Page 137 of Only in Your Dreams

Finally.

Melody lifts my hand and kisses the inside of my palm.

“Take good care of it for me, okay?”

Chapter 34

Melody

Coffee stains down my front. Milk froth in my hair.

That’s the distracted state in which I’m finishing my shift at Sheffield’s this afternoon. I regret every bit of the offer I made Wynn to pick up the shift, to make up for quitting early after Connor showed up yesterday.

You don’t get to tell me I didn’t love you then and haven’t loved you since.

I tied that shoelace around Zac’s wrist last night, and we both clung to it like a desperate white flag. We crawled into bed, kissed goodnight. Both suddenly drained yet aware we’d have more to talk about the next day.

Zac’s confession doesn’t matter—not really. We’ve spent months organically growing this relationship. I’ve spent months fighting him at every turn, only to fall flat-on-my-face in love with him, anyway. Last night doesn’t change any of that. He did a stupid thing years ago, took accountability, has shown me the kind of man he’s grown to be. He’s quietly proven his love for me every day since he crawled out of that tent at camp.

Still, though. I’ve spent all day obsessing over fourteen years’ worth of ill-founded memories and hurt. I assumed I’d been the one to ruin our relationship by asking for a kiss he never wanted. I spent ten years so upset by his supposed rejection that I avoided my hometown so that I’d never run into him. Fell into a relationship with an abusive man because of my own inexperience, coupled with the insecurity born the last night Zac and I saw each other.

It was the most restless sleep I’ve ever had in Zac’s arms and a quiet flight back this morning, in which he let me pretend to read whichever book I haphazardly clicked on my Kindle. It’s a miracle I’ve been able to make it through my shift at all.

Fourteen years. We wastedfourteen years. I can’t decide who I want to shake more. Myself. Zac.

“Hey, Mels.”

Or my brother.

I look up to find Parker eyeing me cautiously. Possibly, he’s been watching me mindlessly wipe down this pristine table for the past ten minutes. He’s wearing shorts and a damp t-shirt. A sheen of sweat at his temples.

“I came in for a post-run coffee,” he explains, jerking his chin at the register. “You okay?”

I don’t know how I expected to feel seeing my brother today. Maybe some resentment. Anger.

But more than anything is deep curiosity. He admitted to the Hands-Off Melody Woods Rule when I first moved back to town. It hadn’t entered my mind that Zac had been one of the people warned off me.

“Not really.” Blowing out a breath, I drop into the booth I’ve been cleaning. “Parker, I need to ask you about something.”

With a look around the emptying diner, he slides into the seat opposite me. “Okay. Hit me, Mels.”

I push aside my spray bottle, fiddle with my rag. “What happened between you and Zac? How come you’re not as close as you were when we were younger?”

Parker doesn’t seem all that surprised by the question. “Why do you ask?”

“Just something I noticed since moving back. You’re so awkward around each other.”

He pushes the sweat-wet hair off his face, sinking lower in the bench seat. “You’re going to want to murder me. You remember the night before you left for college? When he drove you home during the party at his grams’s house?”

I nod, working to keep my face blank.

“Well, he came back all… I don’t think I ever saw him like that, Mel. It was like he was on another planet. On top of the fucking world.”

I grind my teeth together, forcing myself to stop picturing a younger Zac coming to my brother, in love with me, asking for his blessing. On the heels of asking him to kiss me.

Of tying matching red shoelaces around our wrists. With my four-leaf clover in his pocket, before he’d go on to tattoo them for years.

“What happened?” I ask when Parker doesn’t go on.

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