The Art Of Holding On
Beth Burgoon
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Epilogue
Counting Flowers Sneak Peek
About the Author
Copyright © 2020 by Beth Burgoon
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Editor: Blue Otter Editing
Cover design: Wicked By Design
Created with Vellum
1
Sam Constable is back in town.
No surprise. I knew he was coming.
Not because he told me or anything. Sam hasn’t initiated a conversation with me since he dropped out of my life almost a year ago. He hasn’t called, texted or sent so much as an email. But that hasn’t stopped me from hearing all about him and his fabulous new life in sunny California, my information coming from social media comments, snatches of overheard conversations and local gossip.
There are no secrets in a small town.
Sooner or later, the truth always comes out.
Still, I’d hoped word of his return was just the idle talk of those who missed him. Who were anxious to see him again.
Only to have my hopes cruelly dashed last week when Sam’s mom went through my sister Zoe’s checkout line at Top-Mart. During what had to be an awkward, stilted and overly polite chat, Dr. Constable-Riester confirmed her middle son’s imminent return.
According to Zoe, the usually reserved doctor was almost giddy about having Sam home for a few weeks over the summer.
Made sense. She’d never wanted him to leave. No one had.
But he’d done it anyway.
Shortly after Zoe’s conversation with Dr. Constable-Riester, Sam’s friends started with the throwback pics of him. Every day for a week, my Instagram feed was filled with Sam, Sam and more Sam, the captions variations on the same theme: So glad you’re coming home! Can’t wait to see you! All is right in the world again!
Once he came back, it’d only be a matter of time until we ran into each other. Like I said, it’s a small town.
Nowhere to hide.
That I’d considered it—quitting my job and staying tucked away in our trailer for the rest of the summer—left the unmistakable taste of resentment in my mouth.
Why should I hide? I wasn’t the one who changed everything.
I wasn’t the one who left.
And if I quit my job, my other sister, Devyn, would kill me dead.
So, no hiding. Not for me. Which meant I’d resigned myself to the fact that I would, at some point during Sam’s visit home, see him. I’d be walking down Main Street and he’d be in his black SUV at a red light. Or he’d be leaving Drip ’n Sip, his usual large ice coffee with cream in his hand, when I was walking in. Or Zoe would send me to Top-Mart to get more diapers and baby wipes because even though Zoe works there six days a week, we’re still forever running out of diapers and baby wipes, and Sam and his friends would be there buying plastic cups, pop, Hawaiian Punch and Red Bull, because in the summer there’s always a party and there’s always need for mix-ins for the vodka, tequila and rum.
There’s no way I’d be able to avoid him completely. Before he went on his merry way again, I knew we would have at least one totally uncomfortable, completely unwanted encounter.
But it’s supposed to happen days, maybe even a week or two from now. After I’ve had time to prepare. To mentally go over everything I’ll say. Practice how I’ll act. It’s supposed to happen when I’m dressed to kill, my hair smooth and straight and shiny. My makeup perfect.
Not when I’m hot and exhausted from an eight-hour shift spreading mulch over the raised garden beds in Mrs. Benton’s huge, perfectly landscaped lawn. Not when my clothes (khaki shorts that reach the knees, work boots and a green tee sporting the Glenwood Landscaping insignia) are covered in potting soil and grass clippings and I’m wearing a backpack approximately the size of a small car. Not when my hair—pulled through the back of my battered Pittsburgh Pirates baseball hat—is huge and frizzy from the humidity. Not when the only makeup I have on is lip balm and I smell like the worst combination of dirt and sweat and the 50 SPF sunscreen I slather on at least six times a day.
It’s not supposed to happen today. Not like this.
But it is. Sam Constable is walking toward me.
Nothing ever goes the way I want it to.
It’s so annoying.
Especially since I can’t seem to move. I just stand in the middle of the parking lot like a statue while Sam closes the distance between us. It’s so familiar, me waiting for him, watching him approach, that for a moment I forget everything that’s happened between us. What we said. What we did.
For a moment, it’s like it’s always been.
But it’s not real, this sense of connection. It’s just memories of how we used to be.
He looks the same, which is another reason to be mighty ticked off. His dark, thick hair waves wildly around his handsome face and he’s wearing the Warriors T-shirt he got after they won the championship. But the closer he gets, the more I notice the slight differences. His hair is longer than before, the curling ends brushing the collar of his T-shirt. His shoulders are broader, his stride more confident.
