Chapter One

Home. They say it’s where the heart is.

-  Porter

Porter

I was in the final hour of the twenty-hour drive, the steering wheel irritating the callouses on my palm. The air in the rental car had shut off long ago, the Mississippi heat causing sweat to line my back. I’d taken off my blazer at the last diner I ate at, but my collared shirt still trapped the humidity of the day. The drive had been lonely just as much it was tiring, my companion in the backseat typing away on her computer. Jess said she needed to work and had to have as much space as she could to do it. Funny how she came to support me, but all she’d been doing was working since we left New York. I supposed that’s why we got along all right. Work didn’t stop because a parent was dying.

Life didn’t stop.

The feedback from her Bluetooth headset filled the car, her brown hair up and wavy from the heat smothering us both. Her hand lifted from her laptop keys, wiping away at her neck. I assumed from the sweat. Her black blazer was gone too. The top two buttons of her shirt open, the lapels swaying from the wind coming through the open window. She pressed a finger to her headset, her blue eyes making eye contact with mine through the rearview window. 

“Porter, you think you can stop? I need ice. I’m dying back here.”

My eyes shifted back to the road. In the distance a sign read the name of the small town I headed toward, only thirty miles between me and there. I made eye contact with Jess again.

“We’re almost there,” I told her. “Can you hold tight?”

She released a breath, tilting her head. “Porter?” she said shortly, flatly. 

I couldn’t remember the last time my name held any ounce of the bright-eyed girl I met in college. Jess was all business now. No passion, only direct. Going with the motions did that to us both. Growing up had a way of affecting you. Her name sounded the same from my lips these days. 

Pulling off at the next exit, I drove into a town outside of the one I grew up in. It seemed like more of an extension of my own, the area vacant except for a gas station and another small diner.

I asked Jess if she wanted anything else with her ice, but she was back on her call, busy. I couldn’t argue about that. She’d be holding down the fort, our link to the office, while we both were away. 

I pushed the windows the rest of the way down for her, then cut the heat of the air when I opened my door. I had half a mind to strip down more, to my beater if anything, but the indecency of it kept me from acting on the urge. I may have been home, but the mindset hadn’t been mine for a while. Being in the city changes so many things. 

The gas station was more of a country store, vacant inside just like the rest of the town. Even the counter was empty of a worker. This didn’t surprise me. In a town where everyone knew the other and passing cars were rare there was a sense of honesty and trust.

I filled a large cup with ice at the soda fountain in the back. Airing out my button up shirt by the tips my fingers, I considered buying a full bag of ice for the rest of the trip, a smile on my face at my overreacting thoughts. I supposed Jess wouldn’t find that funny.

After lidding the cup, I stepped to the counter. I figured I’d leave a quarter there for the ice for when the gas station owner got back, but I didn’t have to. The counter was no longer empty, my feet slowing at the sight behind it. I’d been driving so long, seeing all kinds of things along the way. The seemingly never ending stretches of road had a way of creating mirages. But this wasn’t a mirage. She wasn’t a mirage no matter how many times I blinked. 

She was bent over the counter; a small fan sending her dark locks twisting wildly through the air. Her rich skin tinted deep in color, even darker freckles dotting her nose, her cheeks. They always made her look doll-like those freckles. Her beauty mesmerized, even still. 

Her name was Avery, and I hadn’t since her since I was seventeen.

*

Avery

My name was called, the sound so deep, thick and rich. I looked up from my text and saw eyes staring at me. Eyes I hadn’t seen in so many years. Dark and stormy, they used to see right through me, always seeing the truth no matter how hard I tried to hide it. They were doing that now. Even still. Long brown lashes curled above them, matching that unruly hair I used to get on him about. He kept it that way, curly, didn’t try to slick it back. That hair was him and no one else. It didn’t match the rest of him. The business suit minus the jacket, phone clipped on his waistband like a businessman, and the foreignness of this man reminded me of our reality. His baby face, though always handsome, had matured, and the last look he gave me before he left had faded as well. That one that haunted my dreams, ghosted upon me for so many nights. That anguish seemed to have left him… at least at the surface. I used to think about the day I’d see him again. I longed for it as much as I feared it. His forever disappointment, gray eyes blazing with resentment, had me wishing he never had to see me again. That I’d never again be responsible for the pain I inflicted upon him. But on the other hand, I wanted nothing more than to be around him, drinking him in and enjoying the safety and security of him I once had. I was like some kind of masochist. A lover of pain and torture. What else could I be if I wanted the very subject of my own pain? He’d left me here that day. 

He left me.

But this man wasn’t that boy anymore. He went off for his dreams while I stayed with mine. I guess that was no fault but my own.

He set his cup on the counter, his cheeks flushed no doubt with the Mississippi heat. “Avery?” he repeated, the pink lips I knew to be so soft parted. “How are you?”

It was such a simple question, yet one of the hardest I felt I’d ever been asked. I had a feeling because it was the asker. Not the question. My phone pinged, and I straightened quickly, silencing it before slipping it into the back pocket of my cut offs. 

I slipped my hands into my back pockets. “Porter. Um, I’m good. Fine. Wow, it’s been a long time. Hasn’t it?”

Nearly eight years. I wondered if he remembered.

“Yeah.” He lifted his head, acknowledging that. He pushed his hand behind his head, long fingers weaving through the locks. “Around eight years, right?”

He did remember. 

He dropped his hand, and his eyes did the twinkle thing they did when he grinned. So many days I loved looking at that twinkle. So many nights. “Time sure moves fast, doesn’t?” he said.

For some faster than others. But that was life. “Right,” I agreed, giving a small smile.

He placed his hands on the counter. “So you work here? Do you still live in town?”

