Six Years Gone (Gone #1)

by Jessica Gouin

  Doubtful.

  “I want you.”

  Any breath inside of my body dissipates. A glimmer of emotion flashes in his eyes.

  Before I can say or do anything, Owen is by my side. “What in the fuck do you want?”

  I hadn’t even realized he took Sloane’s place. She must have gone back to the dining room with…. Oh no. Time for Lachlan to leave.

  I place my hand on my brother’s puffed-out chest. “O, please. I can take care of this. Can you please handle things in the dining room?”

  “I’ll be just over there,” he says to me then turns to face Lachlan. “You better be gone within three minutes. You’re good at leaving, right?”

  After Owen walks around the corner of the hallway, I return my attention to Lachlan. His lips form a hard, thin line, and he stares at me with pleading eyes. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. More than anything else, I had to see that you’re okay. It’s been so long, Sawyer. I just thought…. I don’t know what I thought.”

  A commotion comes from the dining room—Owen and Sloane won’t be able to keep him in there much longer. I close the door half an inch and brace myself for my next words. “There’s a small coffee shop around the corner, Chloe’s Café. Meet me there tonight at nine?”

  That small speckle of light returns to his irises, and he nods once. “I’ll be there.”

  Unable to find any words that won’t lead into what needed to be said tonight, I drop my gaze, then close the door.

  Heart pounding, mind racing, I return to my family to finish diner, a thousand questions running through my mind. Mere hours separate me from six years of unknowing.

  Six years of him not knowing.

  “Who was that?” He questions between bites. I knew he would ask. I’m shocked he stayed at the table the whole time.

  “No one you need to worry about, babe. Let’s finish eating our dinner.”

  Breathing in deep, I stab a piece of my chicken with my fork, ignoring the stares of pity from Sloane and Owen. I plaster the fakest smile on my face and choke down the rest of dinner.

  I take the next few hours to sort out my thoughts while mechanically continuing with the night as though nothing happened. As if my life didn’t come back around to haunt me when that doorbell rang.

  One minute past the hour, I’m standing outside of the same coffee shop I pass every morning on my way to work. Except now, this place holds the first love of my life.

  Inside, Lachlan grips his cup with both hands. Does he still drinks tea, like an old man? He always seemed mature for his age. It even showed in his beverage choice.

  It leaves me wondering what kind of man he grew into.

  Grabbing the handle, I yank the door open, resulting in a ding and a sudden blast of caffeinated aroma. His eyes find mine across the room, and I realize he has no idea what kind of woman I grew into. The woman I was forced to become. Because, unlike him, I had no choice. I couldn’t just walk away.

  Curiosity disappears and is replaced with anger again. So much anger in my world. I’m not enjoying the rollercoaster ride my emotions have been on since this afternoon.

  As I approach, he makes a move to stand, but I wave him down, and he tucks his chair back in.

  He clears his throat and eyes me carefully, seeming guarded. “I wasn’t sure if you would show. Thank you for meeting with me. Can I get you something to drink? Coffee with a little milk?”

  A cup is placed in front of me. “Hey, Sawyer, coffee with milk!”

  A faint smile plays on my lips. He’s not the only person that knows me anymore. “Thanks, Chloe.”

  “Not a problem. It’s nice seeing you out after dark.” She smiles and winks. “Enjoy.”

  I thank the owner again, and she leaves. With Sloane’s shop the next street over, I frequent here throughout the day to refuel. It’s a strange feeling to be welcomed in a town. After practically being run out of Woodsview.

  I lift the cup to my nose and inhale before pressing it to my lips and taking a small sip.

  Lachlan studies me the entire time. “I don’t even know what to say. Where to start. You look…amazing. More beautiful then I remembered. I didn’t think that was even possible.”

  I’m afraid if I open my mouth, everything will spill out. That can’t happen. I can’t tell him my six years’ worth of secrets until he tells me his.

