Page 10 of The Hometown Legend

What a nightmare.

In the end, coming back home felt like the only answer. Though right at the last minute was when he’d started feeling pressured by the whole thing. The stay at Sullivan’s was a godsend in that way.

He didn’t know any of the Sullivans all that well, apart from Rory, who was his sister’s friend. He didn’t know her now. He knew her as a teenager who chattered his ear off and sang tunelessly to the car radio on the way to school.

If he could find affection for his past self, for his memories, he’d have looked back on that time with warmth.

As it was, all he could do was look back and envy that idiot kid he’d been. The guy who’d felt bulletproof.

Well, he was not, it turned out, blast-proof.

He thought of the angel he’d seen earlier today.

And he pushed that to the side.

He’d forgotten how many complications a man could find in a small town.

He’d chosen to come back home. He’d found himself in a weird-ass place these past few months. He didn’t have the stomach to stay in Georgia, not when it was littered with the debris of his life, blown all to hell by a bomb from Afghanistan.

When he’d gone on deployment he’d always felt thankful that while he might be moving into the line of fire, his wife wasn’t. His home wasn’t.

He’d been wrong.

That bomb blast might have happened overseas, but it had sure as hell blown up that life on Dogwood Street, in Atlanta, Georgia, where he’d once had that perfect life.

He hadn’t been able to stand being near any of that. He’d considered going off somewhere new. Somewhere no one knew him. There was a hefty amount of appeal in that.

Also a lack of accountability that scared the shit out of him.

So he’d finally considered coming back home. He knew why he’d decided on this. It was just...doing it was harder than he’d anticipated.

He’d never imagined his life ending up like this.

After the blast, right at first... Right at first, it had been okay. Cass had been that brave military wife. The one who stood by her husband through his injuries. The one who sat in the hospital with him. She’d thought this was the testing of them, the making of them.

He’d believed that, too.

They’d both been wrong.

She’d found her breaking point.

He’d found his.

It was fair.

This wasn’t the life he’d promised her. If he could have left himself, he would have.

Hell, he’d tried.

He pulled his truck onto the dirt road that he knew would lead up to the rental house, based on his instructions.

He drove until it seemed like he had to have gone way too far. But he seemed to recall that Fia had said specifically that. That it would feel like he’d gone too far, but he had to keep going.

There was maybe a metaphor in there somewhere. But he felt a little too weary to try and grasp it in his hands.

So he just drove on. He turned off the road onto a narrower dirt road that went straight up the side of the mountain.

He was thankful he had a four-wheel drive. And everything that he owned was in a duffel bag in the back of the truck.

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