Page 1 of Entwined Hearts
Prologue
SAVANNAH
Thirteen years ago…
The stars twinkled above in the night sky, blinking at me like some kind of mockery; shining brightly while I felt like I was fizzling out.
I wrapped my arms around myself, leaning against the porch railing while I looked to the sky for the answers I didn’t have. Answers I needed, but like usual, the sky was quiet.
I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. I wasn’t a barrel racer like my big sister, Claire. I didn’t want to serve my country like my brother, Emmett. I didn’t adore animals as much as my best friend, Delilah. And I never developed any special aptitude like my little sister, Tess, did towards computers and math.
All I did was worry. My mind felt like a tornado or a never-ending spool of yarn. The thoughts never stopped. The chaos never ended, which was why I was wide awake at one in the morning. It was exhausting.
“Shit.” The hushed curse carried over the land that stretched between mine and the McLeod’s house. It was hard to live so close to them after we stopped being friends six years ago, butour dads hated each other because of some merger that never happened when they were boys, and Claire said we couldn’t hang out anymore.
It was confusing and didn’t make sense, and I didn’t do well with things I didn’t understand and couldn’t get answers to. And since nobody would tell me the real reason, I just listened.
There was a low, raspy laugh. A boy’s laugh. It had me straightening off the railing, squinting into the darkness.
That’s when I saw a figure stumbling near the fence line like a newborn foal. He was tall, lean. Moonlight filtered through the glass bottle he brought to his lips while nearly draining the amber liquid inside.
That had to be Weston; Colt would never do something as dumb as drink somewhere Mr. McLeod could catch him. Weston, on the other hand, was always getting in trouble at school and in general. Just last month, he got suspended for gluing all of Mrs. Montgomery’s desk drawers shut.
It reminded me of the pranks we used to play on each other as kids. Weston and Delilah were the masterminds behind most of them, while Colt and I were always scared of the fallout. Leave it to the two sticks in the mud to befriend the wild ones. But those days were long gone, buried under decades of tension and resentment between our families.
I went down the porch steps as Weston stumbled forward, tripping over his own feet, before he caught himself on the fence that divided our properties. He held onto it like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to Earth.
What the heck was he doing?
The grass was slick under my bare feet as I neared him, and the wind carried a chill that my pajamas didn’t stand a chance against.
“Weston?” I called out as he drank more from the bottle. “What are you doing out here?”
He jerked his head up, squinting at me like he couldn’t tell if I was really there or not. “Savannah?” he slurred.
“You know that’s illegal, right?” I nodded towards the bottle that hung from his hand.
He looked down at the bottle like he’d forgotten it was there and laughed. “You gonna write me up, Sheriff Hayes?” I gasped. He laughed more, shaking his head. “God, you haven’t changed one bit, have you?”
I scowled, putting my hands on my hips. “Neither have you, by the looks of it,” I snapped, feeling defensive. Last time he spoke to me, I was ten. All gangly limbs and buck teeth. Surely, I’d changed since then. Right? I took a step closer. “What are you doing out here anyway?”
He took another sip from the bottle. “What’s it look like? I’m celebrating. You?”
My eyes narrowed, confused. He didn’t look particularly happy. “Couldn’t sleep. What are you celebrating?”
“Why can’t you sleep?” he countered, deflecting.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Weston.”
“Savannah.”
I turned around with a huff. “I’m leaving.”
He let out a long sigh as I started to walk away. His voice was flat, devoid of emotion as he said, “Four years ago today, my parents bailed.”
I stopped walking then. Our group had broken up before that happened, but I remember hearing about it at school. One day, he was just a thirteen-year-old boy living his life, and then boom, his parents were gone. I didn’t understand how they could do that to him, how any parent could do that to any child.
I turned to find him staring at the ground, swirling the liquid in his bottle. He looked lost, broken. Nothing like the carefree boy I knew, or the rowdy teen I passed in the halls. He was theone who was always smiling, always laughing or cracking a joke, not whatever this was. It shocked me how much I hated it.
