I didn’t want to try.
“She seems like a good girl,” Joy went on. “Nice personality, too. You know each morning she greets me with the biggest smile and asks if I need anything? She’s a sweetie pie like that. The world needs more nice girls.”
Why? So it could destroy them?
If I knew anything about nice people, it was that the rest of the world wouldn’t stop itself from beating the kindness out of them. It was as if niceness was a disease and everyone was determined to pummel anyone who displayed its symptoms. I’d spent the past twenty-eight years having any positive light beaten out of my system, and if I’d learned anything, it was that the world wasn’t made for nice people. It was created to destroy them.
I stayed quiet as Joy kept going on about her. “You should talk to her more, get to know her.”
I snickered a bit. “Not really into making friends, Joy.” She knew this. It wasn’t a secret. A warning sign of that should’ve been when my best guy mate was my fucking therapist and my best lady friend was almost ninety. “Besides, I have you.” I always figured if you had a true friend, you were better off than most. And me? I had a handful of them—if I counted Connor. Based on statistics, I probably had one too many.
“Yes, well, one day I’ll be gone, and you’ll need a new one. You better start putting out feelers now. I ain’t getting any younger, boy. Besides, I think she could use a friend, too. She lost somebody, just like the both of us.”
My eyebrow arched. “She told you that?”
Joy shook her head. “Loss isn’t something that needs to be said. It sits heavily within a person’s eyes. People who have lost loved ones move a little differently. Her loss still feels fresh, as if she doesn’t know how to move through each day. That’s something I can understand. I think it’s something you can understand, too, so consider getting to know her a little.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You aren’t trying to play matchmaker since I broke up with Amanda, are you?”
“No, no, not this time. Not a matchmaker—just a friend-maker. Contrary to your personal belief, everyone needs friends, Jaxson, even the black sheep in a small town like Havenbarrow.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“And by the way, I’m happy you broke up with that Amanda girl. She was too pushy,” she said, waving a hand in dismissal. “Always wanting you to be someone you weren’t, trying to change you into someone she wanted you to be—I didn’t like that. Plus, she didn’t like my lemon cake.”
I laughed. “Which was exactly why I broke things off with her.”
She reached across and patted my hand with her palm. “What a good man you are, Jax. Speaking about my neighbor,” she said, switching the subject back to what she deemed important, “you know what I like best about her so far?”
“What’s that?”
“The unique car parked in her driveway. It’s so different and fun! Oh, Jax, you have to see it when you leave. It’s very neat.”
Thankfully, Joy allowed the conversation to shift from my dating and friendship life when the newest episode of The Bachelor came on. Like always, I watched the insane show with her. Like always, I called who wasn’t getting a rose at the end of the episode, and like always, Joy acted so surprised at who was going home. During the show, a few rumbles of thunder came rolling through, and I knew we were in for a powerful rainfall.
Before the bachelor handed out his final rose, a deluge was upon us, the rain hammering down on the house.
“The trees are going to love this storm,” Joy commented, always finding the positive in any situation.
As I walked outside, I quickly hopped into my truck, and hell, I couldn’t help myself. I drove past the new girl’s driveway and checked out the car sitting outside. My chest tightened as the unique vehicle clicked in my mind, and my jaw dropped.
“No way,” I muttered, looking at the car that was more than familiar to me.
It couldn’t be.
There was no way…
Fuck.
Putting my truck into park, I hopped out and hurried over to the vehicle, trespassing like the dumbass I was, but I couldn’t help it. I moved around the car, looking at all the drawings on it, and then I paused by the back, near the trunk. Right above the tire, there it was—a heart with the initials JK + KL inside. The words ‘friends forever’ was written below it.
“No way,” I said breathlessly, stumbling backward. My hand raked through my dripping wet hair as shock almost knocked me out. I should’ve known. I should’ve connected the dots instantly, but it’d been over fifteen years since I’d last seen her—the girl who had obviously grown up to be quite a woman.
Kennedy Lost.
Kennedy Lost was the new girl on the block, and she was living right between the Jeffersons and Joy. How? How was that even possible? There was no way. No fucking way. What in the world had brought her here? How had it ended up that she landed in my hometown? What did it mean? What the hell was I supposed to do with this new information? Did I do anything?
No.
Of course not.
It was a long time ago. We were just two stupid kids. She was just a part of my past—nothing more, nothing less.
But still…
I thought a part of me knew it was her the moment I locked eyes with her in the woods. I had felt a tug at my frozen heart the minute she looked my way, but I’d done my best to deem it heartburn because I didn’t want it to be her. Not after all the years that had passed. Not after the changes that had taken place in my life. Not with the man I’d become over time because I was not the boy she used to know.
I didn’t need visitors from my past to come back to haunt my present day. My mind was already a professional at haunting me with past regrets every single day. I didn’t need more ghosts coming back to me. But damn…
Kennedy Lost.
Not only was she this beautiful individual who had curves in places that hadn’t existed when we were kids, her hair was longer, and her curls were sun-kissed as they fell in front of her face. Her skin glowed as if she bathed beneath the sun, and her eyes…
Fuck, Kennedy and those eyes.
Leave, I told myself.
I needed to pull away from her house and not allow my brain to let her in. I needed to stop thinking about her. I couldn’t travel down that road.
After seeing that beat-up yellow car proved who she was, my frozen heart tried to do the stupidest thing in the world—it tried to beat, but the stone-cold crystal sitting in my chest couldn’t perform the task. It didn’t know how.
I got into my truck and I drove away. I had to drive away. As I made it back home, I didn’t head straight to bed. Instead, I walked in the rain through the darkened woods I knew like the back of my hand, heading toward the field of flowers. Dozens I’d planted throughout the years that were in full bloom. The most common flower was the daisy.
I walked to the bench in the middle of the field and sat down as the water washed over my skin. The flowers drank up the water droplets as I closed my eyes and looked up at the sky. I was soaked head to toe, but I didn’t mind. Truthfully, I always felt renewed when I was able to sit out in a storm.
I felt as if it regenerated me the same way it did the flowers.