Stronger By Your Side (Great Love Book 2)

by Hart, A.

  I was there in Panama City with Charles all those years ago. The warm gulf breeze surrounded us as we walked slowly down the beach. Our shoes were in our hands as we walked in silence. Suddenly, the silence was broken with Charles’s soft voice. “I don’t think you trust me, Megan.”

  I scrunched my face a little and looked up into his soothing green eyes. “Um, well I barely know you, Charles.”

  He laughed. “We have spent nearly every minute together for the past week. What’s not to know?”

  I shrugged as we continued our slow pace. “I trust you.”

  He went to grab my hand and I quickly pulled it away. “You won’t let me hold your hand,” He stated with a hint of humor.

  I shrugged and just stared off into the sunset. The sun was going down over the Florida beach, and the white sand was cool on my toes. It was a nice contrast to the warm wind that blew through my long, black hair. A little unsure of myself, I cleared my throat and said in a low voice, “I have only held one other guy’s hand.”

  Charles stopped and his brows arched up. “Ever?”

  I shrugged and whispered, “Ever.”

  He looked down at me with a look I couldn’t read. After a brief pause, he nodded with a smile pulling at his lips and continued walking down the beach.

  I laughed and began walking after him and yelled, “What!?”

  Charles shrugged. “Nothing, Megan Santos. You’re just turning out to be even more interesting than I thought.”

  I huffed. “Glad I’m not boring you.”

  He went to grab my hand again, and this time I let him gently hold it. He smiled down at me. “You could never bore me. Now if you can just trust me a little . . . ” He threaded our hands together, and as my heartbeat skipped from my hand up to my heart, I shook my head with a smile.

  Suddenly, I stopped when something caught my attention. A pile of fresh shells just rolled in with the tide. I ran down the beach while Charles just stood with his hands in his pockets and watched me. I picked up a small shell that was buried in the dirt. Sawyer and I used to dig for perfect shells when we were little. A pang of guilt made my stomach ache, and then I took a deep breath, telling myself it was for the best. Still, I thought of him and how his Mom loved the beach. When I was at their house, we would make a road trip often. I had a collection of beautiful shells at Sawyer’s house in a mason jar. The shell I held now didn’t really look like the others. It was brown and boring looking, and not the shiny shell I had been looking for.

  I pursed my lips together and decided this shell wouldn’t work. When I was about to throw it into the ocean, the tide came in and almost took it out of my hand. When the tide drifted back out, I lifted the shell to see that it wasn’t brown like I had thought. It was white with beautiful purple specs. Usually you could tell the difference, but this shell was different. This shell had been caked in the mud so well and for so long that I, an experienced shell finder, couldn’t tell the difference.

  I stared at it in awe for a moment and then played with it in my fingers. It had been so dirty that you couldn’t see how beautiful it truly was. It was covered with pointless grime. Once the grime was washed away, it was pure and flawless. I was now on my knees in the cool sand as I paused to stare down at the shell. It hit me in that moment that I was the shell, that this was me. I was also dirty with pointless grime, but with the right tide, I could become something beautiful again, just as the shell had. I ran back up to Charles with the shell clenched in my fist, holding on to dear life at the hope it brought me. The fact that I felt a connection to the shell, and that it was different than any other shell I had found with Sawyer, felt significant to me.

  I held it out to him, and he looked at me with his brow furrowed. He opened his palm, face up, and I gently placed the shell in it. I decided to bare a piece of my soul, a piece I never even dared to bare to Sawyer. “This shell is me,” I stated plainly. He tilted his head a little in confusion, so I chose to continue. “It was dirty, brown, and caked in grime, but when the tide came in, it was washed clean and now it’s beautiful again.”

  Charles frowned a little, and then his eyes turned concerned, almost like he somehow knew exactly what I was saying. He couldn’t possibly know it all, but his eyes said otherwise. “You can tell me anything you want to, Megan, or not tell me anything you don’t want to.”

  I nodded. “All you need to know is that this shell is me.”

  He paused for a second with his lips pulled tight, and then with a weak smile he nodded back. “Okay then.”

