Prologue

PROLOGUE

TANNER

I hold the thick paper in my hand, reading it for the tenth time while standing at my mailbox. I don't know what I was expecting when I took a quick run down my mile-long driveway this morning, but this definitely wasn't it.

You are cordially invited to the 40th-anniversary celebration of Bill and Libby Valentine

Saturday, April 2nd at 2 o'clock

1111 Journey Lane, Hope Harbor, Massachusetts 01125

I wish I could say I was excited to celebrate such a huge milestone for my childhood best friend's parents. Forty years of marriage is a big deal, and their love has always been an inspiration to the people who know them, but the only thing going through my mind as I think about what attending this party would mean is her .

Grace Valentine.

My Grace .

The girl whose anguished cries haunt my dreams every single night.

There was a short time in my life where I held her and nothing else mattered. Not football, not school, not my future. It was just us, learning, exploring…falling.

And then I fucked it all up.

I knew better than to have a secret fling with my best friend's younger sister. It started as me wanting to protect her, as I had done since the day she was born. I was only three, but our parents always joked that I was Grace's personal bodyguard. If another kid tried to play with her or touch her toys, little Tanner had no problem letting them know that wasn't an option. And as we got older, my instinct to make sure she was safe and happy only intensified. I can't tell you how many douchebags her brother Riggs and I scared off in high school so they'd stay away from her. Wrong? Maybe. But I'd have done anything to protect her heart.

Then I turned around and ripped it out with my own two hands.

What I thought was the right thing at the time ended up being my biggest regret. It's been five years, and every time I get invited to an event in Hope Harbor, I decline like a little bitch. I make some shit excuse about having practice or workouts so I can get out of them, convincing my family to come visit me in Boston instead. I even had this house built with a fully equipped guest suite so they would feel like it was a little vacation when they came here. For half a decade, everything I've done has been for Grace…or to avoid her.

Riggs and I still talk occasionally, but he's currently playing professional baseball in Florida, so our conversations rarely make it long enough for his sister to come up. Especially since, to this day, he has no idea what happened between her and me that summer.

I don't want to know what she's up to now. My guess is that she's in a relationship, if not married. Girls like Grace Valentine don't stay single for long. If her beautiful blue eyes and silky blonde hair don't reel a guy in, her kind heart and amazing sense of humor will. Some lucky son of a bitch is probably holding her right now. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that whoever he is, he doesn't deserve her.

No one does.

The day I walked away, I deleted all my social media accounts, drove myself from Hope Harbor back to Harvard, and vowed to stay away for good. I had done enough damage. The least I could do was let her have our hometown as her safe space. Let her chase her dreams in Los Angeles, being able to return whenever her heart missed home, and give her a fair chance at a happy life. Because I knew that without her, that would never be an option for me.

The thick cardstock feels like a brick in my hand as I try to tell myself to stay away. That I'm only invited because Riggs and his parents have no idea that I'm the cause of Grace's first broken heart. That for one whole summer, she gave me every single piece of herself, and I humiliated her by acting like the way she felt was just some stupid schoolgirl crush. Then I told her she meant nothing to me and walked away while she cried and begged me not to.

I decide right here that it's time to go back and face the consequences of my actions. I deserve to see how happy and successful she's become in spite of the way I broke her. That she's thriving while she unknowingly still carries my heart in her hands.

And she deserves to see how empty my life has been all these years, knowing that I'm the only one to blame.