“I’m so fucking sorry, Eliza.” Preston fell back against the wall when I finally stopped hitting him.
“You treated me like I was garbage on the street—no, like I wasn’t even worthy of being garbage. That’s not how you treat someone you care about. I needed you!” My eyes refused to hold back the tears, but they were angry tears—and that was okay. “I spent my whole life being abandoned, thrown away, and when I finally—when I fucking finally allowed myself to trust someone, you just…”
“I know.” Preston took a step forward, and he looked just like I did the day I left Andalusia—eyes filled with despair. “But he still loves you, and I couldn’t let you leave again without knowing that.”
Still? After all these years?
“What about you?” I wiped away the tears.
“I don’t even love myself—I certainly don’t deserve to love anyone else.” Preston walked to the door and slammed it as he left.
I cried. I’m not ashamed to admit that the angry tears gave way to sorrowful ones. Melanie came downstairs and wrapped her arms around me as I sank to the floor. All of the heartbreak? The scars? They had all been a lie? I did have someone who loved me—someone who wanted me—and I was the one who abandoned him. I couldn’t even process those thoughts. If Preston didn’t want me back then, that was fine, but how could he ruin my chance of happiness with Hudson? How could he do that to his own brother? How could he do that to me? How could he walk into Melanie’s house and shatter my whole world again? None of those questions had answers. Or maybe they did—deeply rooted in the words he said was one truth. Preston Anderson didn’t even love himself—so of course, he couldn’t let anyone else be happy. He was a gutless coward who destroyed everything because he was afraid of his own feelings.
11
Hudson
Three years ago
I spent three years suffering from my own fucking regrets. I internalized them and focused on helping others. The first year was hard. When Preston got hurt and had to come back home, I found a little bit of comfort in being there for him. We were both going through something—even if it wasn’t the same thing. I thought that would strengthen our bond, but every day seemed to drive us further apart. I didn’t understand it. He knew how I felt about Eliza, and I knew that football was everything to him. Then I learned the truth. Football broke his body, but his regrets were much deeper than mine. He betrayed me. He betrayed our bond—all because he wanted to push her away so that he could have the life he thought he wanted. Where did that get him? Where did it get either of us? I carried a broken heart in my chest because I thought Eliza left me. Instead, that was all a lie.
I could have kept the hate in my
heart for Preston, and let it eat me alive, but I already had too much eating at me to let my brother kill himself. That was the road he was headed down if I didn’t do something to intervene. I found the strength to pick him up—the strength to forgive. I got him to stop drinking, got him enrolled and the fire academy, and begged the chief to let him work at the fire department with me. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. I still did love him, even if he was a coward who pushed Eliza away. Maybe I just wanted to be a better man than he was, or maybe I believed he could be redeemed. I still carried a torch for Eliza, but I knew it was too late. It had been two years since she left—two years since the lie sent her running from Andalusia as fast as possible. After Preston’s confession, I allowed myself to heal—allowed myself to accept the reality of the situation. It was easier knowing that she did care about me, but heartbreaking to think about what we could have had together.
* * *
Present day
“Preston could have died in that fire.” I put my fists on Chief Traywick’s desk and leaned forward. “You have to talk to the mayor.”
“I’ve tried.” Chief Traywick leaned back and shook his head. “This is a small town. We struggled before the Internet came along and everyone started buying things online. Now we’re lucky if the city’s budget isn’t in the red every damn year.”
“Our resources are tapped because we are always the fire department that everyone calls when they need help.” I grumbled under my breath. “We could have saved that farmhouse if we had better equipment. We need another truck, another tanker, more fire hydrants—this is so fucking frustrating! We don’t even have a pump that we can hook up to the natural water reservoirs when we get so far out that the tanker can’t hold enough water!”
“I know.” He nodded and sighed. “I was standing right where you were once upon a time—telling my chief the same thing.”
“So nothing is going to change, no matter how upset I get?” I pushed myself back from his desk and nodded.
“Not unless you’re going to get elected mayor—but even then, I doubt you could do anything. This place needs money and that isn’t easy to come by.” Chief Traywick sighed.
“Yeah. I get it.” I nodded and left his office.
As tragic as the two fires were, they had managed to do one thing—they made me stop focusing on the fact Eliza was back in town. I hadn’t fully come to terms with it yet. I was still struggling to believe that it was anything more than an illusion. I dreamed about that moment in the first couple of years after she left—that she would see the light and return. When I found out Preston was the one who drove her away, that hope faded. She definitely wasn’t going to return if she thought we used her for sex and that I lied to her when I said I loved her—that I was just some confused kid who didn’t know what I wanted. I suppressed everything as deep as I could where it didn’t have to see the light of day. It was better that way. The bitterness wasn’t in my mouth every time I thought about her. She deserved better than me anyway, and some things were better left in the past where they belonged.
* * *
The next day
I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when I got off work. I went home like I always did, letting my thoughts wander as I drove. I was tired from my shift, worried that we were eventually going to have a fire that did result in a tragedy because of our backward town, and of course—I thought about Eliza. There was a part of me that wanted to find her—to force her to listen to all of the things I wanted to say—but that wasn’t fair. She could be married—she could have kids. She could have a happy life outside of Andalusia that she was eager to get back to. Five years was a very long time. We weren’t kids anymore—far from it. Except when I turned my truck into my driveway, I saw something very unexpected. I saw Eliza sitting on the steps of my house. My heart started beating in my chest, but I tried to quell it. If she had anything to say to me, it probably wasn’t the words I wanted to hear.
“Hey.” Her tone was flat, and she seemed nervous.
“Good morning…” I resisted the urge to run to her—because I still didn’t know why she was at my house.
“Do you want to get that cup of coffee now?” Her head lifted—and for the first time in five years, I saw her smile.
“Yes.” I nodded, but it felt like my head was spinning in circles. “I’d like that very much. I’d like it even better if you’d let me make it.”