Fall in Love Book Bundle: Small Town Romance Box Set

by Grover Swank, Denise

  My chest wrenched at the hardness of his tone. At the way he was watching me as if he had no idea who I was.

  As if he were guarding himself the way I was so well known for . . .

  When I just stared at him, not knowing where to start, he said, “I asked you once if we needed to hide you.” A harsh laugh left him. “I’d been joking then, but you still assured me we didn’t.”

  “No,” I said immediately, and felt another piece of me cry out in sorrow and apology at the way that one word seemed to confirm what he’d already known and make him more suspicious. “That isn’t it at all.”

  “Then tell me what it is.”

  My chest heaved as I tried to figure out a way to explain, tried to think of any way to give him some version of the truth that would pacify him—all of them. Because he wouldn’t understand . . . not this.

  “Because it was you and me?” he pressed.

  “No—well . . . not exact—kind of—”

  “Fuck, Rae.”

  “It’s complicated,” I cried out, and desperately tried to clear my head and the jumbled thoughts tripping up my tongue. “I don’t check in at places. If I take a picture of somewhere I’m at, there is nothing identifying. I don’t let anyone know where I am or where I’m going to be. Ever. I don’t want people to be able to find me.”

  His wounded expression pinched with confusion, but he stayed silent, waiting for me to continue.

  “I don’t even promote events I’ll be signing at. When readers tag me there and in their pictures, it’s okay because I’ll be leaving before anyone can get to me anyway.”

  “Who are you hiding from?” he demanded in a soft, threatening tone.

  “Everyone,” I nearly yelled.

  Everything about his voice and his demeanor shouted that he would stop whatever threat was searching for me.

  But he had it all wrong.

  “I am not afraid of anyone, I am not in a situation where I need to be hidden from someone. I’m not—God. Okay, if you want the truth . . .” I lifted my arms to the sides and let them fall with a stuttered huff. “I’m hiding because I’m a coward.”

  At that, his eyebrows shot up to his hairline. For the first time since I’d opened the door, his frustration faded.

  “My dad’s family, the people I told you about last night?” I waited until he nodded before saying, “They wanted nothing to do with me before, but the moment I hit a list, they wanted everything to do with me.” I gestured to the side as if they’d all be standing there. “They showed up at my very first signing, acting like I owed them for what they had done for me. They asked for money in front of my readers, Sawyer. They’ve contacted my friends who have tagged me in things, giving them bullshit stories in an attempt to get free things from them.” A bitter laugh tumbled from my lips as my head moved in harsh shakes.

  “I finally learned to stop promoting my events after the second one they showed up at,” I continued through clenched teeth. “I finally learned to remove all tags on social media after some author friends showed me messages from one of my aunts, asking for donations for my grandma’s funeral. My grandma who, if you remember, died when I was eleven. But that’s only them, they aren’t the only people who have shown up places.”

  “Who else has shown up, Rae?” Sawyer asked, his low tone just as fierce as before.

  “It isn’t like that,” I said so softly, I wasn’t sure he even heard me. “It isn’t what you’re imagining.”

  I thought about Jack’s calls and texts, about his wounded requests to come back and his insistence that we were good together.

  It was all so familiar, and why I had started blocking men from my life once I left town.

  “Who has shown up?”

  “I leave, Sawyer.” I swallowed past the emotion tightening my throat and tried to steel my jaw. When I continued, my words were nothing more than a strained plea. “I leave . . . and when I do, I don’t say ‘goodbye.’”

  I knew the second he’d understood the full meaning behind my confession. Saw it in the way his expression fell before going blank, preparing for when I would do that to him.

  “After a lifetime of having it happen, it was hard to not take on some of the habits I hated so much.” My shoulders lifted, but the weight pressing on me forced them to sag heavily. “Some people weren’t ready to accept things were over and showed up the next place I resurfaced . . . begging for something I couldn’t give them.”

  “So, now you don’t resurface,” he assumed in a somber tone.

  I shook my head, but he didn’t react in any way, leaving the space in the hall thick with suffocating tension.

  When it felt like I might go insane from the silence, Sawyer breathed a laugh filled with frustration and thinly-veiled fear, then pushed from the wall. Head hanging low as he leaned toward me while still keeping a significant distance between us. “Were you gonna say ‘goodbye?’”

  My body hunched inward and my expression crumpled as assurances and heart-breaking truths amassed until I no longer knew how to speak.

  Anyone else—anyone—I wouldn’t utter a goodbye because then there were the pleas to not do what I was. There were the show-ups at my door before I could disappear and the attempts at getting me to stay.

  But this was Sawyer, and I wanted to believe that with what he’d come to mean to me, I would give him warning. That I would treat my leaving differently as I’d treated everything else.

  And then there was that part of me that was screaming I didn’t want there to be a goodbye at all . . .

  His hardened stare lifted, the anger in that look seeming to seize and obliterate my heart so slowly, so painfully. “You’re right . . . you are a coward.”

  My soul wrenched and cried out when he left me there. A broken sob clawed from the hollow in my chest as I stumbled into the wall and dropped my head into my hands.