  “I’m rambling, aren’t I?” He pauses, taking a few small sips of his drink. I remain silent. “This is weird. Being here with you. What umm… How have you been? I see you’re still close with Sloane and your brother. That’s great. Did you both move here after graduation?”

  “Something like that.”

  He nods, as if understanding my short, cold answer. “Sawyer, this is stupid. I can’t sit here and attempt to have a normal conversation. Not with you. If you want to know what happened, I’ll tell you. I swear to God I’ll tell you everything. But I need to know something first.”

  Half of me wants to hear him out, to listen to everything I’ve waited to hear. The other half wants to walk away from him, just as he walked from me. If I left, I would never forgive myself, though.

  There’s also the part of me that I hate. The part of me that has the urge to press my lips against his to see if they still feel as amazing as I remember. The internal battle rages on the inside while, externally, I keep my poker face on and sip my coffee.

  “What do you need to know?”

  “I tried to contact you after I left for Australia. I’m not going to pretend to know what your life has been like since the night I walked away. I just…. Did you even wait for me?”

  Good feelings gone. I want to wrap my hands around his neck until he can no longer suck in air. “You’re right. You don’t know the first thing about what I’ve been through. At first, yes, I waited or you. Then I met someone, and he made me realize you weren’t coming back. So, I moved on.”

  Chapter TWENTY-TWO

  Lachlan

  Her words are a shotgun to my heart. Shattering.

  A machete slicing my body open. Bleeding.

  Grenades burrowing into my soul, exploding.

  It’s unreasonable of me to think Sawyer would wait forever, but I honestly never thought she would move on with someone else. I never thought she would love another man because the feelings I held for her back then prevented me from ever settling for anything less than her since.

  Images of her laughing with some random guy, being intimate with him, sharing parts of her world, makes my blood boil with the same intensity that the knot twists in my stomach.

  From the very beginning, Sawyer and I seemed to have a curse placed on our relationship. Our worlds were never meant to collide. I thought of her constantly since I left, and I’ve convinced myself of our ill-fated relationship. We were destined to fail. Six years ago, as hard as we tried, we couldn’t make it work. Something, or someone, always stood in the way.

  Our time together was short then, and it seems it will be even shorter now. For the life of me, it’s taking every ounce of man inside me to resist pushing the table aside, grabbing her face, and kissing her so hard she’ll forget we were ever apart.

  But Sawyer has someone else in her life. She let this person in, and it kills me that, by letting them in, she pushed me out.

  He helped her move forward from her past. From me. It was a bad idea for me to come here. I should go. Charlie was wrong about facing my demons before starting a new life. I’m not even sure why I followed the damn address.

  Closure? Love? Forgiveness?

  The past is supposed to stay in the past for a reason.

  All that has happened to us, every mistake, every lie, every secret, led us to this table. On this night. For what reason? What was the point of doing everything asked of me, fighting every step of the way and pushing myself so I was able to one day look into her eyes again?

  It’s all been for nothing.

  “You met someone?” I repeat her words, testing out how bitter the
y taste on my tongue. They cause my limbs to feel numb and detached.

  She nods and averts her gaze. Her chest rises with the sudden intake of breath that she holds inside of her. Inside, with all the secrets and mysteries she has earned since I left, creating a new woman. One I no longer know better than anyone.

  I lean back in my chair, unable to determine how to take this conversation. The last thing I want is to get into an argument three minutes after waltzing back into her life.

  “That’s…great. I mean, you look happy.” My voice is weak and unconvincing. Her eyes finally meet mine, and there’s no denying the sparkle in them. In that second, I decide I whole-heartedly hate this person.

  “I am happy. Happier than I’ve been for most of my life. He gives me meaning. Purpose.” Full of smiles, she reaches for her purse hanging on the back of her chair.