I looked around. Sullivan’s General Store didn’t pay much, but it was quiet, allowed me to get some coursework done in the evenings. “A few years now. Pays the bills. And yeah, I do live in town. Though, on my own now.” 

He didn’t ask any more details of where or anything else personal. Before he could, I decided to turn the tables, spotlight him and keep the focus off me. “I heard you made it to the city. Got through school all right. You’re doing well.”

His lips lifted slowly. “Small town, right?”

I nodded, trying not to be overpowered by that stormy gaze. “Right.”

“But, uh, yeah. I’m in New York now. Fast life. Definitely keeps a guy busy.”

Chewing my lip, I tried not to look too joyed by his words. He had made it. In the end, that’s what I wished for him. No matter how things were left. How they ended. Porter deserved that. He did.

He stared at me for a long time, the silence moving between us both that neither one of us seemed to know what to do with, two souls that knew each other in another life. Another time.

Slowly, he slid his hands into his pockets. “Hey. You didn’t end up going school, did you—”

“Just this for you?” I asked, gesturing to his cup. I was saving him from the awkwardness of small talk. Saving us both. That’s what was best. 

“Uh, yeah.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a single quarter. 

I kept my hands on the register, and he eventually placed it on the counter. I didn’t mean to do that, make things weird, but the situation felt that way. I grabbed the change, ringing up the ice. 

“Are you just passing through?” I asked, the words flowing as more of a distraction.

“No, actually. My, um. My dad… Maybe you heard?”

My fingers stopped, curling on keys. A sharpness hit my chest, churned my stomach, and layer of sweat followed, prickling at my brow.

“I did hear,” I said, pressing the register keys. The register popped open, and I placed the quarter in. I looked at him. “I’m sorry for your family.”

I tried. I did my damnedest, but voice had pricked with something. Emotion, I knew to be there. I knew it to be evitable, but I tried to hide it just the same. I wanted my words flat. Empty of emotion, but this was Porter. It was so hard being anything but open with him. No matter how many years had gone by. 

He noticed, tilting his head at me. I hoped he’d take his cup. Be on his way, but he simply stood there, that tall body, broad and wide, casting over me, drawing me to him despite the counter between us. He stared deeply, searching like he always did for more from me. Pulling to get what he wanted beneath my surface, pushing the layers away softly. 

He placed both large hands on the counter, gripping his cup. “Avery, I’m in town for a few days. Maybe before I go we could take some time. Talk about some—”

His hair fanned as he turned to the sound of chimes. Sullivan’s door opened, and a tall woman with dark brown hair gathered on top of her head stepped in. This woman looked to be his equal, pantsuit, and phone to her holster with Bluetooth headset to her ear. Strands of her hair rested on her forehead, stuck there due to sweat, but she was still very pretty. Eyes blue, lips red. 

She saw Porter and tilted her head, giving a small smile. “Good. I caught you. I was so busy I forgot to ask for a Coke.”

Porter turned, closing his eyes briefly in my direction, and I wondered why. 

He opened them quickly, then turned back to give her a nod, his lips lifted in a smile so faint. She went to the back, and the sound of the cooler cracking open hit the air. I idly wondered if Porter would continue what he said, but when he simply played with his hands on the counter I knew he wouldn’t. The woman came back, setting two Cokes down on the counter. 

“I got you one too. Just in case,” she stated matter-of-factly.

He reached into his pocket, taking out a brown wallet this time, shiny leather. He cracked the billfold and glanced back at the woman. “Jess, this is Avery,” he said, to her. “Avery is from town. We went to school together.”

Nothing he explained was untrue, though the subtleness about our history wasn’t lost on me. I owed him nothing. He owed me nothing, either. I couldn’t expect anymore or less. 

He handed me five dollars for the Cokes. “And, Avery, this is Jess.”

I smiled at her, which she returned, before I got Porter’s change. I handed it to him. “How do you guys know each other?”

Porter slipped his wallet back into his pocket. “Oh, um, work—”

“I’m his fiancée,” she said, cracking the cap of her soda open with a small smile. She took a small sip back, and that was the only noise that passed through the country store.

She didn’t seem to notice my struck silence, or Porter’s working jaw. He didn’t look at her. Not once, and his cheeks, pink before, were red now. For some reason, he wasn’t acknowledging what she said. I had a feeling that was because of me.

“Congratulations to you both.” I forced a smile. That was all I could do. Porter had grown up. That’s what happened when people left here. I just had to deal with that. 

She said thanks, though he didn’t. Her gaze moved to the counter, and her eyes lit up. She screwed the cap back on her soda, pointing at the counter. “Did you make these?” she asked, looking up at me.

Porter’s eyes moved in the direction of her finger point, and some of the light that left after this woman entered the store returned to his gray eyes. The sign on the counter read, Avery’s Baked Goods, apple, peach, and pecan pie individual slices on a display behind it.

“You still bake?” Porter asked, those eyes now flashing to me.

I shrugged, passing his look off. “Mr. Sullivan lets me bring in stuff sometimes. That’s all the selling I do really.”

I hated the way my words seemed to warm his expression more. They couldn’t do that. That wasn’t fair. Wasn’t allowed. Not after what I just found out about him. He couldn’t do that to me. Act like I… That what I did still held a place in his heart.

“That’s so nice,” Jess said, placing her hand on her chest. She looked at Porter. “We should buy some and support her.”

“Of course.” Porter didn’t hesitate. Cracking open his wallet again, he didn’t take his eyes off me.

Just because he was looking that way, staring at me, didn’t mean I had to entertain him. I gazed away, sliding a few slices of pie out of the case. “Let me get these packed up for you folks quickly. I’m sure it’s been a long day. Y’all probably want to get to town soon so you can rest.”