Page 77 of Don't Call Me Sweetheart

“Do you want to fix it?” Eli asked, his eyes sharp.

“There’s nothing to fix. I want to be with her, if that’s what you mean.” The words came out easily, shocking me. Who was I? It wasn’t like me to be open like this. Kate had changed that, little by little. And maybe, too, I couldn’t hurt worse than I already was, so what was the point of holding it back? “It doesn’t matter what I want. She’s not ready to move on. Not with me anyway.”

“Hm.” Eli raised his beer to his lips. “Don’t wait seven years for her to be ready, that’s my advice.”

“Yeah. Don’t be like Eli,” Luke said. “Learn from his experience.”

Eli saluted with his middle finger. “At least I have experience.”

“Hey!” Luke protested. “I have experience.”

“Experience getting women, sure. You have absolutely zero experience keeping them.” He smirked at me. “There is literally a note about him in the Appalachian Trail app. Don’t miss Goat’s Tavern. Have a beer, bang the bartender.”

Luke threw a candy bar, beaning Eli right in the forehead. I laughed. Actually laughed, even though my chest ached from wanting Kate. The pain didn’t ease. It was still there. But it seemed more endurable somehow.

And suddenly I knew what this was.

Friendship.

That thing that had eluded me all my life was happening right in front of my face. It was so simple, really. Friendship was a choice—a two-sided choice, and that was the piece I had failed to understand all this time. It was a choice to care about someone else, and to let them care about you.

I had never made room for either part in my life. People had invited me out—for happy hours, barbecues, or whatever—but I hadn’t gone. Any offer of connection I had either not recognized for what it was, or I had shoved it as far away from myself as I could. People had tried to care about me, but I had never let them.

Until Kate had shown me how. She had made it feel like a good thing instead of my imminent destruction. Losing her felt fucking terrible, but I would survive it.

Friendship was a choice. Family was a choice. For far too long, I had chosen neither, and I hadn’t let anyone choose me. I didn’t want that life anymore. It was lonely. I wanted Kate, but even if I couldn’t have her, I still wanted friendship and family.

It was time to make a different choice.

Chapter 27

Max

The Hart sisters lived two miles outside the town proper in an 1820s farmhouse that had, at various times over the last century, been painted yellow, white, blue, and red, but now was weathered to a little bit of all those colors, along with the dark brown wood peeking out beneath the peeling paint.

Once upon a time, the farmhouse had proudly fronted 250 acres of green farmland dotted with herds of sheep. The farm had, acre by acre, been swallowed up by the neighboring Locklear Livestock. Cows had replaced sheep until all that was left of Hart Farms were the house and family graveyard.

And that was everything I learned from my exhaustive internet search. I wanted to come prepared.

I pulled up to the long, rambling house and found Violet, Olivia, and Hannah waiting for me on the front porch. I had called yesterday and spoke to Violet, the eldest sister, and asked if I could come by for a talk. Rather than tell them the whole complicated thing, I had said I’d done some research on the Hart family and found something I thought would be of interest to them.

“A good thing or a bad thing?” Violet had asked.

“I suppose that’s in the eye of the beholder,” I had answered.

I hoped they would see finding a long-lost cousin as a good thing, but family secrets were nebulous things. Better to set the bar low.

The sisters stood, forming a barricade at the porch railing—or so it felt. They probably only meant it as a show of hospitality, I hoped.

“Hey there, handsome,” Hannah drawled, flipping her blond curls over her shoulder, looking and sounding exactly like a Southern beauty queen.

Violet crossed her arms over her chest. Olivia tightened her ponytail—brown, like Violet, in contrast to their youngest sister. Brown like my own and my mother’s. Maybe there were nuances I was missing, but I liked to think we had all inherited the shade from the same relatives a ways back on the family tree. Although, to be fair, all brown hair looked kind of the same to me, except for Kate’s. Hers was special.

There was an undercurrent of tension that I hadn’t expected. But maybe that was just me. I was plenty tense as I walked up the gravel walkway. Maybe they sensed my tension, and it made them tense in turn, the way horses spooked when their rider was nervous.

“Can we offer you something to drink?” Violet asked as I climbed the front steps. “Water or maybe some iced tea?”

“Iced tea would be great, if it’s not too much trouble.”

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