Holding her hand as we walk down Main Street makes me feel a goddamn king.

Maybe it’s something about this town. It’s charming as fuck, Jules was right about that.

There are vendors selling cotton candy and a fucking Ferris wheel is setup on the edge of town. Sugary sweet elephant ears are purchased and kids eat ice cream cones even though it’s ten o’clock at night. The whole town is in celebration mode. Bales of hay are placed along the sidewalk, lights are strung across the light posts, and American flags wave in the evening breeze. Everyone seems to be smiling and it’s contagious.

My ball cap is on, and my hair is getting pretty long and shaggy. No one’s gonna notice a guy with his head down and his hand held by a woman like Sadie. Besides, Sadie’s the person everyone’s going to be looking at.

She looks so fucking cute today. She braided her hair and wears a short denim dress, showing off her legs and her perfect set of tits. She’s wearing flip-flops and looks as wholesome as a summer day.

But I remember her at the Small Town Fuck Club, the way she got down on her knees in the shower and sucked me off until I came all over her round breasts. She may look innocent, but she is more than sugary goodness.

But that just makes you want her all the more. There are many sides to this woman. She’s more than good and bad, filthy and sweet. She’s fucking everything in between.

“Everything here is so perfect,” she says. “It’s like we landed on a movie set.” Then she looks up at me, as if the words ‘movie set’ require a trigger warning. “Sorry, Sawyer. I shouldn’t have said that.” She shakes her head and bites her bottom lip.

“That’s not true, baby, you don’t have to censor yourself with me. But a movie set isn’t exactly perfect. It’s mostly angry directors and high-strung assistance. Bitchy costars and crabby producers. I wouldn’t exactly say paradise. But this place? This farming town in the middle of nowhere? This is something I call heaven.”

“Would you want to stay here?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. We stop and get ice cream cones. She chooses chocolate, I get salted caramel. Watching her lick her cone gets me hard. Right about now I have something she could lick. Something she could wrap her pink lips around. “The hardest part of staying here, or anywhere really, is figuring out what I’m going to do with my life.”

“You could work at Dusty’s with me.” She elbows me as we walk. “Or hey, you could be a sex club bouncer with Teddy.”

“I’d hate to be in a sex club without you,” I say, laughing. “And can you really see me working behind a bar? I’m not sure I have the right personality.”

“But what would you do, like if you could do anything?”

“I’m always writing those journals. Part of me thinks I could do that. Be a writer.”

Sadie stops and turns to face me. “Maybe if you ever let me read some of those writings I could tell you if you’re any good,” she teases.

“I know,” I tell her, raising a hand in defeat. “I hold my cards close. But damn, you want to read my journals? You’ll think I’m even more touchy-feely than you already do.” Laughing, I grab Sadie’s waist and pull her to me. “See, I can’t help but touch you.”

“There’s nothing wrong about being a touchy-feely guy, especially when you have a body like this, and a cock like that,” she says pointing down. “Besides, there is something special about being with a man who is in touch with his emotions. Everything we do together is heightened because I know you feel things deeper than the average man. You feel things to your core. Way past your heart. You feel with your soul.”

Her words give me strength, make me feel like the man she believes me to be. Capable and mighty and more than I ever see in myself. My parents never thought I was enough, but it isn’t like that with Sadie. She sees me, really sees me. And she loves me anyway.

I tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Alright, so you’re okay with me being a writer out here in the farmlands. What would you do, Sadie?”

She shrugs as we start walking again. The brass band stops playing and everyone, including us, congregates at the edge of town to watch the fireworks display.

“I guess I could keep working at Dusty’s. Honestly, I like working there. And I want to be near my mom. She’s my only family. I want to hold onto that, you know?”

I nod, knowing exactly what she means.

“Looks like we’ve got it all figured out. You’re gonna keep working at the bar, bringing me tater-tot nachos as I write the next Great American Novel.”

“I like that idea. But I don’t think we can stay in Dusty’s cottage forever.”

“We can always build a place for ourselves. The land next to him is for sale.”

Sadie looks up at me, laughing again. “And how exactly do you know that?”

“I looked it up,”

“Wow,” she says exaggeratedly. “You really want to put roots down here in Indiana.”

“Is that bad?” I shrug again. “Because from where I’m standing, it’s looking pretty good.”

We stop as fireworks begin shooting into the sky. The crowd around us claps in excitement. The place is alive, this town picture perfect. And I have Sadie. Damn, for a moment I forget the mess from before and all I see is the perfection of the future.

But then, everything changes.

I thought I may have disappeared completely. But nothing is ever that easy. And sooner or later I think I always knew my past was going to catch up with me.

I just wasn’t expecting it right here, right now.

But here it is.

Here he is.

Levi Callahan Mallone.

My oldest, dearest friend.

The friend I betrayed and the friend I tried to protect.

“Sawyer?” he says.

Cal was my best friend. A man who’s been a brother to me. The man I lied to, the man I left behind.

The man who picked up the pieces of my broken life, who took one step in front of the other because he knew there was nothing else to do.

“Sawyer? What the fuck?” Cal is freaking out front of me. Juliana behind him, covering her face with her hands.

“Oh my God,” she cries. “What is happening?”

Sadie holds me back, holds onto me. But I tell her it’s okay.

Tonight, there’s nothing left to do but face my fears.

“Sawyer?” Cal says again.

“I’m sorry,” I manage. My words are a tangle of emotion. I’m sorry is the only way I know to begin. “I am so fucking sorry.”

Sorry for running. For hiding. For not telling him the Goddamn truth.

“What the hell,… what the hell?” Cal runs his hands through his hair, he’s shaking, trembling. He’s a fucking mess

I did this to him.

