“Our front window got smashed in yesterday,” he answered flatly. “Our phone keeps ringing and then the callers hang up. Trenton and his goons are getting restless,” he muttered.

I closed my eyes, resenting Trenton. The man was going through a lot, but he did it mostly to himself. “Jake, I’m sorry. But it’s just Trenton. Everyone else knows you didn’t attack Brett. They know it was an accident.”

“I should’ve walked away, called his bluff.” He shook his head, his eyes hollow. “He died because I wasn’t smart enough to walk away from a drunk. I didn’t put the knife in him but I’ve still got blood on my hands.”

“Jake, he swung at you. If you’d walked away, turned your back, he was drunk enough … he might have hurt you …” I reached for his hand and squeezed it but he gave me nothing back. “We’ll get through this.”

He stared silently at me in answer and I felt that horrific weight settle in my stomach again.

“Jake?”

“I have to get through this on my own.”

“What?”

“I can’t do it with you around me.”

I shook my head, panic pressing down on my chest. “Are you … breaking up with me?”

He looked away, unable to meet me eyes as he replied, “Yeah. I’m breaking up with you.”

I couldn’t catch my breath. “And everything between us … everything you promised … that’s just gone?”

He tensed and then shook his head. “I’m not sticking around to listen to this.”

“Don’t walk away from me!” I cried, anger thankfully breaking the panic into pieces. “You owe me!”

And suddenly the fury was back in his face when he stopped and whirled to face me. “I owe you? I owe you? I played a part in a kid’s death. Do you know how fucked up that is? How fucked up I feel right now? Can you think of someone other than yourself for just a second?”

“I am!” I argued. “I’ve been thinking about you constantly for days. I’ve been worrying nonstop. All I want is to help you. I don’t understand why this is my fault?”

“I told you we shouldn’t have gone to that party.” He was back to unbridled anger again. “We should never have been there and none of this should ever have happened.”

I felt like he’d punched me. “So you blame me?”

“No,” he grew quiet, “I’m just done.” Jake turned to leave me again and I ran after him, yanking on his arm.

“Don’t,” I growled up into his face, feeling a pain and ire I’d never felt in my life. “Don’t you walk away from me like I don’t deserve better than ‘I’m just done.’ You promised me!” I pushed him and he took it, stumbling back. “I gave you everything.” I shuddered, trying to control myself. “Every piece of me. So if you’re breaking up with me … I deserve an explanation.”

“The explanation is that I need to be alone. Don’t make it hard for me. I’m exhausted. I don’t need this …” He gestured helplessly to me.

I swallowed hard and dragged a hand through my hair, trying to think of something to change his mind, to stop this. In the time it took me to do that, Jake had started walking away again.

“I’m sorry he did this to you, Jake. I’m sorry his dad is still doing this to you.” He hesitated so I continued, “But I’m standing by you, ready to help you work it all out. Doesn’t that count for something?”

The look he gave me ripped me apart. “No. I can’t be here, in this town with these fucking people. And you’re one of them. When I look at you, that’s all I see.”

Desolation crashed over me. Nausea rose through me, my eyes burning with tears I was determined to keep in check around him. But the realization that he’d ended it, that we’d never talk again, that I’d never feel his warm hand in mine, that no one would ever look at me or make me feel the way he made me feel ever again shattered me. The tears started to fall and Jake looked sharply away.

Swiping at the traitorous teardrops, I curled my lip in disgust. “You’re just as big an asshole as they are—” my voice broke as the emotion became too much. “I can’t believe I gave you everything,” I whispered.

“Yeah, well, we all do stupid shit sometimes.” He shrugged callously, turned and walked quickly out of my life.

Five days later word reached me that the Caplins had gone back to Chicago. Two days later a for-sale sign went up in the front yard of their home. Someone, I imagine Trenton, re-broke the window that had been fixed.

Jake’s departure re-broke me.

“It feels like a lifetime ago. How is that possible?”

I spun around at the intrusion, a soft smile playing on my lips as I drank in the welcome sight of Alex Roster. “Hey, you.”

He grinned and took two steps toward me on the lot so he could haul me into a bear hug. “Your sister thought you might be here.”

“It’s official,” I sighed, easing back to stare into his handsome face. “My sister is creepy spooky.”

Alex took hold of my hand as I stepped back. “Missed you this semester.”

After Jake had left, I’d felt lost for the first time, not really sure where I fit in the town I’d loved my whole life. Alex had been feeling the same way after Brett’s death and we’d clung to each other, finishing out high school as best friends and heading off to Purdue together. From there things had gotten complicated until I’d uncomplicated them. “I missed you too. How’s Sharon?”

“She’s great. She’s home in Tampa with her family. We’re still not quite at the spending Christmas with one another’s family stage.”

Sharon was a sophomore Alex had met almost a year ago. She was tiny, cute as a button, loud, girly, the complete opposite to a now-reserved Alex. I thought they were great together. She loosened him up. “It’s been almost a year. Holidays-with-the-family time is approaching.”

He rubbed a hand over his close-shaven head and nodded. “She’s talking about coming here in spring, so I think you’re right.” His gaze flickered behind me to the parking lot before they returned to me, his study careful and perhaps a little worried. “So I’m guessing from everything you told me that you’re here because of Jake.”

Other than Claudia and Andie, Alex was my closest confidant. Despite the convoluted history between us, I told him everything because at the end of the day, he was one of my best friends. This meant I’d kept in close contact with him while I was in Edinburgh and he knew how messed up I was feeling over Jake being back in my life. Although he’d always been neutral in our conversations as he quietly advised me to follow my gut, I was braced to hear him tell me what everyone else was recommending: to get Jake out of my life.

“It’s gotten really hard to be around him and Melissa,” I confessed quietly. “He changes me, Alex. I become this neurotic, whiny girl, and I don’t want to be that person.”

“One: you could never be a neurotic, whiny girl. Two: just because he makes you feel weak doesn’t mean you are. Three: this whole time you haven’t been honest with him. I know you were close, and I know he thinks he knows you, but has it crossed your mind that he actually has no clue you still care about him? Char, he said some unforgiveable things to you. He took every bad feeling he had out on you. If I were him, I would presume a girl like you would’ve moved on from a guy who treated her like that.”

I shook my head. “He knows, Alex.”

“Maybe he does. Maybe he doesn’t. The thing is, you do. It’s your decision.”

I glanced back over my shoulder at the school, angry butterflies stirring inside me. I shoved them aside, determined to get myself back on track. When I looked back at Alex, I nodded. “I know what I have to do.”

Reading the decision in my wounded eyes, Alex yanked me toward him and curled me into his side. “Come on. Your mom was taking a pecan pie out of the oven when I stopped by, and I am not leaving town until I have myself some of that goodness.”

“It’s great to see you,” I snuggled into his side.