Page 38 of The Lilac River (Silver Peaks #1)

The Reason - Hoobastank

Lily

M y heart sank as Nash dragged Grandma’s old footstool closer to the sofa and sat down. Too close. Way too close. I would’ve preferred if he sat across the room, in Mom’s chair, far enough away for me to breathe properly. But Nash Miller was never one to play it safe. Never had been.

He leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, his eyes locked on me like I was the only thing in the world worth looking at. And just like that, I was sixteen again, trembling in the grass behind the barn while he kissed promises into my skin.

"I felt," he began, "like I disrespected you. Like I treated you like some one-night thing. Like you didn’t matter. And you do, Lila. You always have."

There was no hesitation in his voice, just that low rumble that always did something treacherous to my insides.

He glanced down, dragging his thumb across his bottom lip, a small, nervous tic I hadn’t seen in years. It hit me like a punch, the familiarity of it. The vulnerability. Like under all the muscle and time and pain, my Nash was still in there.

"Even when I was mad at you… you still mattered. Hell, you probably mattered more because of it."

The air thickened between us, heavy and aching, like the room itself knew we were toeing the edge of something irreversible.

"It was my choice, too," I said quietly. "It’s not like you forced me."

Nash’s eyes snapped back to mine, fierce and clear. "I know. But my mom raised me to respect the woman I love."

The word love hit me like a bell. Loud. Clear. Impossible to ignore.

He didn’t correct himself. And I didn’t ask him to.

A shiver worked its way down my spine. Not just from the memories of last night, but from the sheer, terrifying hope that maybe... there could be a future. Something flickered to life in the wreckage I’d been carrying for a decade.

“Concentrate, Lila.”

My head snapped up to find Nash smirking, his dimple barely visible beneath a rough shadow of stubble. Like he knew exactly what he was doing to me.

"You used to bite your lip like that whenever you were thinking dirty thoughts," he teased, voice dropping into a low, rough timbre. "Nice to see some things haven’t changed."

I blushed hard, and it only made his smile widen, like catching me out was his new favorite game. I hated how easily he could still fluster me. I loved it too.

"I heard what you said," I told him. "But you don’t need to worry. I don’t think you disrespected me at all."

"Good to know," he said, his expression sobering. "But it doesn’t stop me from feeling like I let you down."

Guilt twisted inside me, sharp and relentless. If anyone had let someone down, it wasn’t him. It was me. Over and over again.

"Honestly, Nash. You didn’t."

He leaned in closer, hands clasped together, voice soft. "So, you understand now? That my regret wasn’t about us, it was about where we were. You're not some mistake, Lily. You’re..."

His voice faded, but I felt the words he didn’t say. You’re everything.

"I didn’t know just how much I still needed you," he finished, and it shattered me.

He looked at me like I hung the moon. And it was the most dangerous, beautiful thing in the world.

"I understand," I whispered. "And I accept that we probably shouldn’t have?—"

"No," Nash said, cutting me off gently. "That’s not true. We should have. We just should’ve done it with a little more... reverence."

His voice dipped into something broken and tender. "You deserved more than a table and regret."

"But it’s been ten years," I said, my heart hammering. "We’re not who we were."

"Exactly," he said with certainty. "We’re better. Stronger. Smarter. You’ve lived. I’ve raised a daughter.

And through it all, Lily, I’ve never stopped wondering what it would’ve been like to still have you."

He reached for my hand, both of his encompassing mine, and I forgot how to breathe.

The warmth of his skin anchored me. His thumb slid along my wrist, slow and steady, and a hundred old memories flooded me.

Him rubbing nettle stings from my skin when we were sixteen and went hiking one weekend.

Holding ice to my ears after cheap earrings made my lobes swell.

All the tiny ways he used to take care of me without asking, without expecting anything back.

He was doing it again now. Taking care of me. Like breathing.

"What I mean," he said quietly, "is that I want to see what we can be. Now. Not what we were. What we are."

I swallowed hard, my heart threatening to beat straight out of my chest. "What if it doesn’t work?"

"Then we deal," he said without hesitation. "But I’d rather fail trying with you than spend the rest of my life wondering."

He shifted onto his knees in front of me, his hands sliding up to cradle my face. His touch was reverent, trembling with the kind of tenderness that could break a person open.

"I want to try, Lily," he whispered, forehead almost resting against mine. "Please tell me you want to try too."

Tears stung my eyes. "I was pretty bad at the marriage thing," I whispered. "What if I’m just bad at love?"

His jaw clenched, his eyes fierce and unwavering. "You’re not. You just gave your heart to the wrong man." His thumb brushed along my cheekbone. "But I’m not him, Lily. And you...you've always been the one."

God. He was breaking me with his tenderness, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but the truth.

"Yes," I whispered. "I want to try."

The look on his face was like I’d handed him a whole galaxy. He leaned in, just about to kiss me, to seal it all, but I stopped him with a hand pressed to his chest.

"If we do this," I said shakily, "we can’t let your dad know."

Confusion clouded his face. "My dad? Why?"

I hesitated, heart pounding painfully against my ribs. "We may need a drink for this," I said quietly.

And as I walked to the kitchen, the warmth of Nash’s touch still buzzing along my skin, I wondered if telling him the truth would break us before we ever really began.

Returning with the hard liquor we needed, I closed my eyes, not able to look at him while I said the words, and the memory felt like a punch to the gut.

Ten years ago

I was tiptoeing through the mud, sneakers squelching on the wet grass as I slipped out the side door of the Miller ranch house.

