It had been six long years since she last set foot in this town - the place that cradled her dreams and then crushed them without apology. Trees still lined the street like silent witnesses, unchanged, unlike her. Emily had returned, not as the timid girl who once ran away, but as a woman molded by heartbreak, time, and the weight of her own decisions.
Her eyes swept across the road and landed on the old bookstore - Mr. Denby's corner of dust and wisdom. It looked smaller now, like most things from childhood did when revisited. The painted sign still hung, crooked and faded, yet defiantly unbroken. She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes.
Dragging her suitcase behind her, she made her way past whispers from windows, imagined or real. Faces peeked and then disappeared. Emily Matthews had come home, and the town was already buzzing.
Her first stop was the house. The one she said she'd never return to. It stood like a stubborn ghost at the end of the lane - same pale blue paint, same squeaky gate, same heaviness around its edges. She paused at the door, fingers hovering above the rusted handle, breath catching in her throat.
Was she ready to go back inside?
She turned the knob anyway.
The smell hit her first - aged wood, lavender soap, and something else. Grief. Her mother had kept everything the same. The same couch cover with the tiny red roses. The same photo frames, tilted just slightly. Her own teenage photos still hung on the hallway wall, frozen in a time she barely remembered.
Emily dropped her bag and walked deeper into the silence. Each creaking floorboard seemed to whisper her name. In the living room, her mother's handwriting peeked from a sticky note on the fridge. A grocery list that would never be fulfilled. A tear slid down Emily's cheek before she could stop it.
She didn't cry at the funeral. Not when the lawyer read the will. Not when she was handed the keys and told, "It's all yours now." But standing there, alone in that too-quiet house, it all became real.
This was no longer her childhood home.
It was her responsibility.
The soft knock at the door startled her. Emily wiped her face and opened it slowly, heart thumping.
"Emily?"
The voice belonged to Caleb. The boy who broke her heart. Now a man - taller, broader, with the same stormy eyes and a voice that still knew how to weaken her resolve.
"I heard you were back," he said.
"I didn't expect to be seen so quickly," she replied, arms crossing over her chest.
"It's a small town. Secrets echo faster here."
She stepped aside reluctantly, and he entered, his presence filling the room like an old
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