He stops a few feet away from me. “Hadley.”
That’s it. Just my name. But the sound of it in his soft, deep, familiar voice has my stomach tugging with longing.
Has me wanting to forget the past eleven months ever happened.
He knows it, too. He’s always seen through me. Knew me better than anyone. Wasn’t that the problem?
I let him get too close. Gave him too much.
And still he wanted more.
He must sense my vulnerability because he steps forward. Reaches for me. I remember what it’s like to have his arm slung around my s
houlders as he squeezes me to his side. How he’d give me a quick, friendly hug whenever we said goodbye.
Except the last time he pulled me toward him, it wasn’t so quick. Was way more than just friendly.
And when he said that final goodbye, he didn’t touch me at all.
I cross my arms and Sam stops, clearly reading my Hands off! body language. Accepts it as his due. Part of his penance.
But not fully, because there’s a flash of disappointment on his face, a brief glimpse of hurt in his eyes.
I refuse to feel guilty for either.
He shoves his hands into the pockets of his gray basketball shorts and gives me one of his stupid lopsided grins that he knows damn well is adorable. “Hey.”
I don’t smile back. “Hey.”
“Uh…how’s your summer going?”
Seriously? He thinks I’m going to play the nothing-happened-and-nothing’s-changed-between-us game?
So much for that whole he knows me better than anyone thing.
“Fine.”
“Good.” He clears his throat. “That’s…good.”
I nod. Yep, everything with me is just hunky-dory. Living the dream and all that.
If living the dream means being basically friendless, spending forty hours a week working a job I hate and constantly scrimping and saving and still never having enough, then yeah, I’m there, standing on top of a brightly colored rainbow tossing handfuls of golden confetti to a bunch of dancing unicorns.
From the garage behind me, someone—sounds like Cody—calls Sam’s name, diverting his attention.
“See ya,” I say.
Keeping my pace slow and steady, I walk away. I won’t let him think seeing him has me running scared. That being close enough to him to smell his cologne, to pick out the strands of hair highlighted by the California sun affects me in any way.
You know, like in a palm-sweating, heart-racing, stomach-twisting sort of way.
“Where are you going?” he asks, catching up to me.
Guess one more thing about him hasn’t changed.
His persistence.
Comes with the territory of always getting your own way.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Eventually, all opposition will fall away, leaving you an open path to whatever your little heart desires.
At least that’s how it works for Sam. For regular schmucks like me who don’t come from a life of privilege and entitlement? We learn early on how stupid and useless it is to want things beyond our grasp, so we don’t even bother trying.
I slide my glance to Sam’s strong profile.
Even when those things are close enough to touch, they’re still out of our reach.
“Hadley?” His arm brushes mine.
I shift away. Hitch my backpack higher. “I’m going home.”
“I can give you a ride. I just need to see Mr. G for a minute but you can wait in the car.”
“I have my bike.” I refuse to ask why he needs to see the owner of Glenwood Landscaping. Mr. G. is my boss. Not Sam’s.
Sam quit working for him last summer.
Sam quit a lot of things last summer.
“We can put it in the back,” he says, pulling his key from his pocket. He presses a button and his SUV’s lights flash.
“I’d rather ride my bike home.”
He skirts around me, walks backward so he can see my face. “It’s five miles.”
“I know. I ride it every day. Twice.”
Now he’s frowning. “No one picks you up in the morning? Takes you home after work?”
Like he used to.
“No.”
After Sam left, a couple of our coworkers offered to drive me to and from work each day, but after my constant refusals, they finally stopped.
He tries that grin of his again because…yeah…adorable. “Come on, Hadley. Let me drive you home. We can stop at the Tastee Freeze for a milkshake. My treat.”
The boy knows the way to my heart, that’s for sure, and honestly, if he throws in an order of fries, I might just take him up on it.
What can I say? I’m weak.
But it’s not really the food that’s tempting me to say yes. After spending the entire day out in the sun, the humidity pressing down on me like a giant thumb, the idea of sitting in Sam’s air-conditioned car—instead of pedaling my way home—sounds like heaven. But worse, and far more dangerous, I’m tempted by Sam. By his voice and smile. By his broad shoulders and dark eyes and pretty, pretty face.