The sun hadn’t even lifted over the lavender fields yet, the world muted to misty purples and hushed blues.

Fog rolled like breath over the hills, softening the edges of the barn and fencing, cloaking the world in a gentle hush that felt deceptively safe.

I wasn’t supposed to stay the night. Mom was on a night duty at the hospital, and Nash didn’t want me to be alone. The neighbors were nosy, though, so I stayed at the ranch. With him.

He’d kissed me, whispered that he loved me, told me to have fun at Grandma’s. He’d said he couldn’t wait to see me Sunday. Like it was just a normal weekend. Like we had all the time in the world.

Having left him sleeping, I wasn’t sneaking because I had something to hide. But the heavy tread of boots behind me told me someone didn’t believe that.

“Running off so early, Lily?”

The voice stopped me cold. It wasn’t loud. It didn’t have to be.

I turned, breath catching in my throat. And there he was, Nash’s dad, Michael Miller, leaning against the fence post like he’d been waiting just for me. His silhouette was cut sharp against the morning haze, coffee mug dangling lazily from his fingers, smile razor-thin and mean.

The kind of smile that told you he’d already made up his mind.

“I’m just... going home to pack,” I said, voice scraping up my throat. “I’m going with my mom to visit my grandma.”

He pushed off the post, sauntering toward me with a slow, deliberate gait. The kind of walk that said he had all the time in the world to ruin mine. Each step crunched against the gravel path like punctuation.

“You know, I always wondered,” he said. "What a girl like you was doing here. In a place like this." He circled a finger lazily in the air. “On a ranch like this.”

“I’m sorry.” I gripped my jacket tighter. "I’m not sure I understand."

He smiled. A cruel, pitying one. Like I was a stray someone should’ve shot long ago.

“What my son sees in you is what I mean. The high school football star and the daughter of a single mother.”

My heart caught in my throat, squeezing until my voice came out hoarse. “Nash loves me.”

“Love.” He said it like a curse. “It’s a fragile thing, sweetheart. You think it’ll survive what’s coming?”

The hairs on my arms lifted. My body knew something terrible was coming before my mind could catch up.

"I-I don't know what you mean."

He lowered his voice, making it almost gentle. "Your daddy’s a killer. Am I right?"

My blood iced over.

"H-how did you know? No one knows," I whispered, heart pounding like a snare drum in my chest. "It doesn’t matter anyway because ? —"

"It matters," he snapped, all pretense of charm dropping like a mask. "Especially when it hits the papers. When every gossip in this town gets a whiff that Michael Miller’s boy is shacked up with a murderer’s daughter, because I know all about your little scheme to lure him away from Alabama. Did you think the Dean at UA wouldn’t contact me to ask why my son was changing to Ohio State? "

He stepped closer, looming now.

"Of course they did. You think he’ll make it if he doesn’t stick to the plan?”

“That was Nash’s choice, not mine.”

He ignored me and continued his verbal attack. “And if by some chance he does you know that the headlines will be, don’t you? ‘Father of Star quarterback’s girlfriend murdered two for pocket change’."

I shook my head fiercely, the world tilting sideways beneath me. “That’s not how it is,” I protested. “I don’t even see my father. He’s not ? —”

“People will make Nash’s life hell because of it. The press will love it.” He shrugged. “Or maybe not. Maybe people will feel sorry for you. Maybe.”

He leaned in, voice low and oily. "What about your Mom, though? You think she’ll survive it if it comes out? You think Ella Jones keeps her job at the hospital once everyone knows her husband was a killer, and she kept it secret?"

Tears pricked my eyes, hot and helpless. "Please, you don’t ? —"

"Listen, Lily,” he said, his voice dropping even lower. “I’m not a cruel man, so I’ll give you a choice.”

No, he wasn’t cruel. He was calculated.

"You can go now, this morning. Quietly. Disappear from Nash's life, and I’ll make sure your mom stays protected. No one’s the wiser. Nash will go to UA as planned and will become a star without your secrets holding him back."

He let the pause hang like a trap. "But if you stay?"

He stepped closer, his breath sour with coffee, his eyes glittering.

"If you stay, I'll ruin you both." His tone was calm. Chillingly calm. "No one around here will feel safe around you. I can hear it now, ‘What if she takes after her dad?’ ‘She must have known she was married to a monster.’”

He let it hang in the fog like poison.

As he watched me, waiting for his words to settle like ice in my blood, I tried to catch my breath. Tried to make sense of the nightmare unraveling around me.

"Can I tell her?" I choked out. "My mom. Can I at least tell her?"

"You can leave a note. A goodbye. That's it." His eyes gleamed like dark glass. "No explanations. No confessions. If you tell her the truth, I’ll know. And it’ll be the end of both of you."

“Where will I go?” Tears careened down my face, gathering pace like boulders in a landslide. “I have no money.”

He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out an envelope. “There’s five thousand dollars in there and a plane ticket to Maine. Where you go from there is up to you but never come back to Silver Peaks.”

I flinched like he’d struck me.

He smiled wider. Victory.

"You want to prove you love Nash and your mother?" he said softly. "Then you’ll do what’s best for them. You'll take the money and the plane ticket and vanish.

Otherwise, your mother will suffer. I’ll make sure of it."

Without another word, he threw the envelope onto the dirt, turned his back on me and strode back to the house. Like I was already erased.

I stood there shaking until the sun finally broke the horizon, burning away the fog but not the fear. Not the cost. Not the choice I would carry like a weight around my neck for the next ten years.