Page 69 of Falling Back to You

“All I’m saying is maybe you needed love that wasn’t aimed at making you strong, tough, and emotionless.”

“Well, eventually when I broke something or got my feelings hurt, I stopped going to my dad and came to you. You let me cry or vent, and you didn’t laugh at me. And I loved you for that.”

Ozzie’s eyes shifted in my direction, and I couldn’t sever the tether of his gaze. We had years of history, years of loving each other. The feelings hadn’t stopped because the relationship ended. Oz was my best friend. When I got my period at ten years old, I’d cried on his shoulder, telling him I wasn’t ready to be a woman. I didn’t even think he understood what menstruation was.

“I was just being a friend,” I said.

“Yeah, but you’ve always been a caretaker. Looking after the people in your life.”

He was being nice, but his words landed like a boulder. “I don’t know about that. I didn’t step up when it counted with Maple.”

“You were going through some pretty big emotions. Nobody blames you for what happened.”

I did. I still did. When Maple was four months old, I left her alone while Oz was at work. Just jumped in my car and drove away. Her plaintive wails were the last thing I heard before starting the engine—she’d been crying all morning, and nothing I did seemed to fix it. A constant reminder I was fucking up. I was sleep-deprived and stressed and I just didn’t want to be in that house with her disappointed whimpers one minute longer.

The thought of leaving her still sent shivers up my spine. Thankfully, my mother had stopped by and discovered I was missing. It took hours for Ozzie to find me at the abandoned drive-in. I was still in my pajamas. At the time we thought it was due to fatigue—neither of us had been sleeping very well with a new baby in the household—but it quickly turned into something much worse.

Oz rested his hand on my knee, giving it a strong squeeze. “Dial, look at me.”

Reluctantly, I turned to face him.

“You’re not to blame for how things played out. Do you hear me?” His tone was comforting but stern at the same time.

“I hear you.”

We got to Gainsborough just before noon, pulling into the tiny-home warehouse where our materials were now stored. Ozzie unhitched the trailer from his truck so the workers could begin loading. While he chatted with warehouse staff, I took the opportunity to stretch my legs, appreciating the weather in Gainsborough at a perfect eighty-one degrees. Had to admit this was the superior plan, because it meant we could start building this weekend and hopefully get back on schedule.

Truthfully, there was a part of me that believed this was all a huge waste of time. Who’d pay to spend the weekend in the middle of nowhere, with zero entertainment or big-box stores in sight? Hume was sandwiched in between two other boring towns, so what was the point?

Cyrus claimed that people who lived in big cities were always looking to retreat to a place where they could unplug and be one with nature—and what better place than Hume, with its fresh air, mountain vistas, and clean water? If rich people wanted to cosplay in the woods as a lumberjack or trad wife, I was more than willing to take their money.

“Hey, they said loading will take a few hours,” Ozzie said when he returned. “They have some priority shipments ahead of us.”

“Shouldn’t we be priority, seeing how this delivery was scheduled to arrive days ago?”

“It’s cool. I planned for this.” He opened the passenger-side door, directing me to climb in.

“Where are we going?”

“To kill some time.”

I assumed we’d be heading to lunch, so when we drove up to the coastline thirty minutes later, I was confused. “Why are we at the beach?”

“Remember when you mentioned your bucket list?”

“No.”

“It was after your date with Shelton in the back seat of my truck—”

I raised a silencing hand. “Memory jogged, thank you.”

“Well, you said you wanted to ride horses on the beach.”

“We can’t ride on the beach. It’s probably packed with tourists running in and out of the water.”

“Nah, because I reserved a stretch.”

“What are you talking about?”