Page 17 of Wild Heart

4

AVA

I was back.

But something about this just didn’t feel right; it never felt like this. To say I was a mess, a mix of conflicting emotions, about it would have been an understatement.

Landing, Pennsylvania had always been home for me. Despite a rough childhood, nearly all the things that made me happy were in this small town. And after being away for so long, coming back just felt good.

It always had.

But there was a part of me that felt uneasy about it now. It was that same ominous feeling I’d experienced at Christmas.

Why I was trying to confuse myself or pretend I didn’t know why was beyond me. There was one thing making this return trip to Landing feel so much different than all the others.

I was going to be seeing him again. And it was going to be especially difficult because things weren’t the same between us.

I’d ruined it, and there hadn’t been anything I could bring myself to do to fix it. What would I have done anyway? How could I have made it better?

Tate had rejected me. He made it clear where he stood. And I’d utterly humiliated myself.

Maybe that embarrassment had been good. Maybe it was the best thing for me, even if it had crushed me. The humiliation I’d faced had led me to doing one of the most difficult things I’d ever done in my life.

I stopped.

I stopped reaching out.

I stopped texting.

I didn’t even talk to him when I came home for a few days at Christmas.

And I put on a show, pretending I wasn’t devastated by the loss of his presence—even the way it used to be—in my life.

It hurt so badly. The ache I felt in my chest when I had free moments to myself while on tour never eased.

And whenever I’d reached out to Ivy, it only got worse for me. For some reason, I hadn’t ever been able to bring myself to tell my best friend about my feelings for her brother. She loved me,adored me.If she had the slightest inkling, I didn’t doubt she would have pushed him to do something about it.

I didn’t want that.

Not at all.

I wanted Tate to want me without anyone’s influence or pressure. I wanted him to pursue me and start something between us, because the thought of not having me in his life was too much to bear.

Sadly, that wasn’t ever going to happen. He’d made that much clear.

But losing contact with my best friend over the last year while I was away for work wasn’t an option for me, so our friendship continued as it always had. It was both a good and bad thing.Good,because I missed her, and I liked being kept in the loop about what was happening in her life.Bad,because Ivy’s life intersected with Tate’s life. She couldn’t tell me about a year of her life experiences and not include her family members.The Westwoods were a tight-knit family; it would have been an impossibility.

So, I listened and laughed as I always would have, meaning every word I said to her, but feeling that hole in my heart growing larger and larger.

The only thing that made life easier was work. There had been a lot of shows, and it was rare for us to get consecutive days off. Though my body was exhausted, my mind and my heart appreciated the distraction of work. Plus, when the shows were over, I was so tired; I didn’t stay up all night thinking about Tate and wishing things had been different.

With the state of things between Tate and me, I had considered not coming back for the wedding. But as quickly as that stupid idea had popped into my head, it was gone.

The Westwoods were my family, and Wyatt had been like a big brother to me for as long as I could remember. Missing his wedding, one of the most important days of his life, just wasn’t an option.

But this event made me realize what my life was going to look like moving forward. I couldn’t pretend in any other scenario that I wasn’t devastated about Tate, and I needed to figure out how I was going to cope moving forward.

I was scheduled to fly out the morning after the wedding to return to the tour. There was one week of performances left. Afterward, I had to decide where I was going to go.