“Can we go some ––” People are turning to look at us. And I drop my head to the ground, a fucking cluster of emotion as more fireworks explode in the air, eliciting oohs and ahhs from everyone around us. The crowd is thick as the entire town stands watching the fireworks go off.

Sadie reaches for my arm pulling me back and Juliana reaches for Cal’s dragging him toward us as we run through the maze of people.

I have an impulse to keep on running. Forever. Fucking forever.

But it’s not just my life anymore. My life is attached to Sadie’s, and where she goes, I go. And where I go, she goes.

And she still has business to attend to here in Resting Hollow.

And maybe I fucking do, too.

My past is catching up with me.

Maybe we all ended up in this town for a reason. Maybe this is the moment that will define me.

I sure as hell know what I don’t want it my life to be. A wasteland of regret, a story of me giving up when I should have given in.

Given in to the love around me.

We’ve run far from the downtown area and are at the end of an empty road, no one is around us.

The sky above shimmers with fireworks lighting up the night sky. The four of us standing on what feels like the very edge of the earth.

The edge of everything.

“What the fuck is going on? Cal asks. He is the same Cal, the same defined features, and classic good looks. But there’s something different about him. There’s this hope in his eyes I don’t recognize. The belief that life could be more than you planned. I look at Jules standing beside him, and I know he loves her the same way I love Sadie. The kind of love that spans beyond doubt and fear and anger and regret.

The kind of love that washes it all away.

I hope it’s strong enough to wash away this next part too.

I told him I jumped off a bridge once, and I don’t expect him to ever trust me again. But damn, I hope like hell he’ll listen.

“Sorry, I had to go, I faked my death because—”

Cal falls to his knees, shaking from his core.

Juliana sobs beside him, her hands on his shoulders, then she’s on her knees too. “I’m so sorry Cal, but I had to—”

“Why did you do this?” Cal asks, incredulously.

Looking down at him, my oldest friend, the man I betrayed in such a deep way none of my reasons seem to matter anymore.

“It’s not a story you’re gonna want to know. It’s a story that makes me ashamed of the place I come from. Ashamed of the people who share my name.”

“Tell me,” Cal begs. “Just fucking tell me why. Do you have any idea what we’ve been through? We had a service for you. We thought you were gone, and now I’m seeing a goddamned ghost. None of this can be fucking real. Are you real?”

He has a right to hate me, to wish me dead. But that’s not the tone of voice he has right now. It’s more disbelief than anger.

I’m still here and he’s still here.

I shake my head, gathering my words. “The night your parents died, Cal, my parents, you know, were in the car with them. And the night the photos of me at the A-list were leaked, I went over to see my parents, and—“ I start crying now, my shoulders shaking. I need to be strong, Cal deserves the truth. “My mom was drunk, and she told me about the night your parents died. She fucking told me that she was the one who called the paparazzi. It was because of her that there was a car chase. My parents are the fucking reason your parents died.

“They called the press because they wanted the attention. Wanted the photographs and the fame. My parents were hungry for it and it cost you your fucking family. My parents did this to you and all this time have pretended to love you, to care about you.” I run my hands through my hair, unable to look in Cal’s eyes.

“I didn’t want you to know the truth. It’s a story that should never be told. It’s so fucking awful. And I didn’t want to do the same thing to you one day, Cal. Lead you into a deathtrap by being my friend.”

Cal looks up at me, finding the strength to stand somehow. And when he does, he pulls me into an embrace, clapping me on the back. “You are a goddamn fucking idiot, Sawyer. What does that have to do with you? How are their choices yours?”

“Don’t you get? My life was fucking out of control. I didn’t want it anymore. I was getting so much heat, so much attention, and I was scared it would bring you down. All you wanted in life Cal, was to have a life out of the public eye. Being best friends with me, was bad enough, but I knew it was only a matter of time before my drama became yours. I wanted to save you from that”

“I never asked for you to be my protector.”

All of a sudden, the words of Sadie’s mom rush back to me. A few days ago, she sat in the bar, looking at her daughter and told her that she wasn’t asking her daughter to be her guardian angel, her protector, either.

And I remember what Sadie told her mom in response.

She wasn’t asking permission.

“I’m your best friend. I’d do anything for you. I’d fucking die for you, Cal.”

“Sawyer, I didn’t need you to die in order to keep me safe. What I needed was my best fucking friend.”

“I don’t expect you to ever forgive me. Dammit, Cal, I’m sorry. I hate that I did this to you, that I did this to us.”

“All I wanted, all along, was my best friend.” Cal wipes tears from his eyes. “And it looks like I fucking found you.”

“I don’t deserve your forgiveness,” I tell him.

Sadie and Jules watch us, covering their mouths in disbelief as we hug it out.

“Fuck that,” Cal says. “None of us fucking deserve any of this. And what does that have to do with anything anyway? Isn’t all of this more than we fucking deserve?” Cal’s face is written in rage, he’s pissed at me, at the situation. And I understand it all too well.

It’s fucked up.

I fucked it up.

“You’re right, all that matters is what we have at the moment. The people around us, the ones we can hang on to. Hold on to. God knows, faking my death wasn’t the answer.”

“What is the answer?” Jules asks, her voice soft

“The answer? If you have the chance to live your life, then live it. If you have something to hold on to, don’t fucking let go.”

Cal wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, and Jules wraps her arms around him. At the same time Sadie wraps her arms around me.

“I forgive you, man,” Cal says. “I’m just so fucking glad you’re alive.”

Relief washes over me as I accept the grace I don’t fucking deserve.

None of us deserve anything. The fact that we’re still standing on this earth, is a precious gift.

And I’ll never forget that again.

So long as I’m breathing, I’ll never take it for granted.