Chapter 108 — Madison

Sitting in a booth at the back of the seafood restaurant near Louisiana Tech where Kade and I had spent so many hours hanging out in college, was a blast from the past.

Except that the servers were all so impossibly young.

We had lunch along with the usual weekend crowd, but then we stayed as others cleared out. As the crowd cleared out, the noise level dropped, and we could actually hear each other talk.

But this time, we didn’t have books spread out across the table, getting ready to study our respective subjects.

Instead, I had something I needed to tell Kade.

Something that was making me so nervous I’d barely eaten a thing.

He seemed a little nervous, too, but I was pretty sure I was projecting my nervousness onto him.

“So I’ve been thinking,” he said.

“So have I.”

He grinned that lopsided grin that always did funny things to my heart. “We usually are on the same page, aren’t we?”

“A lot of the time, yes,” I said, clasping my hands together tightly beneath the table.

“And,” he said. “since we started in Ruston, I thought maybe this was where we needed to pick this up.”

My stomach plummeted. After all the plans I’d put into place, he was going to break up with me. To say that our relationship had run its course. That the summer had been nice. That—

“Madison,” he said, interrupting my spiral of thoughts. “I didn’t tell you, but I ran into Mike a few weeks ago.”

“Mike Phillips? Really? Where?”

“Here, actually.”

“Oh wow. How is he? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“He’d doing great. And I didn’t tell you because I wanted to bring you here. As a surprise. And I couldn’t tell you about Mike and give you this as a surprise at the same time.”

I rested my chin on my hands and smiled at him. Sometimes his logic was so funny it was adorable. “I see,” I said.

“But that’s not the point,” he said. “The point is he offered me a job.”

“But…” Mike was a professor. “Here? In Ruston?”

Oh no.

I could see Kade as a professor. He was at a good age to transition into teaching.

I tried to force a smile, but it fell flat.

No. This was not good.

This was bad. It was so bad that I thought I might be sick.

Kade would be moving to Ruston.

Just as I had figured out how to stay in Houston.