Tangle (Dogwood Lane 2)

He’s right. She told me up front—fuck, she practically begged me at first—not to pursue her. She took a line from my playbook and was one hundred percent clear about what she wanted. I disrespected that.

Motherfucker.

“If you leave, don’t come back.” He levels his final shot with the sobriety of a judge.

Message received.

I want to tell him how happy I am that she has him to protect her. But why would I do that? He knows how to treat his family, someone he loves. Hell, he does it better than I do.

My stomach sinks as his words pile on top of my own lamenting and Lorene’s advice. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to climb out from under it.

“Thanks for all your work on the house,” I say, trying to make some progress before I leave.

He puts his truck in drive. “Fuck you.” I get another go-to-hell smile before he hits the gas and blows dust all over my truck.

“Fuck you too,” I mutter, rolling up the window.

I crawl through Dogwood Lane. The post office’s flag blows in the breeze. Jennifer is outside Buds and Branches, washing the windows. I wave. She waves back.

I blow out a breath as I pass the road where the dog lies in the middle of the street before coming upon the café. I slow, peering in the windows as I slide by.

My body is pulled to the parking lot, desperate for some kind of positive connection to a place I’ve grown to really like. But I keep going. Because it’s all I can do. It’s all I know how to do.

I pull my phone from underneath my pillow. The screen lights up when I press the button on the side.

Nothing.

Not a call or a text or an alert that someone sent me an email.

Nada.

I roll over on my back, the room dark. Three blankets are piled on my body, and I smile as I think of what Haley would say about the temperature of the room.

She hates it cold.

She hates all the blankets.

She hates me.

If this was the right thing to do, why does it feel so wrong? Why does it feel like someone sawed my chest in half and gave a part of it away and now I’m expected to act normally even though I can’t breathe?

It’s my own fault. This was my choice.

I swipe around the screen until I find my dad’s name. It’s late, but not too late to wrestle some advice out of the old man.

Laughing at the level of desperation I’ve reached, I listen to it ring.

“Hello,” he says.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Trevor. What’s going on, son?”

“Nothing. Just got home a little while ago. Thought I’d check in.”

“I’m getting ready for bed. Meredith and I are heading down to Dogwood Lane next week, and we have a lot of preparations to work on. I figured you’d still be there when we got to town.”

My heart sinks. He’s going to Dogwood Lane, a town where I left a piece of my heart.

“I have work to do here,” I say.

“Jake said you were doing a good job of handling it online. And having Natalie there helps, of course.”

“Yeah.”

The line goes quiet. My mind is in Dogwood Lane, in a little house with no room in the kitchen and a living room with a fireplace. It’s with a woman with a penchant for doughnuts and pizza and blanketless nights.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” he asks.

I’m surprised he knows anything is wrong. It’s not like he and I have ever had some deep, emotional connection.

“I think I’m having a midlife crisis,” I say with a laugh.

He laughs heartily too. “If I’m having one, as you say, then you can’t have one too.”

“I don’t know how else to explain it, Pops.” I sit up and rest against the pillows. “I’m the same guy I’ve always been. Doing the same things I always have. Making decisions under the same rules I always use, and right now, it all feels . . . wrong.”

“I thought you were in love with her.”

“What? I’m not in love with Haley,” I say, dismissing it immediately. I stand up and pace the room, fighting the urge to yell into the darkness.

“Maybe you are. Love changes people, Trev. It makes you a different person.”

“But I like who I’ve always been.”

“Then go be that guy and do it without Haley.”

I grimace, hating that he thinks those are my options. “I’ll opt for Plan C, please.”

“There is no Plan C, and there’s no Plan B either. There’s Plan A: fall in love or regret it your whole life. As a matter of fact, that’s wrong. You don’t get an option to fall in love. You only have the option to accept it.”

I contemplate that. “But what if you accept it and then you decide you don’t want it anymore?”