Page 20 of Kellan & Emmett (Gomillion High Reunion #1)

Kellan

By the time we left the hardware store, the sun was climbing, hot enough to press through my shirt.

I’d expected we’d head straight back to the inn, but Emmett turned the wheel the other way, rolling past Main Street until the red and white awning of The Roll came into view.

The bell gave a soft jangle when we stepped inside The Roll.

The place smelled exactly the same as it had when we were kids — cinnamon, butter, and a hint of burnt coffee.

Only a few tables were taken: an older couple near the window, two teenagers hunched over milkshakes in the back booth.

Enough space that Emmett and I didn’t have to hunt for seats.

Emmett leaned closer as we slid into line.

“Coffee’s still terrible, by the way,”

he muttered, low enough that only I heard.

I huffed, eyeing the board above the register.

“Guess I’ll stick to orange juice, then.”

“Suit yourself,”

he said.

“I’m already committed to bad coffee.”

Ethan Lattimore stood behind the counter, sleeves rolled, handing off a paper bag to a woman balancing a toddler on her hip.

He was only a year behind us in school—close enough that back then, you couldn’t pass in the halls without knowing each other’s name..

Another man waited behind her, already reaching for his wallet. By the time he took his order and stepped aside, we were next in line.

Ethan spotted us over the register and broke into a grin.

“Well, well. If it isn’t Miller and James. Reunion wasn’t enough? You had to come back for the real town tradition?”

“Morning, Ethan,”

Emmett said, half-smile tugging at his mouth.

“Morning,”

I added, tipping my chin.

“Place looks the same. Smells the same, too.”

“Best smell in the county,”

Ethan shot back with a wink.

“So, what’ll it be?”

“Two of the cinnamon rolls,”

Emmett answered.

“One coffee, one OJ.”

“Figured as much,”

Ethan said, sliding open the case.

“Nobody comes in here for the bran muffins.”

He set two plates on the counter, steam rising off the rolls.

“Still the best in the state, by the way. Twenty years straight, until they finally just gave us the lifetime title and killed the category. Saves the judges the trouble.”

I let out a low whistle.

“Guess I picked the right morning to come back.”

Ethan smirked as he reached for a cup.

“Funny seeing you two here together again. Back in the day, it was always Kellan-and-Emmett, Emmett-and-Kellan. Thunder and Lightning, right? Half the school thought you were joined at the hip.”

He chuckled, sliding the coffee across.

“Good to know some things don’t change.”

Heat prickled at the back of my neck, though I managed a smile.

“We’ll take the rolls before you start digging out more nicknames.”

“Fair enough.”

He pushed the plates across the counter, grin still in place.

“Enjoy, fellas.”

A minute later, we carried our plates and coffee to one of the two-seater tables. The Formica was chipped at the edges, same as always. I glanced around, taking it in.

“Feels smaller than I remember. Didn’t nine of us cram into one of those booths once?”

“Yep,”

Emmett said, settling across from me.

“And you complained the whole time you couldn’t feel your legs.”

His mouth curved, easy with memory. He tore off a piece of roll, steam curling between us.

Before I could answer, a voice called from one of the booths.

“Well, if it isn’t Kellan Miller and Emmett James.”

I turned. Mr. and Mrs. Dobbins sat side by side, silver hair catching the morning light through the front window. They both wore the kind of smiles that made it impossible not to smile back.

“Morning,”

I said, giving them a little wave.

“Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Dobbins.”

Emmett greeted the couple with a broad smile.

Mrs. Dobbins leaned forward, eyes bright.

“My grandson’s in that rec program—you should hear the way he goes on about Coach K. Comes home every evening talking a mile a minute about drills and how you make them all run plays twice until they get it right.”

She chuckled, shaking her head.

“We’ve never seen him so excited about practice.”

Heat pricked my neck, though this time I didn’t mind it.

“Glad he’s enjoying it,”

I managed.

Her husband chimed in, voice warm.

“And Emmett, your inn’s looking fine, son. Brisk business, from what I hear. Miss Cole would be proud.”

At that, Emmett’s shoulders tipped, just slightly, but his voice was steady.

“Thanks. I try to keep it the way she’d have wanted.”

Mrs. Dobbins nodded, satisfied.

“Well, you’ve done more than that. We’re thinking of staying a weekend ourselves. Our sixtieth’s coming up.”

She reached for her husband’s hand across the table, fingers laced, soft and sure.

“Congratulations,”

I said, genuine.

“That’s something to celebrate.”

They both beamed.

“Good to see you boys sitting together again,”

Mr. Dobbins added.

“Takes us back. Some things change, some things don’t.”

Emmett gave a modest nod, but I caught the flicker of pride in his eyes.

After a few more pleasantries, the Dobbinses turned back to their coffee, voices dropping to the soft hum of the room.

For a moment it was just us again, two plates between us and the low clatter of forks from the other tables. Emmett tore a piece of roll, watching the steam curl up before he spoke.

“It’s been a couple of weeks now,”

he said, glancing at me.

“How’s it going over at the rec? Settling in with the kids?”

I nodded, brushing my thumb over the edge of my plate.

“Yeah. They make it easy, honestly. We run drills, play scrimmages, but half the time they just want someone to notice them. They don’t care about scholarships or scouts yet. They just want to play.”

A grin tugged at my mouth.

“One kid looked at me like he’d won the damn Super Bowl just because I high-fived him after a goal.”

Emmett huffed out a soft laugh.

“Sounds like you’re good with them.”

“They make it easy,”

I said again, quieter this time. Then I leaned back, letting the thought expand.

“Some parents hang around the whole practice, cheering from the sideline. Others just drop ’em off, let them burn energy before dinner. And some… well, you can tell they’d like to be there, but work or whatever else keeps them away. It’s all kinds.”

