Page 29 of Big Risks

She's not coming. The realization settles over me like a weight. I've lost her. I've lost us.

Leaving money on the table for the coffee, I walk outside. The morning air is cool against my face, carrying the scent of pine and distant rain. I stand in the parking lot, not ready to go home, not ready to face the emptiness.

The sound of tires on gravel makes me turn. A car pulls in, but it’s not Hailey's sedan, so I head for my car. It parks, and the driver's door opens.

Hailey steps out, her hair windblown, her eyes finding mine immediately across the distance.

And suddenly, I can breathe again.

Chapter 9

Hailey

The drive home feels twice as long as the drive to Oakside yesterday. My phone sits silent in my cup holder. There have been no messages from Walker since our fight. I'd left him standing there in his living room, hurt swimming in his eyes.

I pull into my driveway and for a moment, I sit in the darkness, listening to the sound of a quiet Tennessee night, wondering how everything went so wrong so fast.

As I walk up to my front door, something catches my eye. A piece of paper under a rock. I bend down to pick it up and find it’s an envelope with my name on it. I recognize the handwriting. It’s the same one on the letters I’ve spent all this time reading.

Once inside, I drop my keys in the bowl, the sound echoing through my empty house. Going to my living room, I sit on thecouch holding the envelope, fingers trembling. The envelope is damp at the edges. It’s been sitting overnight and soaked up the morning dew. How long had it been there?

I sink back into my couch, tearing it open with clumsy fingers.

Hailey,

I've been staring at this blank page for an hour. Words used to come so easily when I talked to you, but now I'm afraid anything I say will only push you further away.

The truth is, I've spent years trying to outrun my past. Years pretending I could start fresh if I just moved on. But the thing about ghosts is they follow you, especially when a beautiful nurse moves to town and starts making you believe in second chances.

My breath catches. I pull my knees to my chest, the letter trembling in my hands.

Riley was my best friend. I called her Red, and she called me James, always has since we were in school together. She was my high school sweetheart and my biggest supporter when I joined the military. We got married young so she could follow me wherever I was stationed.

We made it through our first deployment, and then we had Olivia. She grew distant, and caring for a newborn was a lot, especially since I couldn’t be there like I wanted due to training. Then we deployed again. She moved in with her grandma herein Big Wood, so she had some help. Still, the letters were slow, and I knew she had a lot going on.

Then the letters stopped. I knew things were good because her grandma was writing to me all the time and giving me updates on Olivia. But she started mentioning Riley less and less.

When I got home from deployment, I realized it was because she had been cheating on me with one of our friends from high school, Jeremy.

The night she died, we'd been arguing. She was complaining I didn’t love her like I did before Olivia came along and I said she was right. I hated her right then, thinking Olivia might not even be mine due to the timeline she had told me.

She stormed out and drove off to her boyfriend’s place. I could have stopped her. Should have. When the police called three hours later, they said she and Jeremy had been in a car accident. He was driving, and he'd wrapped his car around a tree. They were both dead on impact.

His parents blamed me. Said if I hadn't picked that fight, he wouldn’t have been in the car with Riley that night. They weren't wrong.

I press my hand to my mouth, tears blurring the words. All this time, I'd been so focused on the mystery of Walker that I never saw the weight he was carrying.

At first, I was still so angry I didn’t grieve the way I should have. I didn’t give Riley the obituary she deserved as Olivia’s mom. Someday. I will have to explain that to her. It took Riley’s grandma begging me to do a paternity test, and it coming back that Olivia was mine for me to snap out of it. I was six months from the end of my military contract, and with the help of Riley’s grandma and this town, we made it work.

Olivia became my whole world until you moved to town. I had set my past behind me and it was almost like that guy was a completely different person.

When I saw you were reading those letters, letters I didn’t think still existed, my past came crashing back. I was terrified you would see that I'm broken in ways I don't know how to fix.

I should have told you everything from the beginning. About Riley and what happened. I was afraid if you knew the real me—all of me—you wouldn't want me anymore.

But that's not fair to you. You deserve someone who trusts you with their whole heart, not just the pretty parts.

I love you, Hailey. I think I've loved you since the first time you made Olivia smile and told her about your mom’s cat.

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