“It’s been too long,” he muttered into my hair. Being almost a whole foot taller than me, my head came up to his shoulders. I felt like a little kid again, surrounded by the safety of my parents. I could hear the front door shut behind me, but I didn’t spare a glance at it as I held on tightly to my father.
What felt like mere moments later, he was pulling away from me and gave me a once over, like he was looking for any injuries. I hated to think that they thought that was necessary.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, leading me to the large sectional that took up a majority of the living room.
Once we were all sitting, my mom spoke up, “And where’s Jon?”
I had to swipe my hands under my eyes to stem the flow of tears. It did little to stop them.
I shook my head helplessly. “I left him.”
“Did he hurt you?” my father demanded to know.
I thought of lying, but my father could always tell when I wasn’t being completely truthful. I didn’t want one of the first things I told them after a year of no communication to be a lie, anyway.
I couldn’t bring myself to say the word, so I just gave him a small nod.
“That son of a bitch,” he growled. “I’m gonna kill him.”
“Ted,” my mother reprimanded.
He stood up, beginning to pace while muttering to himself.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked softly.
After the long drive and the hard conversation with Jon, all I wanted to do was relax and soak in time with my family. The last thing I wanted was to talk about the failure that was my marriage.
I shook my head before taking a deep breath. “What’s been going on around town?”
My mother must’ve sensed that I needed a distraction; she immediately went on with what had changed in the time that I had been gone.
As she spoke, my father seemed to relax enough to sit on my other side. “... You’ll be happy to know that Mackenna got her pastry shop up and running.”
“Really? Here in North Hills?” I asked hopefully.
My mom nodded her head with a small smile on her face.
Mackenna and I had been so close while we were growing up. When we had both left North Hills—Mackenna for culinary school and I to college to perfect my photography—we had agreed that we would never lose touch with each other.
I had been prepared for distance to push at our friendship, but I’d never expected Jon to be the force that broke us.
I’d talked to her less than a handful of times in the six years that I’d been with Jon, but I’d only seen her once. Her mother’s funeral. It was before Jon and I had been married, when Jon was still the perfect boyfriend, at least in my eyes. All of my loved ones told me to stay away from him, but I’d been naïve and thought that I saw a different side of him than he showed everyone else.
How wrong I had been.
It had always been Mackenna’s dream to have her own coffee or pastry shop, somewhere she could show off her talent. I was so happy to hear that she had persevered and brought that fantasy to life.
“That’s amazing. I’ll have to go see her tomorrow. What’s it called?”
My mom smiled. “Flour Power.”
I couldn’t help but snort as I heard the name. Mackenna was always the cheery one between the two of us; of course, she would name her shop something catchy like that.
“I love it. What else is new?”
My father scoffed from next to me. “Not much. Those damn Wilders are still running the town. One of those worthless boys even found a position at the police station. They’re fucking everywhere.”
At the mention of the Wilders, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. That family was the closest thing to royalty that our little town had. Beloved by everyone, it was as if they could do no wrong. I wouldn’t have had a problem with it if I hadn’t seen and dealt with it in person.
Nick Wilder was the oldest of the four boys, the most infuriating one. They all had large egos, but there was something about Nick that made my blood boil. I could remember how he seemed to think he was God’s gift to the town, how I would see him with a different girl on his arm every week. He would flaunt his looks and everyone would bow down.
Not me.
I could remember vividly how annoyed he would get with me when I wouldn’t act like every other clueless female. I still suspect that in high school, Nick was the one who spread the rumor that my parents had found cigarettes and bottles of vodka underneath my bed when I’d been forced to miss a few days of school due to a nasty stomach bug.
To get back at him, I may have told people he enjoyed, um, pleasing himself with donuts...
It was completely innocent.
Or not.
That, and a million other things we’d done to each other, were valid reasons that we hated the other. I just prayed that time was not kind to him and in the six years since I’d last seen him, he’d lost that pretty boy face. It wasn’t fair that God made that man so good-looking when he had the personality of a dead cow.
“Which one’s a cop?” I had known that the possibility of me needing to go to the police would be high if Jon found me early; I wanted to know that if I did, I wouldn’t have to air my dirty laundry out to the one man I hated almost more than Jon.
“Nick,” my father retorted.
Damn it.
“With all the crap he did growing up, I can’t believe they made him a cop,” I said disbelievingly.
“Let’s change the subject before you guys start breathing fire,” my mom joked. She was the only one that didn’t particularly have a problem with the Wilders, but she mainly kept her opinion to herself since my dad was so vocal about his dislike.
I had tried to find out why my father had hated them so much, mainly the Wilders’ father, Matthew—besides the fact that they seemed to run the town from their large farm—but he always refused to say anything. I made a mental note to ask him about it later; maybe now that I was older he would tell me.
The Wilders were good for one thing, though. They were a pleasant distraction from the shitstorm that was my life.
While we spent time catching up, the sun had begun to set. I could actually hear the crickets, a sound that I had sorely missed while living in the city.
“Is there somewhere I can sleep?” I didn’t know if they still had my room set up for me or if I would have to sleep on the couch; either was a better alternative than going back to the house that I was running from.
“Your room still has all your old furniture in it,” my mother told me. She motioned for me to follow her up the small set of stairs that led to the upper level, the kitchen was directly in front of me and the hallway that led to the bedrooms was to my right. I gasped when my mom opened the door to my old bedroom.
Besides the pictures and posters that were no longer hanging up, everything was exactly how I had left it. The walls were a light gray with white trim, and the curtains that hung on the window were white and dark gray. She wasn’t lying when she said all my old furniture was still there. My bed, nightstand, and even my dresser. I’d forgotten how good the light brown carpet felt against my toes.
“I can’t believe you kept all my furniture,” I said wonderingly as my eyes scanned the familiar room.
I felt my father place his hand on my shoulder. “We wanted to make sure you knew you always had a home to come back to.”