  I wanted him to truly understand what this meant. I wanted him to know that even though I didn’t want to relive something that I had spent my whole life reliving, I trusted him. I still had Sawyer in my mind, but I needed to forget him quickly. I wasn’t able to become new with Sawyer. I would always be the dirty shell with him, no matter how much I wish that weren’t true. He would never be able to see me as clean, and I would never be able to feel clean. Most of all, my past, my life, and the dirt that followed me would never leave Sawyer alone if I stayed in his life. It would consume him until he became a dirty, brown shell with me. I didn’t want that for him. I wanted him to stay pure. I wanted him to stay him.

  I decided to move on, and that’s what I would do. I looked up at Charles’s concerned face and told him, “The shell is me so . . . as long as you keep this shell safe, I’ll trust you to keep me safe.”

  His concerned face twisted into a small smile. “Well, if the shell is you—if I keep the shell, do I get to keep you too?”

  I bit my lip and nodded. My voice was raspier than I wanted it to be, but I couldn’t help the raw emotion that escaped or the sparks that seemed to fly from my eyes to his. “As long as you have the shell . . . I guess . . . you have me.” And I meant that. I meant it with all of my soul.

  Charles could sense that—at least the fire behind his eyes told me so. He looked at me with a serious look and then slipped the shell into his pocket. With a weak smile, he said, “Guess I’ll keep it safe, then.”

  I think I knew then that I loved him and that he loved me. From the moment I met Charles I trusted him. Maybe I didn’t think I did at first, but looking back now, I did. I had known him only a week that day on the beach, and yet I trusted him more than anyone before. I needed him. I needed him because a part of my soul seemed to know him already. I needed him to leave my past behind. I needed him because he was everything I wanted to be. He had no connections to the shadows that hovered over me or the demons that attacked my mind. He was my tide.

  I sighed and I was out of the memory with Charles and back into the present. I smiled briefly remembering Charles’s and my first kiss. It was our last night in Panama City. At the time, I thought he was leaving the next day without me. Instead, we both went to the courthouse and I became Mrs. Maxwell. That day, I left my past behind. I left my thoughts of Sawyer at the courthouse, too, and I didn’t look back. That was, until I saw Sawyer again at the bar. Now all I seemed to be capable of doing was looking back. I knew it wouldn’t be long before all the memories would come back in swarms, and I didn’t want them to. I had been doing so well ignoring them, not dealing with the pain they caused.

  I clutched the shell in my hand, sitting in Charles’s Bronco. I whispered, “You have me.” His smile flashed in my mind and, as a tear ran down my face, I tucked the shell safely back into the visor. Why hadn’t it fallen on my lap in all those years, yet it did today? I didn’t know. Charles would say it was fate. He would say that God had a reason for every tiny detail. Fate. What would he call me running into Sawyer after all these years? Was that fate, too? I wiped my tears and fixed my frazzled hair. I sighed as I looked at my tired face. Indeed, I looked as much like a zombie as I felt.

  I had Wheatland to thank for my zombielike appearance. Last night, Charlotte and I had gone to the Smiths’ house to bake cookies with Emerson, Maxie and Mari. The baked goods were for Wheatland’s fall kick-off carnival next week. The town held it every year. Travis�
�s family had owned the local pumpkin farm and ranch for a century, and the town fed off of the business. Fall was a busy time for the town. It was a small town, with 4,000 people. The town had one pizza place, one Mexican restaurant, a bar, a small medical clinic, a dentist, one lawyer, one realtor, a local grocery store/market, a gas station, a hardware store and of course the Jitter Bug Coffee House. The rest of the year it was usually just locals who ate, shopped and inquired in town, but autumn was the town’s busy time. The restaurants and even the stores would be packed. It was great for the small businesses. The kick-off carnival got the town started on a high note and the whole town showed up with cheery fall spirit, along with people from the nearby cities, looking for a fun family outing.

  Emerson lived a couple of towns over, but since she was close to Travis’s and Charles’s families now, she volunteered to help run the bake sale. Between her part-time ER nursing job and raising her twins, I wasn’t sure how she did it, but she just did. Her willingness to help out wherever needed for anyone she loved was typical of Emerson. It was one of the many reasons why I loved her.

