“I’ll see you back at the house. If you don’t get a ride, call me and I’ll come back and get you.” Sterling nods, and I make my way to the front door on auto pilot. The crunch of the gravel road under my shoes the only thing telling me I’m still moving. I need a drink. I need to sulk. I need to fuckin’ forget. Damn this town and all its memories.
The drive home was a blur and it took all but five minutes sitting on the living room couch to realize, I can’t do this. I can’t be this close to Callie and not have her. Not be able to walk up and talk with her. I need to go back to North Carolina and figure out some way to make things right with my assistant coach.
With my mind made up, I walk up the stairs to the bedroom I rarely use and grab the suitcase from under my bed. I just got everything in the small set of drawers only to throw them back in this brown bag. One drawer in, I hear the front door open. Checking my watch, it’s much too soon for Sterling to be home. He likes to close the bar on his nights off. The do-gooder in him wanting to stick around in case there’s issues at the end of the night and a voice of reason is needed. Leave it to the cop to work his night off.
Moving to the banister overlooking the downstairs I holler, “Sterling that you?”
“It’s just me, Beau.” The voice of my baby sister floats through the house. As she comes into view, it hits me just how much she’s grown and matured since I left for college.
When I walked away from Alabama, she had been a child. Standing at seventeen, she’s tall with long legs and a dancer's physique from being on the dance team for years. Sterling and I were crazy surprised when she said she wanted to audition. She’d been trained in classical dance—one of the many things he and I insisted on to make Sawyer’s childhood better than ours—but she has always been incredibly shy.
To this day, my baby sister is still not the in your face, out-going type of high schooler. Of course, our little angel gets good grades and is at the top of her class. And she’s the captain of the dance team now that she’s a senior, but she’s never let anything go to her head and remains humble and rather withdrawn from the social aspect of high school.
Walking down the stairs to meet her in the kitchen I ask, “I thought you were at a sleepover?”
She turns to me with a bottle of water and nods. “I was, but I wanted to come home.”
“I thought you got over being scared of sleeping at other people’s houses years ago.” Not that she had many sleepovers back then. It’s not like when Sterling and I were young when no one wanted to invite us over. No, with Sawyer, it was more she was a homebody and enjoyed just having her brothers and Nana as company. I guess some things never change.
“Shut up.” She laughs and walks over to shove my shoulder. “I just missed you. You’re never home for long. And when Sterling and I come up to visit it’s always too short. I didn’t want to waste the time I could be with you.”
“I missed you, too, baby girl,” I say into her hair, pulling her tight into a hug.
Sawyer wraps her arms around me and buries her head into my chest. For a girl she’s above average, the only thing I can thank my father for, but she’s got nothing on Sterling and me. We still tower over her—her protective big brothers.
“Can we just watch a movie and fall asleep on the couch, like we used to?” she asks, the innocence in her voice shining through her words.
“I’d like nothing more.”
We walk to the living room and I let Sawyer pick the movie as I make a nest of blankets on the oversized couch—just like when she had a bad day at years ago. Back before I left and put Sterling in charge of everything.
I never should have left Sawyer for so long. I should have swallowed my pain and hurt so I could be there physically for her instead of just the financial backing and phone calls when Sterling pissed her off. As much as I want to call my agent and force him to find me a flight out of here tonight, I know it’s here that I’m needed. So, it’s here I’ll stay. For as long as Sawyer needs me until the season starts—if I’m not fired.
The morning after I saw Beau was hard. I woke up with Millie sleeping peacefully next to me. She then spent the morning trying to make me forget Beau even existed. The mission Forget He’s Here” commenced by the time breakfast was finished.
It wasn’t easy at first. For the next several days, every time I closed my eyes, I saw Beau’s light greenish-blue ones staring at me like they had that night at the bar. But as the week slugged on, I was able to rid myself of any feelings I had toward the man. He’s simply a family member of a girl in town visiting for a little while and that’s that.
Once I made the decision to forget, my week flew by and I was thankful there was finally a weekend that Mason would be town. It took some teeth pulling and possibly a little begging on my part toward Mason’s dad to keep him here, but it worked. Now we can officially get the wedding details finalized.
We’re going to Granddaddy’s farm and meeting with some florists and the bakery employees with samples, then we’ll sit down with Grandad to get the ceremony situated. Mason knows it’s always been my dream to get married on my Granddaddy’s farm. To have this man that I’ve watched give every Sunday sermon since I was young, do the presiding over my nuptials, it’s all I could talk about when I was little. Many childhood summers were spent on that farm with Millie and I playing make believe. We’d dress as little brides as we dreamed about our fantasy weddings on the farm.
I gaze out the window as we drive down the dirt road to the farm. The weathered red barn pokes out just past the tree line. My mind flashes to the fourteen-year-old version of myself running between with hay bales. Deacon and Beau used to give us such a hard time about still l pretending as we were just starting high school. But it was more than playing pretend. It was like we were the wedding planners to the biggest event in our future. I can’t believe it’s finally going to happen. Though, the guest list is a tad different.
Horses trotting beside the car pull me out of my memory. Such an innocent time, that first bout of pretend. As the summer grew shorter and I became more aware of Beau’s eyes on me, the more he added to the fantasy. Throwing out ideas to make the “wedding” better. Every time we cleaned up, he would tease me saying, “You know you’re gunna marry me one day, right?” I went to bed every night thinking about a time where Beau Davis and I could be married.
It was an entire year before he made his first move, though. Pulling me aside at my granddaddy’s farm. That day will forever have a place in my heart—no matter how much I wish I could forget it sometimes.
“Beau, what are you doing?” I ask as he pulls me away from Millie to “show” me something in the barn
“I have something you need to see.” There was a mischievous glint to his eyes making me suspicious.
“In the barn? It’s so dark in there, Daddy hasn’t put in the new lights for Granddaddy, yet.”
Beau pulls me close as we enter the dark barn and the door closes behind us. “Don’t worry, Buttercup, I’ll keep you safe,” he whispers into my ear as a shiver crawls up my body and darkness surrounds us.
The only light comes from an open window on the far side under the loft. It takes my eyes a minute to adjust, but when they do, Beau is all I see. He’s so close to me. His tall frame bending to look me deep in the eye. It’s almost unnerving how intense his gaze is, but there’s also a warmth that sends tingles down my spine.