Page 50 of Where You Belong

There’s a lot more about who I am and my past than you know, and I’ll never put you in a position to have to choose between me and the people you love.

I’m sorry.

Hae

My eyes scan over the paper, re-reading the words once more. When the pencil touched the paper, it’s like the words flowed out of me. I hadn’t thought through what I was going to say until I was finished.

I set the pencil back down on the paper and stare at the picture frame on top of the oak desk of Corbin with a man I assume is his older brother, Lee. He’s dressed in his army ACU’s with Layla flanking the other side, her arm wrapped around Lee’s waist and her head against his shoulder.

Tears fill my eyes, and I quickly brush them away, stepping back and hurry out the front door before I can take every word back. I’m careful not to let the screen door slam shut behind me, afraid of waking Corbin as I jog down the stairs toward my car.

During the entire drive home, I picture Corbin opening his eyes that morning to find the bed next to him empty and the sinking feeling I’ve felt so many times when I’ve woken up to find Atlas never came home the night before.

I break down at the thought of the familiar ache in the pit of his stomach creeping in, wondering what was wrong. It’s just before four in the morning, so I drive back home and attempt to get a few more hours of sleep before I pick up Huxton.

When sleep doesn’t come, I pick up my phone from the nightstand next to me and give in to the urge to pull up the photos from our stranger shoot the day we met. I scroll through the album before landing on a picture Madelyn took when Corbin first kissed me.

I’m a mess of emotions as the tears once again blur my vision.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, wishing he could hear me.

Once again, before I allow myself the chance to change my mind, I delete all the pictures from my phone before pulling up our messages and his contact information, and doing the same.

When the pop-up appears on my screen asking to confirm the deletion, my finger hovers over the button before Gage’s voice filters through my mind.

“Stay away from him. Stay away from us all.”

Chapter Twenty

Corbin

I wasn’t surprised when I woke up the following morning to find Haelynn gone. I was frustrated and hurt. So instead of jumping out of bed when my alarm went off, I lay there, replaying every second of our night together.

Eventually, I forced myself up and into the shower before I ventured downstairs and found the letter she had left.

A million questions race through my mind.

Instead, I climbed into my truck and took off down the road to spend the day with my parents. My dad and I made plans to go fishing anyway, and I wanted to take advantage of the few warm weekends we had left before it got chilly.

My mom made us breakfast. Layla and Brit brought their kids over to let them run around outside. My aunt Brea and uncle Mason stopped over for a short time before making the trip to Everton to run errands.

It was after noon by the time we made it down to the pond located near the back of their property. Growing up out here, with more land than we knew what to do with, was every boy's dream. My dad kept us busy on the farm, plus we had four-wheelers and dirt bikes, giving us all the space we needed to ride freely.

We spent nearly every day in the summer by the pond they stocked every year. We’d fish, only to release most of them back into the water again.

“How’s everything goin’? You seem… quiet. Not yourself,” my dad, Callum, asks. He reclines back into his lawn chair, resting his arm on the back of the seat as he turns to look at me.

I cast my line out into the water, balancing my foot up onto the bucket we brought down with our fishing gear. I was still trying to wrap my head around our night together and didn’t have the slightest clue where to start.

“You wanna start with this girl you’ve been seein’?” He must’ve picked up on my hesitation.

I look over at him with my brow raised. “You’ve been spyin’ on me?”

He scoffs, shaking his head. “Your sister told us all about it after half the world saw those pictures of you kissing her all over that Face Space.”

I chuckle. I’m not the least bit surprised to hear Layla was the first to share all the details. There’s not enough gossip in her own life, so she keeps up with the rest of the town's juicy secrets and gushes to anyone who cares to listen.

“Is that what’s got you in your head?”

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