  That’s why she agreed to meet me with so little hesitation. She wants to let me know I didn’t break her. She’s moved on, and found someone to give her what I couldn’t. I should be happy for her. Ecstatic even. After all, I’ve only ever wanted happiness for the broken seventeen year old I once drove home.

  The girl I once loved.

  Who loves someone else.

  Fuck my life.

  Turning my head to the side, I crack my neck and decide to end this conversation. My expectations of seeing her again might have been unrealistic, but that doesn’t make this sting any less.

  “Well, all I’ve ever wanted was to see you happy. I suppose by me leaving back then enabled you to find it.”

  As I’m about to stand and go before my caged heart ceases to beat at all, Sawyer places a small photo on the table with her hand covering most of it. The bent, worn corners peeking out from under her palm make it obvious this picture is taken out of her wallet often. It’s all I can do to stare into her familiar blue eyes and not look down. Once I see him, see his face, I’ll forever have him embedded into my mind as the person who unknowingly stole the only girl I will ever love.

  “What are you doing?” My whispered voice cracks. Her eyes glisten, and her chin trembles just enough for the action to register with me.

  She appears terrified, and my eyebrows bunch together.

  One single tear drops from her eyelashes and runs down the side of her cheek, disappearing under her chin. I wish more than anything I could reach across this table and wipe away the faint wet track. I wish I could take her face in my hands and tell her to forget about him. To apologize for leaving her. To tell her it was the single biggest regret of my life and I would do anything to have her back with me.

  Because that’s where she belongs. With me.

  Pressing my lips together to keep from saying anything, I place my hand over hers. Over the photo. I don’t care who his is. She is, and always has been, the only one who matters.

  I shake my head as she lifts her hand along with mine and flips my hand over onto the table. I don’t want to see him. She leaves her fingers on my palm for a few seconds before tearing her focus from me and dropping her gaze, again smiling at the sight of him.

  “I’ve gone over this a million times. If you ever came back, if I ever saw you again, I knew exactly what to say to you. Even on the way here tonight, I made up my mind I wasn’t going to do this to you. Not today. It was too much, too soon. But I can’t look at you for one second longer and not tell you. Look at him, Lachlan.” Another tear from runs down her other cheek, leaving two identical trails to her neck.

  I take a deep breath, lean forward, and lower my gaze to the photo.

  The photo of a…child.

  Thick, shaggy brown hair, olive complexion, and a smile that could melt the heart of a stone-cold murderer.

  Sawyer’s smile.

  This child has Sawyer’s smile. This is her child. I tilt my head to the side as I examine this boy. This stranger who has the most familiar eyes. Wide and curious, warm brown with specks of gold.

  Jesus Christ.

  No fucking way. This is not happening. I’m not looking at….

  Yeah, I am.

  The realization of who this child actually is sets in, and I take in rapid, tiny breaths. Dozens of uncontrolled gasps of air. I push back in my chair, shaking my clouded head that fills with a thousand questions.

  How did this happen? Did she know she was pregnant before I left? I didn’t come back for her. Oh my God, I never came back for her! She must have been devastated when I made her a single, teenage mother. This is all my fault. I left and I…just never saw her again after that night. We never spoke. How can I be so stupid? How the hell did I let this happen?

  Perhaps there is an explanation here. Maybe, the guy she’s seeing now is the father of this boy. They could have slept together right after I left. The boy seems to be about five years old, so it would fit the timeline. The idea of Sawyer sleeping with someone so soon after I went back to Australia tightens the knot in my stomach and pushes bile up the back of my throat.

  The idea of this boy exists is too much for me to comprehend.

  “Fuck. Sawyer, how did this…? I mean when did this happen? When did you find out? Is he…mine? Am I looking at my son?”

  She remains silent, tapping the lip of her cup with her nail. This is probably not something she expected to talk about when she woke up this morning.

  When she finally meets my eyes, I notice they’re the same cobalt hue I’ve memorized. The same ones I pictured daily that kept me going. Her lips twist. “He’s your son. I found out I was pregnant a few days before you left Woodsview.”

