Page 2 of Came the Closest

“Well, then, I guess you’ll have to stay here until someone comes calling.” Footsteps moved across the garage, heavy ones because Daddy had his work boots on. I jumped, but I wasn’t fast enough. Daddy didn’t even look surprised when he stepped inside and looked down at me. “Annie, tell your mother we’re going to have another person for lunch, would you?”

I frowned. The boy was staying for lunch? But it was our first one here this summer.

Daddy noticed my ire. He glanced over his shoulder and then took me by the hand, leading me a few steps further inside. I loved it when Daddy held my hand. It was so strong and steady. I guessed that’s why Mama loved it when they danced on the deck to Steve Winwood.

“Listen, Annie,” he said quietly, kneeling before me. “You remember when you found that baby bird in the backyard last summer?”

“Uh-huh.” It had a broken wing, and we fed it with one of Grandpa’s syringes from the ranch ‘til it got better.

“Well, a little like we took care of the bird until it could fly again, I think this boy needs some of our TLC.” Tender loving care. It was one of Mama’s favorite phrases. That’s probably why Daddy’s eyes crinkled when he said it. “Does that make sense?”

“I guess so,” I said begrudgingly.

Daddy squeezed my hand. “Good. Now go on and do what I asked, all right?”

I did as told. And later that day, when a taller blond boy named Jordan came to get Colton, my grandma pulled me aside.

“That boy,” she told me, squeezing me to her, smelling of lemons and lavender, “is going to be your summer project.”

I didn’t believe her. But like with rain or with storms, I shouldn’t have doubted her, either.

Colton Del Ray did, in fact, become my summer project. It didn’t stop there, though. The boy with the messy dark hair and the lake water eyes?

He became my best friend.

Chapter One

Irrevocably Changed

Colton

Christmas Night, 2023

She is calling me.

Quartz digs into my weaker hip and I have no doubt the bathroom mirror reflects the tension hovering between my shoulder blades through my flannel shirt. A lightbulb flickers above my head, the toilet makes the same gurgling noise it made two months ago, and the picture on the wall is sorely outdated, from when I was ten and gap-toothed.

None of it matters, because Cheyenne is calling me.

I don’t know why. She truthfully shouldn’t be calling me, considering everything, but I don’t care. My gaze lingers on her contact photo—Cheyenne, at our spot on the Falls Lake Beach several years ago, wearing my faded sweatshirt over a blue bikini—for three seconds before I answer the call.

“Cheyenne?” It shouldn’t come out as a question. I have Caller ID; I know it’s her.

But I guess that’s what happens when one’s best-friend-turned-stranger calls for the first time in five years, and it makes my mind run wild with possibilities. Maybe she’s calling because she misses us—belly laughs over sticky Hot Tamales at the scarred wooden table of the lake house, chapped fingers rubbing oil into fraying saddles, toilet papering her older brother’s cottage on his twenty-fifth birthday ten years ago. I don’t know what I’ll say if that’s the case, but I wish hope wouldn’t bubble in my chest.

Because when she speaks, I instantly know that’s not why she’s calling.

Of course, it’s not. Cheyenne married a different man, moved on with her life. The last thing she’d ever want from me is to reminisce on days long, long gone.

“Colt, I need you.” Her voice cracks on the single syllable of my name. Overhead, the light flickers out completely. It feels like an eerie parallel to this phone call. “It was so bad, Colt. The truck—It’s—It’s…”

My heart stops altogether and then starts up again at a rapid staccato. “Cheyenne. Hey. Take a deep breath. What are you talking about?”

“I—I can’t—”

Something shuffles near the speaker, maybe the skin of a palm, and then Beau’s voice is in my ear. And that’s when it starts to hit me, even though I don’t know what it is.

Just that it is very, very bad.

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