She'd been twenty, just about to start college, working at the clinic for extra cash. I'd been twenty-one and already known as trouble, already on Cal's radar for fights I couldn't walk away from and a mouth that didn't know when to quit.
We shouldn't have worked. Good girl, bad boy, all the clichés I hated. But Daisy had never treated me like a cliché. She'd looked at me like I was worth something. Like the parts of me everyone else saw as broken were parts she wanted to understand.
We'd kept it secret. We had to. Cal would have killed me, and Daisy's future was too bright to let me cast a shadow on it. So we met at the overlook after dark, swam in the lake when no one was watching, and spent hours talking about everything and nothing while the stars wheeled overhead.
I fell first and fell hard. I fell in a way I'd never recovered from.
By the end of the summer, we had a plan. She'd finish her degree and I'd save money, get my shit together, prove I could be more than Hollow Peak's favorite screw-up. Then we'd leave together. Build something real.
The night before she went back to school, we were supposed to meet one last time. Our spot at the overlook. Midnight. I was going to go back with her for a few months. Get my act together and get some skills away from the town that wouldn’t give me a chance. It would be a fresh start for me and a chance for Daisy and me to be out in the open with our relationship. Hell, I wanted to marry her. Have a family. Be the man she wanted with her forever. She did that to me.
I never showed.
I could still see it. The way I'd imagined her waiting, checking her phone, watching the road for headlights that never came.Three hours, Cal told me later. She'd waited three hours before she finally gave up.
I'd been two miles away, parked on a logging road, white-knuckling my steering wheel and trying not to put my fist through the windshield.
Cal had found out. Someone had seen us at the lake, and word got back. He'd shown up at my place that afternoon with a choice.
Stay away from her, or he'd make sure I went away for my fuck ups. He had enough on me to do it. A fight from the year before where the other guy had pressed charges, then dropped them. Cal could bring them back. Could add things. Could make my life a nightmare I'd never wake up from. I deserved whatever he threw at me for my mistakes, so they didn’t scare me.
What he said next was what made me walk away.
"She's got a future," he'd said, calm and certain. "A real one. Degree, career, a life that doesn't involve this town or anyone in it. You drag her into your mess, and she'll throw it all away for you. She's that kind of girl. Loyal to a fault."
He'd been right. That was the thing I couldn't argue with. Daisy would have stayed and would have fought for me. Given up everything she'd worked for and burned her future to the ground if I'd asked her to.
So I didn't show up or call. I let her think I was exactly what everyone said I was. A guy who made promises he couldn't keep. A guy who wasn't worth waiting for.
She left and went back to school and built a life.
I stayed. Kept my head down and stopped fighting, mostly. Poured everything I had into becoming someone who deserved better than this town's assumptions.
Not for me. For her. So that if she ever came back, if we ever got a second chance, I'd be worth it.
That was eight years ago.
Eight years of waiting for something I'd convinced myself would never happen.
And now she was here, looking at me through a window like I was a stranger she wished she'd never met.
I went inside and poured myself a whiskey, but didn't drink it.
My phone buzzed. Mason.
Heard Daisy Taylor's back. You okay?
Mason was the only one who knew. The only one I'd ever told, years ago, when I'd had too much to drink and the weight of it got too heavy to carry alone. He'd listened without judgment, which was more than I deserved.
Fine, I texted back.
Liar. Beers later?
Maybe.
I set the phone down and stared at the whiskey.
Tomorrow I'd walk into Cal's cabin and pretend seeing her didn't gut me. Pretend I didn't remember every sound she made, every way she laughed, every spot on her body that made her shiver. Pretend the last eight years hadn't been one long exercise in surviving without her.