Page 1 of Fall With Me (Sugarland Creek)

Prologue

LANDEN

*Please read the author’s note on the previous page and the page before that for content warnings before reading the prologue*

“Yeehaw, motherfuckers!” Tucker shouts as he sprints off a fifty-foot cliff.

It’s his fourth time in fifteen minutes, but still, we watch as he does a double backflip in the air before plunging into the waterfall creek below.

“Has he always been this reckless?” my cousin Warren asks.

“I can’t believe his body ain’t gettin’ sore from slammin’ into the water so many times,” Warren’s girlfriend, Maisie, says.

Tucker swims toward the rocky shore. He throws a fist up into the air and shouts something inaudible.

“Since the day we met, he’s been certifiably insane.” Smirking, I think back to the dozens of memories Tucker Sánchez and I have made since we became best friends in third grade when he moved to Sugarland Creek, Tennessee.

Experiencing our first middle school dance where we both asked out the same girl and raced our dirt bikes through a rainstorm to determine who’d get to be her date.

I beat his ass.

Driving our tractors through corn fields and playing chicken until the other person swerved into the ditch.

The fucker never swerved.

Sneaking out in the middle of the night to tip cows and steal pigs just because we were bored little shitheads.

And got numerous trespassing violations.

After graduation in a couple months, he’ll go off to college in California to study medicine while I stay here in Tennessee to work on my family’s ranch and equine retreat. It’s sad to think this is our final spring break before we go our separate ways and won’t see each other for weeks at a time.

Even so, I’ll be glad to be done with high school.

But mostly, I’m ready to get away from my ex-girlfriend, Angela, who’s thankfully moving to Florida to study only God knows what. Considering she skips classes at least four times a week, she’s failing most of them. Either way, I’m happy she’ll be far away from me.

Even though she’s the one who broke my heart last year and claimedIwas incapable of loving someone and then left me for an older dude, she continues to cling to me any chance she gets.

Including now.

For someone so “emotionally dead inside” as she claims I am, she’s still eager for my attention.

Moments ago, she called mebabyand tried grabbing my hand to get me to jump off the cliff with her.

Even if the water were filled with gold coins, I wouldn’t go in with her.

I didn’t even want her on this trip, but Talia’s her best friend and Talia’s dating Tucker.

The other couple with us are Rhett and Addie. Rhett moved here four years ago and joined the baseball team with Tucker and me. Addie’s friends with Talia, but not Angela. She tolerates her as much as I do.

So naturally, with three other couples here, Angela wanted to play house with me this week.

Not happening.

“I’m gonna miss this place,” Rhett says as he holds Addie’s hand. We came here last year, too, but this will be our final time as a group.

My aunt and uncle let us rent out one of the luxury cabins on their ranch resort and we’ve had a blast partying, hiking, swimming, and horseback riding each day we’ve been here.

“Y’all should visit during your school breaks,” Warren tells them, wrapping his arm around Maisie as if he’s hinting the same thing to her.

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