This is how he got to me seven years ago. He wore me down—with his looks and dogged persistence, his seemingly endless kindness and charm.
And after he patiently chipped away at all my defenses, gained my trust and made himself indispensable to me, to my happiness, as if I couldn’t possibly live one freaking day without him in it, he left.
He. Left.
Now, I may not have a 4.0 GPA like good old Sammy-boy here, but I can be taught.
Especially when the lesson is so clear.
And painful.
“No,” I say and it comes out sharp. Too sharp. Gives away too much. I clear my throat. Modulate my tone before adding, “Thank you, but like I said, I’d rather ride my bike home.”
There. That’s better. All calm and casual and carefree and not the least bit bothered by his return to town, his presence or his very existence.
He stops me with a hand to my elbow.
I go completely still, my breath locked in my chest, and stare down at his hand. The sight of his fingers, so dark against my pale skin, his palm so wide on my arm, causes something inside of me to pinch painfully.
I tug away.
But even though I’m free, the skin he touched still tingles.
He shoves both hands through his hair, keeps them there, fingers linked behind his head, elbows wide as he looks down on me. The pose makes it impossible to ignore his rounded biceps, how they stretch the material of his sleeves.
I hate myself for noticing. I hate him, too. Just on principle.
“I was going to call you,” he says.
“Why?”
“To tell you I was coming home.” He lowers his arms and leans toward me, his voice dropping. “To tell you I wanted to see you.”
His words, the exact words I’d spent so long wanting to hear—I’m coming home. I want to see you—skim along my nerve endings. Cause my scalp to prickle.
No. No, he does not get to do this. Not now. Not after all this time.
“But you didn’t.” My tone is flat. I just hope he doesn’t notice it’s also unsteady. “You didn’t call me.”
His gaze drops briefly then meets mine again. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to talk to me.”
I stare at him. He’s nervous, I realize. Cool, confident Sam Constable is nervous.
Huh. Must be Karma.
Better late than never, I guess.
“Eleven months ago I would have answered your call,” I tell him.
Back then I would have given anything to hear from him. God, I was such an idiot. Praying and wishing and hoping for things to be different. Waste of time. Life happens. It just is. It’s like being on a roller coaster. There’s nothing you can do to steer it in any given direction. Nothing you can change. You can’t avoid the dips and turns, the nausea-inducing loops or the slow, painful climbs.
All you can do is hold on and go along for the ride.
“But you didn’t call or text,” I continue with a shrug. “And now we have nothing to talk about.”
I finally reach my bike but it’s no relief, not with Sam behind me, big and broad and silent as I crouch and unlock the chain, unwrap it from the post. Standing, I slip one strap off, then swing my backpack around so I can put the chain in a side pocket. Usually I change into sneakers before heading home but that’s not happening today.
I just want to go.
I slide my arm back through the strap and shrug the backpack on, catching the end of my ponytail between it and my shoulders. I
reach back…
And brush my fingertips over Sam’s knuckles.
I don’t move, barely breathe as Sam gently pulls my hair free and sweeps my ponytail over my left shoulder. Head bent, hand inches from my pounding heart, he wraps a few strands around his finger and I’m mesmerized by the sight, the strands seeming brighter, redder against his tanned skin.
“Give me five minutes,” he murmurs. His breath washes across the side of my neck and I shiver. “Please.”
But I can’t. I can’t give him anything. Not my time. Not my attention.
Not my forgiveness.
If I do, he’ll take them all and ask for more.
And I’ll be left with nothing.
Shaking my head, I step away from his touch and grab my bike’s handlebars. Put up the kickstand. Then, wordlessly, I walk away from him.
Just like he walked away from me eleven months ago.
2
Sam is not the first person to disappear from my life without a word, a care or a backward glance.
That dubious distinction goes to my dad, some guy named Billy Wheaton, who met my mom while she worked in the office of a local construction firm one summer.
Mom never had much to say about him so the only things I know for sure are his name (assuming Billy Wheaton is his real name and not an alias used to throw off the cops and/or a woman or two scorned, looking to collect child support), that he was originally from New Hampshire (which sounds even more suspicious than his name. I mean, New Hampshire? Do people even really live there?) and he had red hair and green eyes.
The Art of Holding On Page 1
