Chapter 1: The Rehearsal Dinner
The barn door was heavier than she remembered. Alana shoved her shoulder against the rough pine, and it swung inward with a groan that competed with the laughter spilling out. She stepped into the wash of golden light, the scent hitting her first—warm hay, old wood, and the faint, sweet perfume of honeysuckle creeping in through cracks in the walls.
Fairy lights were strung in haphazard loops from the rafters, casting a soft, twinkling glow over the scene. It was pretty. Almost painfully so. It felt like a movie set of her own past, and she was an understudy who’d forgotten all her lines.
Then she saw him.
He was leaning against the far wall, next to a stacked bale of hay, a bottle of beer dangling from his fingers. Jeremy Cole. He hadn’t spotted her yet. He was listening to someone talk, his head tilted, a faint smirk on his lips. Five years had filled him out. The lanky, restless boy was gone, replaced by a man with broad shoulders stretching the fabric of a simple black t-shirt. The tattoos she remembered as fragmented lines on his forearms were now a full, intricate sleeve of dark ink. He’d cut his hair short, but the shadow along his jaw was the same.
Her body locked. Every instinct screamed to back out, to let the door swing shut and pretend she’d never arrived. She could text Mark a lie about car trouble.
But then his eyes lifted. As if he’d felt the shift in the air, the sudden fracture in the noise. They found hers across the crowded space. The smirk vanished. His fingers tightened around the brown glass of the bottle.
The chatter of the rehearsal dinner, the clinking of plates, the folk song playing softly from a speaker—it all muffled into a dull hum. There was only the weight of his gaze. It wasn’t a simple look of recognition. It was an excavation. He was staring like he was peeling back every layer she’d glued into place since she left, searching for the girl she’d been.
She forced a breath into her lungs, straightening her spine. She wouldn’t be that girl again.
“Alana!” Her brother’s voice, bright with happiness, cut through the tension. Mark emerged from a small group, his face splitting into a wide grin. He wrapped her in a bear hug that lifted her feet off the sawdust-covered floor. “You made it. I was starting to think you’d bailed.”
“Traffic on I-90 was a nightmare,” she said into his shoulder, the lie coming easily. She hugged him back, grateful for the shield of his embrace. When he set her down, she kept a hand on his arm, an anchor. “You look ridiculously happy.”
“I am,” he said, his eyes crinkling. Then he leaned in, his voice dropping. “He didn’t know you were coming. I wanted to surprise him.”
“Mission accomplished,” she said, her voice tighter than she intended.
Mark followed her line of sight. Jeremy had pushed himself off the wall and was walking toward them with a slow, deliberate pace that made her pulse thrum in her throat. The crowd seemed to part for him unconsciously.
“Be cool, yeah?” Mark murmured, giving her arm a squeeze. “It’s been years. Water under the bridge.”
Before she could form a retort, Jeremy was there. He stood a foot away, the warmth of the barn suddenly feeling like a furnace. He smelled like engine grease, soap, and summer night. A disorienting combination.
“Alana,” he said. Her name wasn’t a greeting. It was a statement. An acknowledgment of a ghost made flesh.
“Jeremy.” She aimed for breezy indifference and landed somewhere near strained civility. “You’re looking… well.”
A flicker in his dark eyes. Amusement? Annoyance? “You too. Chicago agree with you?”
“It doesn’t complain.” She crossed her arms. “I hear you own the garage now. Cole’s Auto. Very official.”
“It pays the bills.” He took a slow swig of his beer, his eyes never leaving her face. “You cut your hair.”
Self-consciously, her hand went to the ends of her auburn hair, now styled in a sharp chin-length bob. The old her had worn it long, down to her waist. He’d loved to twist it around his fingers. “Styles change.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Some things do.”
The silence that fell between them was loud and awkward, crowded with everything unsaid. Mark, ever the peacemaker, clapped a hand on Jeremy’s shoulder. “Alright, you two. No brawls at my rehearsal. Jer, can you help me with the keg? It’s being stubborn.”
Jeremy held her gaze for a beat longer, a silent challenge hanging in the air. Then he nodded, the movement curt. “Sure.” He turned to follow Mark, but paused, looking back over his shoulder. “Welcome home, Alana.”
The way he said it—low, with a hint of gravel—didn’t sound welcoming. It sounded like a promise. Or a threat.
She watched him go, the familiar set of his shoulders, the way his jeans sat just right. A wave of old anger, hot and sharp, rose in her chest. He didn’t get to look at her like that. He didn’t get to stand there all reformed and solid and make her feel like the one who was unsteady.
The rest of the evening passed in a blur of forced smiles, cousin small-talk, and the cloying taste of cheap white wine. She avoided him, sticking to her brother’s fiancée’s side like a burr. But she was always aware of him. A magnetic north in her peripheral vision. She saw him laugh at something Mark said, the rare, genuine smile transforming his face and sending an unwelcome pang through her. She saw him effortlessly lift a heavy table to reposition it, the muscles in his arms corded. She watched as a bridesmaid she didn’t know touched his arm, laughing too brightly, and how he politely but firmly shifted away.
It was infuriating.
Later, as the party began to wind down and the fireflies sparked outside the open barn doors, she escaped to the makeshift bar—a plank of wood set over two barrels. She poured herself a generous glass of water, her head buzzing.
“Still hiding in plain sight, I see.”
His voice came from right behind her. She stiffened, her fingers tightening on the plastic cup. She didn’t turn. “I’m hydrating. It’s a thing adults do.”
He moved to stand beside her, refilling his own beer from the keg. His presence was a physical pressure against her side. “You’ve been doing it all night. Hydrating in whichever corner I’m not in.”
“Observant.”
“I’ve always been observant where you’re concerned.”
She finally turned to face him, leaning her hips against the barrel. The fairy lights caught the green in her eyes, and she hoped they looked fierce, not afraid. “What do you want, Jeremy? A trip down memory lane? A heartfelt apology? You’re gonna be waiting a long time.”
His jaw tightened. He looked down, spinning his bottle on the wood. “I don’t expect an apology.”
“Good.”
“But I’m not the same guy who let you walk away.”
A hollow laugh escaped her. “Let me? That’s a interesting rewrite of history. You blew up our entire world. I just packed the pieces.”
He flinched, a barely-there twitch near his eye. Good, she thought. Let it hurt.
“I know what I did,” he said, his voice rough. “I’ve had five years to think about it. Every damn day.”
“Well, enjoy the thoughts.” She pushed off from the barrel, intending to leave.
His hand shot out, not grabbing her, but landing flat on the wood beside her, blocking her path. He didn’t touch her, but the cage of his arm was enough. She could feel the heat radiating from him. “Why did you come back, Alana?”
She glared up at him. “For my brother.”
“That’s it?”
“What else would there be?”
His dark eyes searched hers, intense and unwavering. “I don’t know. But you’re here. And I’m here. And for the next three days, this town isn’t that big.”
“Is that supposed to scare me?”
A slow, dangerous smile touched his lips. It wasn’t the friendly one from earlier. This was the old Jeremy, the one who walked too close to the edge. “No. It’s supposed to warn you.”
From across the barn, Mark called her name, his voice slightly slurry with drink. “Alana! Come settle a bet about my fifth-grade teacher!”
Jeremy dropped his arm, the moment breaking. The mask of the quiet mechanic slid back into place. But the look in his eyes lingered.
She walked away, her legs only slightly unsteady. She felt his gaze on her back like a brand all the way to her brother’s side. He wasn’t going to let her slip away. Not this time. And the most terrifying part, the part she would never, ever admit, was the tiny, forbidden thrill that shot through her at the thought.