Free Home Sweet Home by Bella Riley Page A

turned to him and he read the truth on her face.
    She wasn’t going to stay.
    “Of course, I want to help you. I’m going to come home and visit you whenever I can, on weekends and school breaks, to help you through this.”
    “I thought you loved me.”
    “I do love you, Nate. Of course, I love you. But you know I can’t stay here. I can’t live in Emerald Lake. And if I defer a semester, I’ll get so behind I might never be able to catch up. I’ve waited for this moment my whole life, to get away and become something. Please don’t ask me to give it all up now.”
    Reality hit him then, like fists pounding all over his body, and a deep rage took over, so swift and strong, that he could no longer stop himself from giving into it. Tears had been right there about to fall. And yet at the same time, he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to feel anything again.
    “Just fucking go!”
    He’d yelled the words so loud that he startled his sister out of her sleepy state, and she started to whimper from her crib. But that didn’t stop him.
    He’d sneered, “ You’d better hurry back to school or you might miss an important test. ”
    Andi had come toward him, her arms outstretched. “ Please don’t be like that, Nate. Please don’t push me away. ”
    He’d gone to the door and opened it. “ I need to concentrate on Madison right now. Not a long-distance relationship. ”
    “So this is it? You’re breaking up with me?”
    “You’re the one who was already leaving, Andi.”
    A few seconds later, she left. Heading back to a life that had nothing to do with him.
    Memories, snippets of words they’d said to each other came back at him all morning as he showered, dressed, made breakfast, then got in his truck to head to the important meeting he had in a town a half hour away.
    Betsy had taken Madison and Kayla to school this morning after their sleep-over. There was no reason for Nate to drive past the school.
    Instead, he sat outside the building and let his brain play tricks on him. He and Andi had gone here together. He’d pulled her pigtails, and she’d knocked him off the monkey bars. They’d been too young to admit their real feelings for each other back then. Their first kiss wouldn’t come until they were sixteen.
    Seeing Andi again was a big deal. A huge deal. All of his old feelings for her were much closer to the surface than he wanted them to be. Not just his latent anger with her, not just the fact that he still desired her, but the fact that he still felt a strong emotional connection to her, even after all this time.
    He’d let down his guard in the bar for a split second, had let himself forget anything but her sweet smile and soft laughter, had even let himself give rise to the secret hope he’d held on to—that one day they’d meet again and it would all work out.
    Boom! That was when she’d come in with her plans.
    He’d felt so burned, so crushed, like such an idiot for letting himself start to fall again when he knew better.
    Andi had wanted to clear the air last night and now he knew she was right. There was no question that they needed to say whatever needed to be said, to let bygones be bygones. And when they were done settling the past back in the past where it belonged, then they could have a rational discussion about her condos.
    The rational discussion they should have had last night.
     
    * * *
    Andi woke up on top of her covers, her laptop teetering precariously on her stomach.
    With the sun streaming in over her pillow, she had no choice but to drag herself into the shower. She stood beneath the warm spray, but none of her muscles relaxed. Not when she’d been a ball of nerves since the moment she’d seen Nate. Earlier than that actually. She’d been wound up like a tangled ball of yarn since the moment she’d blurted out to the Klein Group that the condos should be built at Emerald Lake.
    Work. She needed to focus on work. It had always saved her before. It would save