Page 1 of Gone Away Home

CHAPTER 1

DUSTIN

There’s something about coming home, like I can breathe again.

Even though there’s a sense of accomplishment I carry with me because of my time in the military, nowhere I went and none of the people I met felt like home. It’s probably because I knew where home was the entire time. It was the same place, the same person, I was running from and the entire reason I made the choice to enlist.

Being back in Jasper Ridge brings all the feelings I’ve spent the last 14 years burying back to the surface. Nothing looks different, but I know it is.

People have grown up. People have left. People have fallen in love. People have lost.

Life moved on and even though I was living mine it wasn’t here, in Jasper Ridge, where I belonged the entire time.

I know that now. It was cowardly of me to run away from what I thought I couldn’t have 14 years ago.

Sure, I could blame it all on being an 18-year-old kid who felt like everything was stacked against me, against us. That wouldn’t even be entirely wrong. Even with everything working against me, I should have stayed and fought for what I wanted instead of rolling over and not even trying.

Absently I rub the center of my chest as I drive past the high school. So many fucking memories, ones I haven’t examined in years.

The first time I ever saw Zayla, really saw her, was on the first day of school. It was clear she was nervous, but she was trying to hide it. I had tried to do the same thing the year before when I was a freshman. Fuck, I felt like I had made it as a sophomore that year, but then I was struck fucking dumb when I saw her.

The light caught on the dark strands of her hair, and I was entranced. Her hair was so dark it was almost black and looked like it absorbed every ounce of sunlight and glowed. What I found out over time was that the sunlight had nothing to do with Zayla’s glow; it was all her.

As I was frozen in place, she looked up and met my eyes. There was curiosity in her brown eyes, the flecks of gold lit up with it, along with an innocent attraction. She couldn’t hold my gaze, but she tried. When she looked away, she was nibbling on her plump bottom lip.

I desperately wanted to kiss her right then.

Honestly, kissing her was all I thought about for the entire school year.

Since she was a freshman, I told myself I was going to give her the school year to get her bearings and find her way. I kept an eye on her the entire time, needing to make sure no one was fucking with her, but I didn’t want to get too close. There was noway I was going to tolerate being put in the friend zone, and I promised myself I was going to wait to ask her out.

Even then, as young as I was, I knew Zayla was destined to be mine. Now, 17 years after I saw her for the first time and 14 years since I left Jasper Ridge, I know it’s still true.

“So much lost time,” I mutter to myself and have to swallow hard past the lump in my throat.

Before I could approach Zayla, before I could do what my soul yearned to do, everything came crashing down around me. I was the only one who seemed to know I was standing in the rubble of my dreams.

All it took was one day, almost a month before the school year ended, to change everything. While I drive by Millie’s Diner, I can’t hold in the sneer. It’s where everything changed and the place where I first felt the impact of other people’s choices on the life that I thought I was going to live.

I was sitting across from Dad at a table for four, which wasn’t unusual since a lot of families ate at Millie’s and there weren’t many two-person tables to begin with. I had been wondering why he seemed so nervous, but being a teenager, I didn’t think too deeply about it.

When his eyes lit up and he waved, fucking waved, at whoever had walked in the front door, I was confused. The relief was evident in his voice when he muttered, “They’re here.”

“They?” I pulled my face into some sort of look as I studied Dad. The sound of footsteps coming our way had me turning to find Zayla shuffling behind a woman who looked like her, but older. I barely even looked at the woman because, like always, whenever Zayla was around she had all my attention. I sounded confused as fuck, “Zayla?”

Her big brown eyes were wary as she looked at me. She nibbled on her bottom lip, something I found way sexier than I should have at the time, and shrugged in response to the unasked questions evident in the way I said her name.

Dad stood up and wrapped his arms around the woman Zayla was with, who I assumed to be her mom. He sounded chipper, but it was almost forced and it put me on edge, “Dustin, this is Janice. I’ve been seeing her for about six months.”

I’m not even sure how many times I blinked, trying to process what he was saying to me. It was a mind fuck and not just because he was introducing me to someone he had been seeing for six months, someone I had no idea even existed. I couldn’t understand how Dad, who I knew had been devastated by my mom’s death when I was only four, was seeing someone. He had never dated anyone since Mom died.

No, it wasn’t like he hid women throughout the years. I had asked him about dating and having a girlfriend, because it was all innocent back then when I was growing up. He would simply smile at me, but it was a sad smile which didn’t quite reach his eyes.

He would ruffle my hair, sadness creeping into his words, “Why would I date when I go to bed every night with memories of the amazing woman that I was lucky enough to call my wife?” He’d look away, a dreamy look on his face, “I miss her every day, but I don’t see myself ever falling in love again. It wouldn’t be fair to whoever I tried it with. No one should compete with a ghost.”

I stopped asking at some point throughout the years. Not because I didn’t want a mom, like most of my friends had, but because it made him sad. He had enough of that just from missing Mom, I wasn’t about to add to it.

There were many times growing up when I would find him looking at pictures of mom with tears in his eyes. He was clearly in love with her still, even in death. I figured if he never wanted to be in another relationship then I would respect his choice.

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