Page 13 of Kellan & Emmett
He turned the key, engine humming to life. For a stretch we drove without speaking, tires rolling over the smooth pavement as the inn slipped out of sight in the mirror.
I couldn’t take the quiet. “I didn’t picture you in a truck.”
His eyes stayed on the road. “It’s South Carolina. What’d you expect, a Prius?”
A short laugh slipped out before I could stop it. He didn’t join me.
“The inn looks good,” I tried again, nodding toward the rearview. “You’ve really made something of it.”
His grip tightened on the wheel. “It’s not a project. It’s a home.”
The correction hit sharper than I wanted it to. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Maybe not,” he said, voice even. “But it’s what it sounded like.”
It was classic Emmett—never raising his voice, never dramatic.
Silence pressed in. I shifted, restless, drumming my fingers against my leg. “I guess I…” My voice faltered, then steadied. “You ever wish you’d left too?”
His glance flicked toward me, then back to the road.. “Not once.”
The conviction in his voice landed like stone. No hesitation. No apology. He meant it.
I wanted to ask if he’d thought about me in those years I was gone. If he hated me, or worse, if he’d managed not to think of me at all. But the words stuck in my throat.
“Guess you were braver than me.”
He shook his head, mouth pulling taut. “No. Just means I stayed put. But don’t think it was easy. And you know what, Kellan?” He glanced at me quickly, before facing the road again. “You can’t disappear on someone and expect them to forget it everhappened.” His voice caught on that last word—happened—like he’d almost said more.
My hands curled into fists on my lap. “You think I forgot?” The words slipped out, scraping my throat on the way up. “I couldn’t if I tried.”
The admission left me exposed, skin peeled back to something I wasn’t sure I wanted him to see.
The night in question lit up in my memory whether I wanted it to or not: the darkness that cloaked us, the way he hadn’t pulled back when I kissed him. For one impossible moment, it had felt like everything was about to change.
I wanted to ask him if he remembered it the same way. If it had meant something to him. But I couldn’t force the words past the lump in my throat, and pride kept my jaw locked.
We hit the light at Main. I heard the tap tap of his fingers against the steering wheel. “You didn’t just leave town, Kellan. You left me. You left a decade’s old friendship.”
My gaze swung his way, throat tightened. “I thought it was better that way.”
“For who?” The words weren’t loud, but they landed like weight dropped between us.
Heat climbed my neck. I turned to the window again, past storefronts that looked exactly the same as when we were kids—the hardware store, the pawn shop, the diner with the sign that never fully lit up. Twenty years, and the town had stood still. We were the ones who hadn’t.
“For me,” I admitted. “And maybe that was a mistake.”
The light changed. He drove on. It was quiet for a long beat before he finally said, “I never blamed you for leaving. Chasing the NFL—that was your dream. I knew you had to go.” He huffed out a breath. “What I couldn’t make sense of was you cutting me out completely. Not even a call back. Not even once.”
The words scraped raw inside me. I’d told myself he wouldn’t have understood. But hearing it like that—so plain, so sharp—it made all my excuses sound thin.
“I know,” I said, voice low. My fingers clenched uselessly on my knee. “You didn’t deserve that. You were my best friend, Emmett. And I just…” My throat worked, but the rest stuck there, heavy as stone. “I thought if I cut clean, maybe it wouldn’t hurt so bad.”
He let out a short breath through his nose, not quite a scoff, not quite forgiveness either.
By the time he turned into the school lot, headlights sweeping over cars crammed into every space, my chest felt raw. Music leaked from the gym—synth beats and bass thumping, like the eighties had been dragged back for one last dance.
He eased into a spot near the back and killed the engine. Neither of us moved. The glow of the gym doors bled across the windshield, painting his profile in pale light.