  Last night we made pumpkin cookies, pies and even doughnuts. Although the smell made me a little nauseous and brought back memories of my childhood and Sawyer, overall it was a pretty fun evening. The best part was that it was Travis-free and stress-free. He had come around a few times lately, but he was always rushed and acting a little off. I tried not to worry about it too much. Charlotte and I hadn’t left the Smiths’ last night until almost eleven. She had passed out on the couch far before that. I had carried her noodle body into our apartment, exhausted. I then laid in bed almost the entire night, staring at the ceiling, unable to fall asleep.

  SJ, or Sawyer as he called himself now, haunted my thoughts. I couldn’t close my eyes without having memories of our childhood together swarm my mind. There were great memories, like when we would go to the beach and search for shells. Then there were terrible ones, like when he would come to my trailer and find me beaten in the bathroom. I winced at the image of a teenage Sawyer looking down at me with concern. Sawyer had seen every part of me. I felt ashamed of that because he was perfect, kind, and honorable. He deserved someone in his life who matched his qualities.

  Sawyer had lost his parents. His perfect, loving parents. His parents who had invited me to every holiday and made me feel loved, that let me stay there often and took care of me. My heart ached thinking of his mom gently holding me as I sobbed after my birth mom, Missy, overdosed for the third time. Sawyer’s mom, Beth, was a natural mother, a loving person. She had wanted a dozen children but was only able to have Sawyer. When Beth and her husband, Peter, died, a piece of me did, too. That part of me didn’t only die for myself, but for Sawyer as well. How was I going to replace that love in his life? All he would have had was me, and it had scared me to death.

  I took a deep breath and realized I had lost minutes thinking about the past yet again. Ever since I moved here, it seemed that’s all I did. I looked at the clock again and hustled out of my Bronco towards my classroom. I pushed my worries and questions about my past far into the back of my mind. Today was our class field trip to the Lincoln fire station, and I would focus on that instead. I sighed and then took a long pull of my extra-large, extra caffeinated mocha that Jules had made special for me this morning. Whoa, that’s the stuff. I opened the door to my class and, realizing that I only had twenty minutes until the little tikes showed up, I rushed to get our morning activities set up. A little over three hours, four Tylenol and a twenty minute drive later, my entire kindergarten class, ten parents and I were standing in front of the Lincoln Fire Station.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sawyer

  My Uncle Tom stood in front of the TV in the common area of the fire station. His belly was wrapped tight in his dark blue LFD shirt and slightly hung over his blue pants. I yawned as he wrapped up his thirty minute “update”, which turned more into a rant about people being irresponsible drivers. He shot me a pointed look as he finished with, “ Don’t forget, today is our field tip with a local Kindergarten class. Now I know they come every year, but last year some kid took out another kid with a fire hose, so just watch those little rascals. Prescott and Miller, you have this one.”

  “Al right, Pres. Let’s kill this thing!” Miller shouted sarcastically across the room.

  I sighed. “I can’t wait.”

  I took a sip of my fourth cup of coffee for the day and rolled my eyes. Chase came trotting in with a bone in his mouth. I shook my head at how pathetic he had become. The guys were spoiling him and it was starting to show. Chase looked at me and then went to the corner where his dog bed sat. After a couple of spins around, he settled down on the plush bed. “Spoiled.” I muttered under my breath.

  I was glad we had a slow morning this morning, but I wasn’t looking forward to the field trip. I didn’t become a firefighter to babysit a bunch of little brats. I sighed. I also didn’t want to be reminded of what I was missing from my own hectic life. A family, a specific woman . . . some brats of my own. I didn’t have to be a firefighter. My parents left me plenty of money, and I had invested it in real estate and other avenues. I had passive income from those. This had just started out as a desperate distraction and as a way to become a better man so maybe, just maybe, Megan would come back. Then somewhere down the line, somehow, this, firefighting, helping others in times of desperation, had become an addiction. It had become a part of me as much as breathing. Uncle Tom was my mom’s only brother and he said that it was genetic, since his father, my grandpa, was also a firefighter, and his father before him. I remember thinking that maybe that explained my natural obsession with the career.

