Year 28 - J.L. Mac Page 0,6

worse because of it. Our unceremonious end was worse still. He forced his way into my heart and the result has been my own private hell for more than a decade since it all came undone. I grit my teeth, pressing my manicured nails into the too soft flesh of my palm until it hurts.

“So when do you get into town?”

“My flight leaves Thursday afternoon,” I say on autopilot, my eyes locked onto the picture of the man who destroyed me and screwed everything up. The hilarity of it is unless he’s a mind reader, there is no way he understands the extent of how badly he screwed up both our lives. No one aside from myself knows how wide sweeping the fallout was when a nuke fell in my lap and detonated, pulverizing the life I had and the future I thought I had laid out before me.

Being forced to go within one hundred square miles of my hometown all but guarantees I will undoubtedly have to endure countless reminders of the life I left behind when I ran from my only home and all the people I have ever known or loved. I’ll drive down the streets we walked along, hand in hand. I’ll see the high school where our connection bloomed and intensified. From my mom and dad’s house I’ll see the Friday night lights of the high school football stadium thrusting skyward above the tree line, casting their yellow-white light over other young girls and guys cheering for their team like we once had. I’ll smell the salt water from the bayou where so many hours were spent discovering each other and growing deeper in love by the day. It all seems like memories belonging to someone else, from a lifetime ago.

I tried to persuade my sister to have a destination wedding. Given that I don’t plan to ever marry or have children—two morsels of happily ever after that I can’t say I deserve—I was happy to give my sister the money. I don’t need the money for myself, but I definitely need the penance.

I had even offered to pay for it, but she refused. I had directed Bethany to email her information regarding the top ten destination wedding locals and package deals to get the entire show done and over with. She stuck to her guns, and of course she would. Ellie has no reason to not love everything about our hometown including everyone in it, and she wants to be married there with everyone in attendance.

The unfortunate cherry on top was that she chose an early fall wedding date during midterm elections and the same week as my twenty-eighth birthday. Fabulous, sis. She doesn’t know a thing about my stupid promise or what any of it has to do with my birthday or him, the last man on the planet I want to bump into. I would much prefer a front-page public relations disaster for Senator Cline with me at the helm. Running disaster management for our team followed by an interview with a panel consisting of political opposition sounds far more appealing than seeing him again. Work catastrophes, I can handle. A trip to Palmetto Grove, Louisiana, where I will face the insufferable, persistent man and the old wounds he carved out in me… not so much.

Chapter 3

Raegan

“Happy birthday!” Bethany, my assistant shouts, bursting through my office door like a goddamned maniac with a cake balanced in one hand and a gift bag in another. I yelp and nearly jump out of my skin.

“Dammit, Bethany!” I growl under my breath, hating that she scared the hell out of me. If I weren’t constantly so lost in thought, perhaps I wouldn’t be so jumpy, but there is no helping it. The impending trip home is happening. As the seconds tick by, I imagine an invisible tether looped around my neck, dragging me inch by inch back to the place I’d prefer to see swallowed up by the earth, dragging me back to him, back to the summer everything changed.

“Happy birthday to you,” the group of staff members filing in behind her begin singing and I smile and nod. I pretend to be delighted with their impromptu birthday party when really I’d be far more delighted if they were combing the web for all things campaign intelligence related while simultaneously checking in with our extended team. Senator Watson is said to be battling back against an accusation of drug addiction levied by his college sweetheart,