I sat on the porch steps of my childhood home in the small town of Gunnison, Colorado and looked out onto the pretty, suburban neighborhood with neatly trimmed gardens and white picket fences I had grown up in.

I had shit to tie up here, shit I'd been putting off for months, but couldn’t anymore. It hurt coming back here. It hurt to see the life I'd once lived. But here I was, sitting in the middle of my personal breakdown, with memories attacking the walls I had managed to build up over the years.

This neighborhood had shaped me. I learned to ride a bike on this street. I had spent more summers than I could count camping in the back yard of my next-door neighbor. I had my first kiss in the house across the street. For the first eighteen years of my life, this small town had been my home, and everyone in it had been my family.

But time had a habit of changing things and it had been almost thirteen years since I stepped foot in this place. The people of my youth were gone now and new families had taken their place, raising their young families in suburban bliss.

Coming back here made me think about how differently my life had changed from what it once was.

I used to be good. Pure. A decent human being. I played football in high school and got drunk on the weekends with my friends. I had a loving mother, a great bunch of friends, a girl I adored, and a future with endless possibilities.

It was all gone now.

Shaking my head, I sparked up a smoke and inhaled deeply, welcoming the stinging sensation as my lungs protested. Good. Fucking burn. I didn’t care.

Exhaling a cloud of smoke, I took another deep drag, and cast my gaze towards the house at the end of the street.

Her father was waiting for me inside that house.

The house that, once upon a time, I used to walk in at least twice a day, and the people who once called me son. Now there was no reason left to call me son.

That reason was six feet under.

My thoughts flicked to Hope and I came to the conclusion that women and my heart were a bad fucking idea.

Last time I fell in love, I went down for murder.

This time, I was positive she should go down for murder because the woman was killing me slowly. And I was fucking letting her do it.

I was pushing myself on her, the masochistic bastard I was, and enjoying the goddamn rejection.

The thing that got me through it was the knowledge that Hope Carter wanted me. I knew she did, and she could run around protesting the hell out of it and ignoring her feelings for me until the cows came home, but it wouldn’t change a damn thing.

She brought me back to life. I'd been living a life of stone for more than a decade. Hope Carter walked into my world and splintered the concrete protecting my heart.

Fuck, she blew the damn wall down by just being herself.

I was never going to be able to live a normal, mundane life like her husband did. I couldn’t offer her that. I had a rap sheet and list of dangerous people I needed to watch my back from. I was thrown in prison when I was eighteen years old and I'd done a lot of shady shit in order to survive that place. I'd made deals with devils, and double crossed a lot of un-crossable people.

I wasn’t good enough for her.

I got it.

Fuck, I got it loud and clear.

But neither was he.

I loved the ugliness inside her. She didn’t have to be perfect when she was with me. She just had to be real. There was no pedestal in sight when she was with me. I didn’t hold her to any damn vows or expectations. She was free to be whoever the hell she wanted to be when she was with me. I would take her in any of her forms. One of these days, she was going to wake up and not be able to lie to herself anymore. One of these days she was going to figure it all out. I knew I'd be standing there on that day with open arms…

I smoked three more cigarettes before I finally plucked up the courage to walk down the street towards the Clarke house. A part of me wanted to get in my truck and drive away from this town without looking back, but I'd never run from my responsibilities before and I wasn’t about to start now.

"Lucky," Hayley's father greeted when I opened the garden gate. He'd been waiting on me. I'd seen the curtains in his front room twitching all damn day. "Good to see you, son."

I could drop on my hands and knees and beg the man before me for forgiveness but it wouldn't change anything, so I inclined my head and shook his hand instead. "Good to see you, too, sir."

"Well, come on in," Mr. Clarke said with an encouraging clap on the shoulder. "Margie's been waiting on you all afternoon. She baked your favorite cookies. Told her not to – that you might not be hungry, but you know the way she is."

I forced a smile and followed the elderly man into the house only to freeze when my eyes landed on the silver haired woman standing in the kitchen doorway. "Lucky Casarazzi," Mrs. Clarke gushed in a voice thick with emotion. "Oh, my boy!" She rushed towards me and threw her arms around my waist, making what was left of my heart shrivel up and fucking die.

"Mrs. Clarke," I managed to squeeze out as I gently hugged her back. "It's good to see you again." I'm sorry I couldn’t save her…

"I was worried you weren't ever coming home," she mused, concern etched across her features. Reaching up, she cupped my face in her hands and smiled. "You look so much like Georgina. I still miss your momma, Lucky. She was my dearest friend and there's not a day goes by I don’t say a prayer for her."

"Yeah," I choked out as pain ricocheted through my body. "Me, too."

"It was such a terrible thing to happen," Mrs. Clarke added as she took my hand and led me into the kitchen. "Her passing while you were wrongfully locked up in that cage."

"I wasn’t wrongfully locked up," I replied gently, taking a seat at the table. "I killed a man."

"You performed a civic duty by eliminating a horrible threat," she hissed, brown eyes welling up with unshed tears. "That creature raped and murdered our beautiful daughter." She reached for the teapot in the center of the table and shakily poured three cups of tea. "He deserved no mercy – the same as he showed Hayley. And you should have been given a medal for stopping him – not locked up in prison."

"Spoken like the true wife of a sheriff," I chuckled, though I felt anything but humorous. I had to face myself every damn day when I looked in the mirror and saw the reflection of a man who had taken a mother's son away from her. I wasn’t the hero she portrayed me to be.

"It's done now," I added, reaching for my cup and taking a sip of tea. "I've served my time and I'm a free man."