  There was a very dangerous stretch of highway that passed by Lincoln, and through a smaller town twelve miles north, Wheatland. There were also a lot of farms and rural roads in between the two towns. The roads were dangerous and difficult to navigate. Wheatland, where Megan seemed to be hiding in, had one fire truck and mostly ran off of volunteers. We helped out there as much as we could as well. Those three things made for a high 911 call volume for our station. Most days we were busy, but every couple of weeks we had a slow morning. Today was one of those mornings, so far.

  Uncle Tom walked past me and patted my back as I washed out my mug in the sink. Outside of work, he was Uncle Tom, but at the station he was Chief Flattery. He was a short, round fellow with a bald head and rosy red cheeks. He had the same nose and cheeks as my mom. Uncle Tom was also very talkative and cheery like my mom. The similarities sometimes stung, but usually, most of the time, they made me feel calm.

  My parents died in a car crash when I was a sophomore in high school, and it was hard on everyone. Both of my Grandparents had died when I was young. My Dad had one sister, my Aunt Mae. She lived with me until I graduated high school as my guardian, and we still keep in touch. Then, like I said, my mom only had my Uncle Tom. He lived out here in California. When Uncle Tom called me almost two years ago with a job at his station, I jumped at the opportunity to start anew and to be closer to him. My Aunt Nancy and Uncle Tom were great people to be around, so I spent a lot of time with them. They had a son, Tommy, and a daughter, Tori. They were six and eight years younger than me and went to college a couple of hours away. I got to see them every holiday, and here and there, and I enjoyed their company as well. I had made a life for myself over the last two years here and found myself slowly moving on. Now that I found Megan, I was glad I hadn’t settled down. Now I had a chance to see if we could ever be what we could have been.

  I couldn’t not think about Megan when I kissed another girl, so I tried to avoid it altogether. I tried, but didn’t often succeed. Women became a vice for me and nothing more. I hated it, but no one seemed to fill the hole Megan left. Mostly I worked. I had worked so hard and so long that when I finally lifted my head, I’d realized that six years had gone by. Then I came here and things began to slowly feel right again. I felt alive again. When I saw Megan the other night, t
hat feeling intensified. I knew that this—us running into each other—wasn’t a coincidence. There was a reason, and whatever had been between us, whatever she refused to acknowledge before, was still there. I knew I couldn’t let her walk away again, not without giving it all I had.

  Megan

  We walked behind a short, round man as he explained to us what we would see on the tour of the fire station. He turned around when he stopped in front of the firehouse door. I tilted my head a little bit and squinted my eyes, trying to place his face. He looked familiar, but not completely. His cheeks and eyes reminded me of someone, and the feeling made my heart beat faster. He cleared his throat and then spoke. “I am Chief Flattery, and I’m in charge here. As you can see, we just walked past our two fire trucks, and this is where we all live when we are on duty.” A couple of the boys in front of me whispered at the word “duty” and giggled. Chief Flattery cleared his throat again. “This way, folks.” I smiled. “Thank you, Sir.”

  My students filed into the tight hallway and down to a large, open room. A long couch with a huge TV and a tiny coffee table were what I saw first. The children “oohed” and “ahhed” over all the firefighter décor and memorabilia on the walls. I, too, was amazed by the memorable photos, used hats, hoses and badges on the tall, red walls. I then turned to see a very long wooden table with at least twelve chairs around it. As I was admiring the small but open family-style kitchen, with granite counters and two large fridges, I froze. My stomach did a twist, and my heart leap into my throat. Shit. Holy Shit. No freaking way. Seriously, you have to be kidding me!

  Sawyer

  I didn’t get too much time to think about how to confront Megan or what to say. She was standing right in front of me, in the kitchen of the firehouse. By the look on her face, I would say she didn’t come looking for me. My heart began to beat through my chest and my hands became instantly clammy. I couldn’t stop the smile that curled at my lips. God did seem to have a sense of humor. I prayed he also had a plan, because I didn’t.