“How’s that working out?” he snaps.
I close my eyes and whisper, “I’m sorry.”
After a few silent seconds, he sits back down on the bed and reaches for my hand. “You’re just scared,” he says softly. “It’s a big deal to get married. I know that. We’re young and we still have our whole lives ahead of us.”
“I’ll be thirty next year,” I say quietly, wondering where the hell the last seven years of my life went, and feeling agitated with myself for letting them slip by so carelessly.
I’ll be thirty.
I should want to get married. I should want a big city job, certainly one that’s less stifling than the one I have here—editing marketing materials for restaurant chains isn’t exactly my dream. But I don’t, I don’t want any of it. I don’t want it in Dallas and I don’t want it here.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Olivia. I can give you a good life in Dallas. I want to give you a good life. Will you just let me do that? Please?”
I give him a tight smile and nod over the emotion that’s suddenly strangling me. “I know you can...but it’s not the life I want.”
“Why?” he groans, and it pierces my heart.
I look up at him with watery eyes and admit, “I don’t love you, Travis.” I feel both relieved and stricken at once, finally saying those words out loud—words I planned on saying last night, before he got down on one knee. The anxiety that clung to them in my head before we got to the restaurant is only exacerbated by the look on his face now.
After a few shocked seconds, the corners of his mouth turn down and he nods his head slowly. “I guess that’s a pretty good reason.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He lets go of my hand, stands up, and gazes at the massive green-leafed sugar maple outside my second-story window.
I’m going to miss that tree.
“Travis, I have to go home.” The ache in my bones turns into a quiet buzzing that makes my heart thump anxiously.
“Home?” He turns around and gives me a curious look. “To Georgia?”
“Yeah.” I nod softly.
St. Simons Island is the second greatest love of my life—the place I called home for twenty-two years. The place that still beckons my soul like a lighthouse signaling a ship adrift at sea. I haven’t been back since I left for my final year of college at North Carolina State seven years ago—a year later than originally planned. But after what happened the summer before, the last thing on my mind was hurrying back here to finish school.
I had planned to return to St. Simons after I graduated, but when the time came, I couldn’t do it. As difficult as it has been to stay away, the fear of facing who I left behind was easier to deal with—or not deal with—from four hundred miles away.
“Why?” Travis asks, pulling me from my thoughts.
I inhale a deep breath and hug my knees to my chest. “I miss the ocean.”
“The ocean?”
More specifically, the tiny section of the Atlantic that surrounds the Island. I miss the way it rushes up on the sandy shores and fills the sounds and rivers that snake through salty marshes. I miss the smell of it, I miss the sound of it, I miss the feel of it on my sun-soaked skin in the summer.
“Yeah,” I say softly, “I miss the ocean.”
He sits down on the edge of the bed and folds his hands in his lap. “So, I guess that’s it then,” he says, uncharacteristically throwing in the towel. “I’ll go my way and you’ll go yours, and we won’t get married.”
I nod softly. “I guess so.”
He gauges me for a few seconds, and then shakes his head and lets out a bemused breath. “Really?” He stands up and starts pacing around the room with a determined look on his face.
After a few unnerving seconds, he stops suddenly and gives me an accusatory look. “This is about that guy you used to date, isn’t it? The one who was in the accident with you and your brother.”
“What?” I whisper, because a sudden flash of heat is coursing through me, burning up all my oxygen. “You don’t know anything about him, or my brother.”
“Well, maybe if you opened up to me once in a while, I might. What I do know is that he got some sort of brain damage in the accident and now you’re getting all nostalgic about him because I want to give you a life that he’ll never be able to give you. Damn, Liv! When are you going to let him go?”
“Stop it,” I say through clenched teeth. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“For Christ’s sake, he killed your brother.”
I bolt up from the bed and slap him hard across the face, making my palm scream. “I said stop!” I yank the ring off my finger and shove it in his hand. “I think you should go.”
He holds his red cheek, looking dumbfounded. “Liv, you’re being irrational.”
I glare at him, hoping to convey the thoughts I’m holding back, which I’d likely regret saying later.
He looks down at the ring in his hand and then at me with disappointment in his eyes. “You’re really doing this?”
I nod at him, unable to find words to express the flood of emotions surging through me.
“Liv, please—”
I close my eyes and warm tears spill down my cheeks. “It’s over, Travis.” I exhale a shaky breath that’s laced with relief, sorrow, guilt, and fear, because I know now, the only way I can move on with my life is by going home and facing my past.
Chapter 2
Liv, Eight Years Ago, August 15th
“Momma? Where are my jeans?” I call down the stairs, hanging the top half of my body over the banister.
“Which ones?”
“You know, the ones that are faded and ripped a little at the knees?”
She holds up the pair I was looking for. “These?”
“Yes!”
“Still warm from the dryer,” she says, tossing them up to me.
I catch them midair and wink at her. “Best mom ever.”
“Love you too,” she laughs.
One of the best things about being home for summer break is that my mom offers to do my laundry. And I’m more than happy to let her. Beats waiting around the laundromat in the windowless basement of my dorm.
“You’re still not ready?” my twin brother, Brandon, says, combing his sandy blond hair in the hall mirror. “Gabe’s on his way. He’ll be here any minute.”
“I know his whereabouts, Brandon. He’s my boyfriend.”
“Yeah, well, he was my best friend first,” he calls down the hall as I make my way to my room.
I turn around and make pouty lips at him. “Aw, I remember those days. Sorry they had to end, but he’d rather make out with me now.”
He makes a gagging sound as I disappear behind my bedroom door and it makes me laugh. Poor Brandon. He’s been putting up with me and Gabe since the tenth grade. But he has no one to blame but himself. He’s the one who said it was okay for his best friend to start dating his sister. I think he might have underestimated Gabe’s affection for me.
I tuck my white tank top into my snug fitting jeans, step into a pair of sandals, and inspect my sun-kissed face in the mirror. By sun-kissed, I mean I forgot to reapply sunscreen while watching Gabe surf for several hours this morning. And by watching Gabe surf, I mean I was gazing at him unabashedly and daydreaming about our future. One more year until we graduate from North Carolina State and then the world is ours. According to Gabe. I giggle with wonder and excitement at the thought.