  I wanted to go after him, to beg him to understand. To explain or attempt to justify the way I’d guarded myself after years of abandonment. But my legs felt cemented to the floor. Where my shuddering back met the wall felt like a tether, grounding me in place and this shattering pain.

  I jolted at the touch to my shoulder, my face creasing from the overwhelming emotions when I looked up and saw Nathan standing there, hand still outstretched. Worry and anger poured from him as he studied me.

  “I don’t know what happened,” he began softly, “but I was there in time to see Dixon leave and hear you cry. Do I need to talk to him?”

  “No,” I said adamantly, the word tight and warped from my tears. “No, don’t, it wasn’t him.”

  When another muted sob fell from my lips, Nathan lowered his voice and leaned closer. “Rae, if I heard you, then everyone else out there can. Let me get you away from here, yeah?”

  I managed a nod or some form of assent, and let him lead me from the hall and out of Brewed, to his car.

  I didn’t see anyone as we left—not that I had been looking—but I was sure Sawyer knew I was gone. If he hadn’t seen me through the windows of the shop, someone surely told him within seconds.

  Nathan didn’t say or ask anything during the short drive, but instead of shutting off his car and getting out once we’d pulled up to Blossom, he just settled in his seat and waited.

  “I think he just realized how terrible of an idea it was to fall in love with me,” I whispered a while later.

  “That can’t be true,” Nathan said gently, earning a belittling laugh from me.

  “It is. I warned him not to.” My head moved absentmindedly as fresh tears filled my eyes and slipped down my cheeks. “I’m fairly certain that was him ending it before I could.”

  “I know you said you aren’t the kind of person to do relationships, or whatever,” he began, his voice hesitant, “but if you’re having this reaction to not being with him . . . maybe you are that person. With him.”

  “Nathan, no, I can’t—”

  “Has it ever hurt like this?”

  I didn
’t respond, because he didn’t need to know me to know it hadn’t. I’d offered him a few sentences the night before that described me well enough for him to know I didn’t get involved this way.

  “Just think about that,” he said.

  I roughly shook my head, as if to clear my mind of his words, my pain, and Sawyer’s look of unfamiliarity, and finally glanced at him—noting his three-piece suit for the first time.

  “The meeting,” I forced out, trying to clear my throat as I did. “You have the meeting with Hunter today.”

  “Had,” he corrected, and slowly drummed his fingers along the steering wheel. “I was stopping in to grab a coffee on my way back here when I heard you.”

  My lungs screamed when I couldn’t seem to remember how to breathe, but I just sat there, gripping the edge of the seat. When he didn’t offer anything, I asked, “How did it go?”

  Nathan finally looked to me, his expression not giving anything away. “I asked Dixon directly if he wanted to sell. He said he thought I was supposed to be convincing him to, but I just asked again.” With a faint shrug, he continued. “Dixon said, ‘Fuck no,’ and I couldn’t help but nod because I’d known that would happen. In my head, I was going over my pitch again and again, but I couldn’t get it out. Ended up saying what you’ve been telling me, told him what the company’s plans were with the land if he sold and that it would be a mistake to sell. And then I left.”

  A watery smile tugged at my lips, my relief clashing with my pain. “Thank you.”

  “I would say anytime, but I might lose my job if you keep showing up where I’m about to try to buy a place out. So, really . . . please . . . don’t show up again.”

  Despite everything, a laugh burst from my chest and was echoed by him, but mine fell flat as I realized I couldn’t run to tell Sawyer the news they’d all been waiting on.

  “Really think, Rae,” Nathan said soberly. “You have a thing against relationships, I heard you. From where I’m sitting . . . you’re gonna lose the one you’re meant to have if you don’t do something about it.”

  My entire being reacted to those words, wanting to take action. Then those scars on my heart flared and made me falter. Reminding me why I was this way and vainly trying to convince myself this was for the best because it couldn’t last and had already gone too far . . .

  “Things aren’t always that simple,” I murmured as I opened the door and climbed out of the car.

  I heard him follow me out and into Blossom and up to his own room, but he didn’t say anything again.

  Once I was pressed against my closed bedroom door, I released a stuttered breath and blinked against the burning in my eyes, refusing to let more tears build.

  I was fine.

  I could handle this.

  After an ache-relieving shower, a much-needed nap, and a few more cups of coffee, I would be ready-to-move-on-again fine.

  A sharp sob burst from me, and I hurried to cover my mouth, muting any other traitorous cries that may escape.

  I deal with things, say goodbye to them, and that’s the end of it. That’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it will be now.

  I can deal with losing Sawyer Dixon too.

  Chapter 34

  Sawyer

  I looked from her stubborn expression to the bottle in her hands, just out of my reach. “Emberly,” I said in a low, grating tone.

  Her only response was to lift an eyebrow.

  A harsh breath burst from me, and I glanced to where Brady stood at the other side of the bar. “Brady, can I have—”

  “No, he can’t,” Emberly said over me.

  “Jesus, Em.” I stood from the barstool and started to step away, stopping when she slammed the bottle of whiskey down.

  “Are you gonna go talk to her?”

  Something like a laugh lined my words when I said, “So, what, I can fall a little more in love with her, only to be another guy she skips out on when I least expect it? So I can wonder where the fuck she went, and probably never know?”