"It still not right," Mrs. Clarke continued to rant. Taking the seat beside me, she hovered over me and dropped two sugar cubes into my cup the moment I set it back down. "It’s horrendous enough that Hayley lost her life over that vermin, but for you to lose eleven years of yours?" She banged her slender fist on the table and hissed, "There's no justice in the world."

"Leave the boy alone, Marge," Mr. Clarke grumbled, tone weary. "He didn’t come over here to hash this all up." Taking his usual seat at the head of the table, he looked at me with pained grey eyes and forced a smile.

And in that moment, all I could feel was compassion for the old man. Chris Clarke had been a force to be reckoned with when we were kids. He was the town sheriff and a horse of a man. Now, he just looked old and weathered. Time and pain had obviously taken its toll on him – on both of them. Hayley's parents were a mere fraction of the vibrant people they used to be.

"Have you been to Hayley's grave yet?" Mrs. Clarke asked, causing her husband to sigh heavily. "I laid fresh flowers yesterday. Lilies. Hayley's favorites."

I shook my head and took another sip of tea. "No. Not yet." And I had no plans on going, either, but I left that out.

"You should go see her," Mrs. Clarke added. "I know she would love that."

"That's enough," Mr. Clarke said in a low, warning tone, but his wife didn’t listen.

Instead, she continued to shred me apart with her words and hopeless hopefulness. "I like to sit under that big old oak and read to her when the weather's fine. Of course, I haven't been able to do much of that lately with the weather being so unpredictable, but I know she hears me. The sun always opens through the clouds when I read to her. It's a sign she likes to give me –"

"Dammit, Margery," Mr. Clarke roared, slamming his palm against the wooden table. "That's enough. Hayley's dead. Standing in front of a piece of black marble with her name on it doesn't mean shit. She's not there."

"Excuse me, Lucky," Mrs. Clarke warbled as she jerked to her feet. "I have to go and check on something…" A small sob tore from her throat then as she hurried out of the room.

"I'm sorry about that, Lucky," Mr. Clarke said, clearing his throat. "She's still…struggling to cope. It got a lot worse after your momma passed on." He sighed again and rubbed his eyes with his thumbs. "I think Margery used to lean on Georgina for support. In many ways, your mother was the last connection she had to you. And you were her last connection to our daughter."

I didn’t know what he wanted me to say to that. I loved his daughter and she died. I had spent more than a third of my life grieving that loss. I'd had thirteen years to come to terms with it, to grieve Hayley, and eleven of those I'd spent alone.

I cleared my throat a few times before daring to speak. "Living with grief isn’t easy." It probably wasn’t what Mr. Clarke wanted to hear, but it was all I had.

I loved his daughter and a part of me always would, but I was tired of being judged and stuffed in a box that was labeled 'damaged goods, don’t touch.'

I didn’t want to end up like his wife.

I wanted to live.

I was built up to look like some goddamn martyr, avenging my dead woman. And yeah, that's exactly what I did. But my actions were selfish. I'd left her there, dying on the ground while I beat the life out of some loser I would never remember.

I was only eighteen years old back then, dammit, and his daughter had been my first love. She was my first fucking everything and she was gone.

And as horrible and fucking horrific as it sounded, there was no guarantee we would have made it. It hurt to acknowledge that even to myself, but there it was.

She was a year older than me and had already left for the University of Colorado in Boulder when I was still in my senior year of high school. I'd never intended on following Hayley to Boulder. Football had been my entire life before I got the taste of her pussy and had been sidetracked. That didn’t mean I never loved her. I had, deeply, and had planned on putting a ring on her finger back then. But my heart had been set on a football scholarship to the University of Alabama. And that's exactly where my life had been heading until that night…

"I heard the sale of your momma's house has gone through," Mr. Clarke stated gruffly.

"Yeah." Nodding slowly, I took another sip of my now cold tea. "I packed up the last of our stuff this morning." The family that had bought my mother's – my – house had needed a fast sale and were moving in next week. "I have some boxes of my mother's stuff packed up that Margie might like," I added, tone a little too hoarse for my liking. "I'll drop them off on the porch before I leave."

"You've put down roots in Boulder?"

Again, I nodded.

"With the fighter and his family?"

"Yeah." I smirked. "With the fighter and his family."

"Good." Mr. Clarke nodded. "Family isn’t all about blood. It's what you make it." He paused before asking, "You got a girl waiting on you back there?"

I felt my body tense up. I had no fucking clue how to answer that question.

"It's okay to live again, son," he added gruffly. "Hayley would've wanted that for you… and so do I."

I exhaled a heavy sigh and whispered, "I'll always love her."

"You're a good boy, Hunter Casarazzi," he finally replied. "Always were." Shoving back his chair, he stood up slowly and motioned for me to follow him towards the door.

Wordlessly, I got to my feet and walked behind him.

"Go and build yourself a damn fine life, son." Reaching for my hand with his, he shook it tightly. "Take chances, go after what your heart desires, and don’t you dare waste another minute of your life… God knows enough time was taken away from you."

This was my closure, I realized.

The closing chapter on this part of my life, and Chris Clarke was giving me his blessing.

And until this moment, I hadn't realized just how badly I had needed it.

"I will," I choked out. "I promise."

He released my hand and took a step back. "Goodbye, son," he whispered before closing the front door, leaving me standing on the porch steps of the first girl I had ever loved.

When I walked back up the street towards my truck, I knew it was for the last time.

I wasn’t going to be coming back here.

This town was my past.

And I was moving forward now.

To my future.