Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Four Years Later

Isaac was leaving early in the morning. His truck was loaded up with all his stuff. He hadn’t seen or heard from Mason all day. He figured he was still pissed at him. Isaac originally planned to leave right after graduation but stayed for the summer. He knew things would be different once he left, and he wanted to spend one last summer on the farm with Mason, like when they were kids.

It was late into the night, but he knew Mason was still up. Before he could overthink it, he walked down the trail to his house. Isaac could have knocked on the door like a normal person, but that would’ve been too boring. He walked around the side of the house until he could see Mason’s window.

There wasn’t a tree close enough to it, so he couldn’t get revenge for all the times Mason had scared him shitless by appearing in his window. He picked up a few small rocks and began tossing them at the window. He watched as the light turned on and the window was opened aggressively.

“The fuck are you doing?” Mason said, annoyance clear in his tone.

“Throwing rocks at your window,” he said simply with a small smile. Isaac wasn’t entirely sure why he acted that way. Mason was usually the type to pull stunts like that. Isaac tended to be a rule follower. He could also be pretty shy at times, yet that night, he felt a sense of boldness. Maybe it was the fact that everything was changing, or maybe that he was finally eighteen. Either way, he wanted to see Mason, and he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life wishing he had said a proper goodbye to his friend.

“It’s annoying as fuck.” There wasn’t any real heat behind the words.

“You have a foul mouth,” Isaac teased.

“Yeah? What else is new?” It was one of the rare moments that he got to see Mason smile. Silence fell over them as Isaac tried to figure out how to get closer to him without breaking the fragile moment by walking away to the door. He spotted the ladder propped up against the back of the house.

“The hell’re you doing now?” Mason called as Isaac started moving the ladder.

“Coming in.” He climbed up, entering Mason’s room less than gracefully.

“What’s gotten into you?” Mason inquired.

“I’m leaving in the morning.” Just like that, the fragile moment shattered. He heard Mason’s sharp inhale and saw how his soft expression turned guarded.

“Okay? So why are you here?” he huffed, crossing his arms.

“I always wanted to leave Stoneybrook, to leave North Carolina?—”

“Oh, here we go again?—”

“Mason, let me talk,” Isaac cut him off, his tone unusually firm. He wanted to get this across. He wanted to ease some of that tension that had built between them ever since he first mentioned leaving. Mason opened his mouth as if he had more to say, but decided against it.

“I always dreamed of leaving. I always wanted to travel. Since I was a kid, I have always had that dream, but even then, there was always a part of it that felt wrong.”

“And what was that?” Isaac wasn’t sure if he had ever heard Mason speak so quietly.

“You won’t be there,” Isaac’s voice wavered as he admitted it. He wasn’t planning on telling Mason that night, or ever for that matter, but the words were leaving him anyway. He knew it was not a permanent goodbye, but it still felt that way. Maybe saying this would mess things up between them, but Isaac would be gone in the morning, so he wouldn’t have to deal with the aftermath.

“What does me being there or not being there have to do with anything?”

“Do you remember how we would watch the stars in the clearing?”

“We did that, like, last week. What are you on about?”

“I knew something was different about me from a young age.” Isaac felt like his throat was closing on him. There was no way he was about to say it. He looked away from Mason, inhaling shakily.

“Why?” Mason prompted, almost sounding nervous.

“Because every time we watched the stars, I couldn’t stop watching you.” Out of all the constellations in the sky, he preferred to watch the shine in Mason’s eyes. No matter where they were, the light always hit his amber eyes perfectly.

Mason didn’t speak. He watched Isaac with an unreadable expression on his face. Isaac waited, giving him a chance to say something, anything, but it never came.

“I’ll see you around, Mason,” he said softly, as if his heart wasn’t breaking in his chest. He knew that was the most likely outcome. Mason probably wasn’t even gay. That wasn’t a very common theme in their town. He wondered if Mason would call him some type of slur on the way out, but he remained silent. Isaac paused at the door frame to look at him one last time before walking out. He closed Mason’s bedroom door softly behind him. Then he ran out of that house like a bat out of hell. He sprinted back to his house while tears streamed down his face.

He wasn’t even sure if Auntie had been in the living room to see that display. If she were, she would’ve already called Mama to inform her that her son was running around like a maniac at an ungodly hour.

Atlanta was like another planet. It surpassed his wildest imagination.

Not in a good way. The traffic was about to drive him mad. Isaac had never been bothered by road rage; that was Mason’s thing. He constantly screamed at people behind the wheel, and Isaac had never understood why until then.

He gripped his steering wheel tightly, taking a deep breath. Why couldn’t people fucking drive? He didn’t get to enjoy the view of the city’s skyline because he was too focused on trying to survive the damn streets.

Isaac unlocked the door to his new apartment, took a deep breath, and stepped inside. He flipped the light on, and the space was so bare. Nevertheless, it was his. He had his place. He lived in the city. He was on his own. It was a bittersweet feeling. He was going to live his dream, yet his family was so far away.