  I inhale a deep breath as her words resonate within me. I thought the hardest part about following the address would be knocking on the door. “You what? You knew you were pregnant and you never said anything? Sawyer, I had no way of knowing you were…. He’s my….”

  Her silence says more than any words could.

  “So, all this talk about another person on your life, when you said someone helped you move on from me, is our child who you were talking about? The person who convinced you I was gone forever. You were talking about him when you said he gave your life meaning?”

  “The day he was born I knew. He made me realize you weren’t coming back for me. Jesus, I fucking hated you, Lachlan. I hated the way it was so easy for you to walk away and leave me here to rot. You have no idea the hell I went through after you left me standing all alone in that godforsaken gazebo. You left with such ease. When the anger passed, I just missed you. All the time. And it hurt. As months passed, I knew you weren’t coming back. I didn’t want to have this baby on my own. I couldn’t. Then he was born so suddenly, and you didn’t matter anymore because, when I held him in my arms, I knew he needed all of me. He needed a strong parent and if I was all he had, than that’s who I was going to be.”

  Not only did I break the only girl I’ve loved, I unknowingly abandoned our child as well. I left them. But I didn’t know there was a them to leave. It would have made a difference. If she would have told me she was pregnant before I left, I would have never gone. Returning home to bury my father wasn’t supposed to turn into a six year life-altering expedition. The plan was to go home, make the arrangements, handle all of the family details, then come back to her. That plan would have changed if I had a pregnant girlfriend to factor in.

  Would it have changed, though?

  Regardless of a pregnancy, I had to take care of everything at home. She could have gone with me maybe. Or I would have tried harder to come back sooner.

  She had days to tell me. She knew she was pregnant and she kept the information from me. I had a right to know I was going to be a father. I had a right to know this stranger.

  I pick up the picture and brush my thumb over his face. “But, you weren’t all he had. He had me, and if I would have known, I could have been there.”

  “But you weren’t here.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before I left? I remember…you avoided me for days. You said you were sick but wouldn’t tell me what exactly was w
rong. That’s what was wrong, and you kept it from me. Why would you do that?”

  “I didn’t know how to tell you. Everything was backward with us. We tried so hard to be together and we hit so many speed bumps along the way. I didn’t want any more speed bumps.”

  Still holding his picture in my hand, I slam the other on the table. “That wasn’t your call to make!”

  From my peripheral vision, its obvious people are looking and I’m causing a scene. The girl who brought Sawyer’s coffee clears her throat from behind the counter. “Everything okay over there?”

  Sawyer nods once her way then leans toward me, hair falling over her bare shoulder. “I didn’t know how to tell you at first, or even if there was going to be anything to tell. I made up my mind and had every intention of discussing it all with you the night we met up at the gazebo. But you just found out your father passed away and you were leaving Woodsview. I couldn’t find the words once I knew you were just going to walk away that night. If I would have told you I was pregnant, what would it have changed?”

  She has no idea what she took from me. Again, someone else took control over my life. Made all the decisions for me based on what they thought was best. I get to decide what’s best for me, not anyone else.

  “It would have changed everything.” Unable to continue this conversation, I stand, tucking the photo of my child in my back pocket without her permission.

  “I’m so sorry, Lachlan. You’ll never understand the choices I had to make, but, I am truly sorry you’re finding out about him this way. After all this time.”

  I’ll never understand her choice because she took that away from me. She took away my choice.

  I make it a few steps from the table, and, with each stride, I can’t help but feel the magnetic force between us being pulled thin. It never left, and it never faded. A skill I have acquired is the knowledge and acceptance that nothing lasts forever. In most of my previous cases, all my energy was spent focusing on the fact that the bad things I had to endure wouldn’t last—mourning, school, distance. I never realized some good things may last. Worthy things. A soul mate can be forever, even if it’s buried deep inside.