy,” Mr. Coty said as he stood and slid the packet back in my direction. “Getting this taken care of, preparing for a wedding, about to graduate, and I heard you had a meeting with my brother.”
I stilled as I closed my hand around the packet, my jaw tightening as I struggled to find something to say.
“Said he’s pretty confident this is gonna be great for the kids and you.”
I looked up, my brows drawing together in wonder and doubt. “Yeah?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” he said with a laugh. “You got the job, didn’t you?”
Lowering my head in a nod, I wondered why he wasn’t getting it because there was no doubt he’d already heard.
I’d gone to my old high school football coach, asking for a job since I was gonna need it. Something that paid more than the orchard and would provide for Savannah and me while we got the bed and breakfast up and going.
About shocked the hell out of me when he hadn’t hesitated in giving me a coaching position, saying, “Gonna need someone like you, helping me and learning all you can so I know we’ll be in good hands when I retire in a couple years.”
What hadn’t surprised me was the reaction of parents when word started spreading around town . . . and I didn’t even start working until this summer.
No one wanted the volatile Dixon near their kids, let alone in charge of them. They didn’t want someone who could come unhinged at any moment. Someone destructive.
“Yeah, but I dunno how long he’s gonna let me stay on.” I shrugged like it didn’t matter. “Or how long the Boosters will let him keep me on.”
“I wouldn’t listen to the town chitchat,” Mr. Coty said with a wave of his hand. “My brother said when you were doing anything with the team and when you were playing, you were a different kid. He said you were a leader. He thinks you’ll be a great leader for the school.”
I tapped the packet against my palm and started backing toward the door. “Appreciate that.”
He pointed at me. “Now, I’ll see you and Savannah back here in . . . when’s the wedding?”
“Three months.”
He let out a low whistle. “Probably the hardest thing you’ll ever do, keep something this big from her for that long,” he said with a laugh, but his words had a pit of ice and guilt opening up in my stomach.
I forced something that might’ve resembled a smile and choked out a single word around the pain clawing at my throat. “Yeah.”
I barely remember leaving the bank or getting in my car.
I don’t remember driving toward the plantation house, but I was suddenly there. Parked around the side, hidden from view as always. Vacantly staring at the place that would soon be ours, drowning in the past that was destroying me, years later.
The morning after that last fight with Madison, I’d woken up knowing our agreement was a mistake. There was no making up for what we’d done, but I knew in the twisting of my soul that there would be no forgiveness if Madison left and Savannah or Hunter ever found out the truth behind it all.
But before I had the chance to act, my mom had busted open the door and started yelling about girls in bedrooms. Demanding Savannah wake up and leave, and for me to get downstairs and clean up from Hunter’s party the night before.
Mom never left my sight. Standing behind me, scolding me and pointing out every spot that needed cleaning until it happened . . .
Hunter’s twisted cry of agony had sent us running through the house and had me biting out a curse as ice crept through my veins because I’d known I was too late.
She was already gone, and I hadn’t stopped it.
As soon as I saw Hunter on his knees in the middle of the driveway, I’d turned and run upstairs to my room, searching for my phone. I’d called Madison again and again, but there was no ringing or voicemail. The call didn’t even go through.
That afternoon, I had to be the one to tell Savannah that her friend had left.
I would’ve gone through any pain, taken any of Savannah’s anger, if it took away the consuming grief that burst from her and continued to slowly bleed from her for months after. If it brought back that extra light that was still missing from her.
Fuck, I would’ve done anything if I could’ve just taken back that goddamn night.
The guilt I felt every time Hunter came to me, needing a friend in the months after Madison left, was unbearable. I verbally lashed out at him and eventually lost control, fighting him until he stopped coming around. Until we stopped talking at all.
Then he was gone too—off in the military.
And I was there, trying like hell to forget something that was always in the back of my mind, reminding me I was the reason for everyone’s pain. Trying to keep my fiancée together when I knew things—had done things—that were the cause of her sorrow. Trying to make mine and Savannah’s dreams come true when my lies and anger were always there, haunting me.
By the time Savannah called a few hours later, I was deep on the property, trying to scrub away the suffocating guilt by noting everything that needed to be done in the next few months.
“Angel,” I said in answer, the word a soft rumble as I turned and took in the back of the property and the plantation house in a new light.
All those years of dreaming and planning, and it was about to be ours.
“Hey,” she said, sounding relaxed and all sorts of mischievous, a tell that she’d had a drink or two. “Okay, so, don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
“You don’t even know what I did,” she hissed into the phone.
“Trust me,” I murmured as that earlier pit opened wide again, reminding me that Savannah could never do anything that would come close to what I’d done to her. “You’re not gonna make me mad.”
A scoff of disbelieving amusement met my ear, and I pictured her rolling her eyes. “Okay, so, we may have gone shopping and gotten our nails done.”
“All right.”
There was a pause before she hesitantly added, “I may have spent, like, two hundred dollars. Fifty. Two hundred and fifty.” She made a distraught noise. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. I’m gonna take it back. I have to take it back, right? I can’t believe I did that. I don’t know what came over me. Or maybe I—I dunno . . .”
I waited until her self-scolding, inebriated ramble trailed off, rubbing at my jaw and fighting a smile as I listened. “Babe, when’s the last time you went shopping?”
“Um . . . I’m not . . . maybe for my high school graduation dress?”
“Four years ago,” I said slowly. “You’re fine.”
“But we need to save money,” she whispered.
“We do—we are. You also need to do things for yourself every once and a while.”
“What about you?” she countered softly.
“I hate shopping.”
Her scoffing laugh filled the phone. “But you don’t do anything for you.”
She had no idea how wrong she was.