  I hadn’t had to tell Emberly what happened with Rae and me.

  By the time I’d made it back into the bar after walking away from her, everyone was already talking about it. Town worked fast on that one.

  Thankfully, the room had started clearing out soon after, and I’d been able to distract myself with trying to assure Faith she hadn’t done anything wrong without revealing Rae’s past. By the time she and Gavin had left, all I’d wanted was a drink.

  One Emberly had been refusing, glaring and snapping at me as if I had done something wrong.

  “She loves you, Sawyer,” Emberly said insistently, but the words had a sinking effect on me.

  Heart shredded and dropped straight to my stomach.

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  “You’re wrong,” she maintained. “I see the way she looks at you, the way she talks about you. Whatever she’s told you, it doesn’t matter. She has absolutely fallen in love with you.”

  My mouth opened to respond, but a defeated huff sounded instead when my phone lit up with Facebook messages.

  Ones I would’ve ignored if a key word hadn’t jumped out at me. A key name.

  I hurried to grab my phone off the bar and opened the app and messages from a guy I didn’t know.

  The first was a screenshot of the picture Faith had posted of Rae and me, the second had my heart racing for all the wrong reasons.

  Jack Palma – who the fuck are you and what the hell are you doing with Rae?

  My gaze shifted to my best friend for a moment before returning to the screen as I thought through the last conversation with the girl in question.

  Me – Right. I don’t know who you are, and I’m not sure why that’s your business.

  Jack Palma – pretty fucking sure my fiancée is my business.

  I dropped to the barstool I’d been occupying when the response came through, nearly missing it as the floor was ripped out from beneath me.

  Before I could question or attempt to deny what he’d said, he sent picture after picture.

  Of some guy proposing to Rae.

  Of some guy kissing her.

  Of a motherfucking engagement ring on her finger as she kissed him back.

  “Em,” I said through weak breaths. “Em, give me that drink.”

  Chapter 35

  Rae

  By the time I’d finished washing and drying my hair, I was such a wreck from holding back tears and trying to convince myself that letting this go was best for Sawyer, I hadn’t been able to stay lying down for more than a few seconds.

  Goldilocks bed, or not.

  I’d shot off the bed and begun pacing, my movements jerky and agitated as I’d taken short, thin breaths.

  It wasn’t until I’d grabbed my phone that I’d realized why.

  Sawyer wasn’t there.

  We fought—God knew we did.

  Sure, there had been a couple times that he’d said things—started the fight—but there was no point in saying the main source of our arguments wasn’t me. Because I’d been afraid . . . because I’d tried forcing him away . . . because I’d been desperate to hold onto who I was.

  But throughout them all, he’d come back, unwilling to let that be it.

  It didn’t matter that it had only been an hour, it could’ve been seconds or weeks, and I would still know in my gut that he wouldn’t be coming back.

  I mumbled a curse when I realized my phone was still turned off from when Jack had called as I was leaving the Brewed restroom, and hurried to power it on. My already abrupt movements becoming even harsher as I waited.

  Less than a minute after it came to life, chimes sounded again and again, halting my steps and stealing my breath.

  But they weren’t from the man I was hoping to hear from.

  Jack.

  All Jack.

  I didn’t listen to his voicemails. I barely even glanced at his texts as I tapped into the contact and did what I should have the night before . . . bl
ocked it.

  Once I’d backed out of the messages, I hovered over the call app for a moment, my soul aching to talk to Sawyer, before I locked the screen and clutched the phone in my hands.

  “It’s for the best,” I whispered, the words weak, even to my own ears.

  It had to be.

  With a glance at the bed, I left the room and made my way downstairs in search of coffee . . . and maybe foolishly hoping he might be there.

  All the while telling myself to stay in that house and not go looking for him.

  It’s for the best, it’s for the best, it was going to end soon anyway . . .

  My chest deflated when I entered the kitchen and found Savannah chatting away to the wrong Dixon as sounds of their kids running and excitedly screaming filtered in from nearby rooms.

  Beau speared me with a cold look, but Savannah visibly brightened when she saw me there. “Rae, hi! What can I get you?”

  My gaze bounced between the two, holding onto Beau’s crippling stare longer and longer before I finally focused on his wife. “I, uh . . . I was just coming to make some coffee actually.”

  And not contact Sawyer.

  Maybe leave forever.

  Because as much as I want to, the thought of seeing him again hurts too much.

  Savannah stepped away from the island she was at when I just stood there, lost in my thoughts, and offered, “I’d be happy to make some for you.”

  “No. No, I can get it. It’s fine.” I gestured to the island littered with ingredients and bowls and measuring devices. “You really love baking, don’t you?”

  Her shoulders lifted and her expression changed into something that screamed nostalgia and love as she glanced at Beau. “I do,” she said, bringing her attention to me again. “Besides, I want our guests to have something to snack on since I only make breakfast for them.”

  “Only,” I mumbled sarcastically as I moved to the coffee bar they had set up on one of the counters of their large kitchen, earning a soft laugh from her while Beau continued to remain unnervingly silent.