Tumble (Dogwood Lane 1)

“I hate crying.” I laugh, pulling back. “I swear I’ve cried more in the last twenty-four hours than I have in my life.”

“Why is that?”

“Because this time it’s all my fault. I have no one to blame for any of this but me.”

“I know you didn’t mean for this to happen,” he says. “I know you aren’t a hateful person.”

“Thank you. That means a lot to me right now.”

He lifts his shoulders up and down. “Look, I don’t know how all of this played out, and I don’t want to know. I don’t care. I just know you’re my friend, and I wanted to tell you to be careful and that I love ya before you go.”

“Damn you.” I blot at my eyes with a tissue I find in my pocket. “I don’t have time to get over to your dad’s. Will you tell him I said goodbye and I’ll see him when I visit?”

“So, ten years from now?” Matt jokes.

“I promise to do better.”

“You better or this country boy is coming to the big city. Yeehaw!”

I laugh. “You’re such a dork.”

“Yeah, I know.” He takes his thumb and rubs a small circle on my forehead. “Be safe.”

“I will. Be good.”

“I’ll try.” With a simple smile, he starts across the parking lot.

“Goodbye, Matt,” I call after him.

“See ya, Neely.”

As I climb in my car and start the ignition, I watch Matt pull away. The farther he gets from sight, the worse the pain gets in my chest.

It didn’t hurt this bad the last time I left. Why can’t I shake it off?

Cranking the air conditioner and the radio, I step on the gas and make my way to the airport. I look back only once.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

DANE

She’s gone. She’s really, truly, actually fucking gone.

I think I’m going crazy. I actually believe I know the minute she left town. I couldn’t breathe, and I had this insane need to get in my truck and barrel to the freeway, but I didn’t. Because people who do stuff like that are lunatics, and I’m not.

Not really.

I was grateful for Mia’s extralong practice tonight. It just gave me a bigger window without having to talk to Mia about why we aren’t seeing Neely again. Then Susan offered to let her stay the night, and while she didn’t say why, the sad look in her eyes told me she knows Neely’s gone.

I hoped she’d change her mind. I hoped she’d start to leave and realize that Mia and I were worth it, that we were worth staying for.

She didn’t.

Meandering through my house, the night as dark as coal outside the windows, I feel like I’m coming out of my skin. There was a time not long ago I loved a quiet house. I loved an evening free with nothing to do. That’s exactly what I have, and I think I’m losing my damn mind.

I got used to her too fast. I became dependent on her laugh, her stories, her body against mine. Now I’m all fucked up, not knowing what to do with myself, and I have no one to blame but me.

There’s a knock at the door, but I don’t even get excited. It’s not Neely’s knock. It’s Haley’s. I don’t tell her to come in either, because I know she will whether she’s invited or not.

Sure enough, within a few minutes, she comes walking around the corner in the kitchen. She stops when she sees me.

“You look bad,” she says. “Good grief, Dane.”

“I’ve seen better days.”

“I believe that just by looking at you.” She hops up on a barstool at the island and watches me. “So, she left.”

“Yeah.”

I can’t even get riled up about it anymore. The anger is gone. It’s just disappointment and loneliness I can’t put into words.

I want to tell Haley this is a broken heart. This is what devastation feels like. But I don’t have the energy to even try.

“I will say,” Haley says, swinging her feet back and forth, “I’m surprised she left.”

“That makes two of us.”

“But I kind of like it.” She grins wildly.

My eyes close, then reopen slowly. “I’m sorry. I think I misheard you.”

“You didn’t. This will make for an epic romantic finale.”

My head falls to my hands. “She left me, Haley. There is no epic finale. It’s done. Kaput.”

“This is why you can’t call yourself a romantic.”

I pick up an orange and toss it from hand to hand. “Good thing I don’t see myself as a romantic then, huh?”

She snatches the orange out of the air. “What’s the plan?”

“The plan for what?”

“I don’t know. The plan to get her back? To forget her? To pull a Penn and screw so many women you forget who’s who?”

“Not that.” I hop on the counter, the cold marble kissing my ass. “I knew better than to screw that one, and I went against my rules.”