Something snagged in his voice.

“My folks… they were always there. Always cheering.”

He broke off, tearing another piece of roll like it needed his hands busy.

I knew the rest.

Everybody in town did back then.

The plane that went down on its way to Georgia, taking his parents with it when he was nine.

The way his grandma, Miss Ruth, stepped in, tough as nails and soft where it counted, raising him until she passed a few years later.

I didn’t need him to spell it out. I’d watched him live it. Watched him turn loss into armor.

He cleared his throat, gaze fixed on the table.

“Guess that’s why I held on so tight to the inn once Miss Cole left it to me. It’s the only thing that felt like something I could hold, something that was mine.”

For a beat, silence threaded between us. Not heavy, not awkward. Just full.

Then he asked, quiet but deliberate.

“You think you could see yourself doing this every summer?”

My head came up. His face gave nothing away—just a casual question, like he was asking about the weather. But my chest tightened anyway, because I heard what he wasn’t saying. Could you stay? Could you stay where I am?

I forced a shrug, eyes on the swirl of my coffee.

“It’s just for this summer.”

“Sure,”

he said, leaning back, but there was a note in his voice I couldn’t name. Something that lingered.

The table between us suddenly felt too small.

His hand slid across it, passing a napkin toward me.

Our fingers brushed—warm, solid, sparking heat that shot straight through me. I jerked back, muttered a thanks too fast, and tried to hide the way my pulse spiked.

Emmett’s eyes lingered on me a beat too long, then he cleared his throat.

“You know, I never asked. Football—how far’d you take it after you left?”

My laugh was low, sharp.

“Far enough to blow out my knee.”

His brows lifted, waiting.

I stared down into the mug, watched the coffee ripple as if I’d shaken it loose.

“Junior year. ACL. Heard it snap like a gunshot.”

My throat worked, memory flashing too vivid—the turf rushing up, the silence after the crowd’s gasp.

“Scouts stopped showing up. Just like that, it was over.”

Silence stretched a second, then Emmett said quietly.

“That must’ve gutted you.”

“It gutted my dad,”

I said, voice rougher than I meant.

“Me? I think part of me always knew I was on borrowed time. But him—”

I blew out a breath, forced a smile without humor.

“He’d already mapped out my rookie season, you know? Had me wearing an NFL jersey in his head.”

Emmett’s jaw ticked, his gaze steady on me.

“And when it didn’t happen?”

My hand tightened around the mug.

“He left. One suitcase, no goodbye. By the weekend he was gone.”

The words hit the table like stones. Emmett’s fingers flexed against his cup, like he wanted to reach across but didn’t.

“I shouldn’t have been surprised,”

I went on, softer.

“He’d been living through me since I was twelve. Friday-night lights, scouts, scholarships—he saw me as his ticket. The second the ticket got torn up…”

My chest squeezed.

“He punched out.”

“Jesus, Kellan.”

His voice was low, threaded with anger that wasn’t for me.

I shrugged like it didn’t matter, but my throat burned.

“Mom tried, though. Even with her lupus—setting two plates instead of three, pretending her hands weren’t shaking. She was…she was the one who kept me grounded.”

Emmett’s face softened, eyes unblinking.

“I remember. She always treated me like I was hers too.”

The memory caught me off guard, pulled a knot tight in my chest.

“Yeah. She did.”

I swallowed hard, but the words kept coming, like once I cracked the lid, everything spilled.

“Her health got worse. Stress sped it up. By senior year, she was in and out of the hospital. And the day she…”

My voice faltered.

“I wasn’t there. I had an exam. Thought I had more time. Four damn hours it took to do my exam and get back to her, and she…”

The rest stuck in my throat, jagged as glass.

For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The hum of the café wrapped around us, muffled, like we were underwater. Emmett’s hand shifted, knuckles brushing the table closer to mine but not quite touching.

“You were a kid,”

he said finally, steady and sure.

“Carrying weight no one should’ve asked you to carry.”

Heat crawled up my neck, part shame, part gratitude. I wanted to believe him, wanted to lean into it, but the guilt had teeth, always had.

I dragged in a breath, sat back, tried to break the heaviness with a thin smile.

“Guess I didn’t exactly live up to the golden-boy hype, huh?”

Emmett didn’t look away. He just sat there, steady as stone, while I tried to smirk my way out of the wreckage I’d laid on the table.

“You’re still here,”

he said again, firmer this time. Like he meant to nail it into me, the way a coach drives a play into your bones.

Something cracked loose in my chest, sharp and aching. I didn’t trust myself to answer. I curled my fingers tight around the cup so he wouldn’t see them shake. And God help me, even in the middle of all that emotional weight, I felt it again—that pull toward him, the one I’d been fighting since the day I came back.

And then his hand shifted. Just a small thing—his fingers sliding across the table, brushing against mine.

It should’ve felt like nothing. Just skin on skin for a second. But it lit me up like a live wire. Heat shot up my arm, down my spine, left my breath snagging in my throat.

I didn’t move. Couldn’t. His palm wasn’t covering mine, just close enough that the edge of his thumb rested against my knuckle, and God, the memory of every time we’d touched when we were kids that had meant so much came rushing back. Side hugs, knees brushing under desks… and the one night everything blurred into a kiss I’d told myself didn’t count.

I told myself to move, to break the contact before I did something reckless, like kiss him.

But I didn’t. Couldn’t.

And that was the moment I knew—I was already in trouble.

Daily To-Do

Fix squeaky hinge upstairs

Garden: water planters, trim walkway

Pay utility bill before late fee hits

Make sure Kellan actually eats something, not just gulps coffee

Resist wanting to kiss Kellan