Page 4 of Kellan & Emmett (Gomillion High Reunion #1)

Emmett

Kellan’s footsteps faded along the hallway, each thud landing somewhere under my ribs. Then silence.

I hadn’t expected him—not here at the inn. When I pulled up the system just now, his name blinked back at me, plain as day. Miller. Grace must’ve processed the booking when it came through the site, slotted it into the calendar, prepped the room. I’d skimmed the entry once but never thought twice—Miller was common enough. I hadn’t let myself imagine it could be him.

Seeing him again at the gym earlier, then at the after-party—I thought that had burned off the shock. Twenty years is long enough to sand down old memories, to file away what someone used to look like.

But the second he walked through my door tonight, bag slung over his shoulder, looking like he belonged nowhere and everywhere at once, the ground shifted.

The Kellan in my head had been eighteen forever. Wide grin, pads on his shoulders, my name on his lips like it was the easiest thing in the world. The man upstairs wasn’t that boy. Broader now, lines around his eyes, hair darker. But the effect was the same: one look, and I was seventeen again, standing on the edge of something I never got to keep.

Anger came next, quick and hot, the kind that burned through nostalgia. He’d left. No explanation. No goodbye. Just gone. Twenty years later, I was still carrying the wreckage, and he’d walked back into town like it was nothing.

He wasn’t getting under my skin. Not again.

I’d spent too long patching myself back together. This time, I’d be smarter. He could sleep under my roof, pass me in the hall, hell, even smile at me like he used to—but that was all.

He didn’t get a second chance at me.

I rose from the chair and got up to lock the front door. Turn the deadbolt, jiggle the knob, flick the porch light off. The house sighed around me, wood beams settling like they knew the hour.

My gaze snagged on the old rocking chair in the corner. Her chair. Miss Cole never sat anywhere else, not once in all the years I knew her. The cushions had been reupholstered since her passing, brighter fabric now, but the grooves on the arms were the same.

I paused.

When Kellan left for LA, I unraveled. He’d been my anchor since we were kids—summers at the creek, winters on the bleachers, graduation night that changed everything. And then he was gone.

Miss Cole filled the gap before I even realized I needed one. First it was yard work, then odd jobs around the house. She paid me more in conversation than dollars—stories about the students she used to teach, recipes for cakes she swore she’d perfected.

When her health started to go—first the diabetes, then the stroke—I stayed. Made sure she ate. Drove her to doctor’s appointments. Sat in a chair across from her, night after night, when her hands trembled too much to hold a book steady.

She never had kids. Never married. No cousins or nieces waiting in the wings. When she died, it turned out she’d left the house to me.

I’d thought about selling. God knows it would’ve been easier. But the walls still smelled like cinnamon, and the porch still sang when the wind hit it right, and for the first time since Kellan left, I felt rooted.

So I stayed. Painted the porch, fixed the roof, turned it into a bed-and-breakfast. My bed-and-breakfast.

And now he was upstairs, sleeping under the same roof.

I entered the kitchen, which was dark except for the glow above the stove. I didn’t bother with the overheads, just grabbed the bottle of bourbon from the cabinet and poured two fingers into a glass. The burn hit the back of my throat sharp, but it didn’t quiet the noise in my head.

It didn’t matter how many years had passed, how much I’d built here, how far I’d come from the boy he left behind. One look, and everything I’d shoved into a box slammed open again.

I told myself I didn’t care. That I was out now, living my life, running the inn, doing fine without him. Truth was, I’d built this place from the rubble he left.

But seeing him—really seeing him, not just across a room full of former classmates, but here in my space—brought it all back.

Graduation night.

The crowd fading, the air thick with summer heat, and then—his mouth on mine. Not a brush. Not a mistake. Solid. Certain. The kind of kiss that seared straight through skin and bone and told me, without words, this mattered. That I mattered. For one impossible heartbeat, it felt like the world tilted open, like we’d stepped out of boyhood and into something bigger, brighter, ours.

And then morning came.

He was gone.

There wasn’t a note. No explanation. Just his absence—like that kiss had been erased everywhere except in me.

And now? He looked good. Better than good. Broader through the shoulders, a man instead of the boy I’d memorized. Handsome in a way that made my pulse trip even as my jaw locked.

Had he married? Had kids? The ring finger on his left hand was bare, but that didn’t mean much. If he was still hiding, I doubted he’d ever parade the truth.

I gripped the glass tighter, bourbon sloshing.

Dammit.

I tipped back the last swallow, heat crawling through me that had nothing to do with the bourbon.

The thoughts swirling in my head didn't matter. Whatever Kellan Miller was now, whoever he was now, I wasn’t about to find out.

Upstairs, my footsteps fell quiet against the smooth hardwood as I crossed into my bedroom. The air conditioner hummed steady overhead, cool air spilling through the vent. I stretched out on the mattress, staring at the blank white ceiling, trying to will my thoughts quiet.

Sleep didn’t come.

Tomorrow was packed—tours, games, yearbook nonsense, and some former schoolmates booked under my roof. I couldn’t avoid Kellan even if I wanted to. Which I did. Or I told myself I did.

Twenty years ago, I swore I wouldn’t give him the chance to hurt me again.

Now he was sleeping under my roof.

May 24

First night back in Gomillion behind me. Didn’t sleep much—jet lag, nerves, or maybe just the sound of being back in these walls. Hard to tell.

The reunion schedule looks harmless enough on paper: campus tour, yearbooks printed twenty years late, a prom theme that’ll probably have us all sweating under neon lights. The kind of schedule that’s supposed to stir nostalgia, not heartburn.

Part of me wants to lean into it. See the changes on campus. Catch up with old faces. Maybe even laugh about who we used to be.

But none of that feels simple with Emmett in the room. I catch myself scanning crowds, tracking him without meaning to. It’s like my compass never reset.

Maybe today will be different. Or maybe it’ll just remind me of how far I ran, and how close he still feels anyway.

—K