by Jami Alden
What if the doctor's say you're not able to do... whatever it is you do? Sadie''s question rang in his head, acid eating at his stomach as he remembered his response.
I can't even consider the possibility.
He guessed he would have to consider it now.
Now his future opened up like the endless stretch of highway in front of him, with nothing on the horizon to offer guidance.
He was vaguely aware of an insistent, electronic buzz. It took him several minutes to realize it was his phone, buzzing with phone calls and texts from his parents, his brothers, and Sadie. Everyone knew the evaluation would be over by now.
He turned it off. The thought of revealing his failure to anyone made him want to throw up.
Hours later, he pulled into Big Timber's town limits. He bypassed his parents house, where he knew they would be waiting eagerly to celebrate the good news. Instead he drove out to the ranch, relieved that Sadie's car was nowhere in sight, and went directly to his cabin.
Maybe Jim and Pete would keep him on as a ranch hand, he thought bitterly as he made a beeline for the liquor cabinet.
He reached all the way in the back to retrieve the bottle of Macallan 18, which he'd been saving to share with Damon and his father when he finally got cleared.
Fuck sharing.
He tipped the bottle directly to his lips. The first swallow burned all the way down. The second less so. By the third the scotch was going down like water.
###
Sadie waited for hours at the Decker's house, waiting to hear from Dylan. The mood went from celebratory, to concern, to outright worry when hours passed with no word from Dylan.
With the hope that his exam had been delayed or was taking longer than expected, Sadie finally headed back home to get started on her packing.
She pulled into the driveway, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw Dylan's truck parked in front of his cabin. The relief was quickly swallowed by a wave of unease. If he was back, why hadn't he stopped by the house? Why hadn't he returned any of the increasingly urgent phone calls and texts from his parents, his brother, or herself.
She started for the cabin and pulled out her phone to call Dylan's mother.
"That's a relief," Vivian breathed when Sadie told her Dylan's truck was there in one piece. "But why didn't he come over? Why didn't he return our calls?"
Sadie pushed open the door to the cabin and recoiled at the gasoline-like smell of liquor. "I'm not sure," she said, her stomach sinking as she spotted Dylan sitting on the couch, staring at the dark TV screen. "But I'll call you back as soon as I find out."
She called his name. He didn't so much as flinch to acknowledge he'd heard her. She walked over to the couch. His gaze remained fixed forward as he tilted a half empty bottle of scotch to his lips.
"What happened?" She sank down next to him.
"I didn't pass."
Sadie's stomach fell somewhere around her feet. "I thought that wasn't a possibility."
He barked out a laugh. "Yeah, well, I guess I was a little too glass half-full on this one, because according to the doctors my heart problem makes me unfit for duty."
Her stomach dropped to the floor. "Heart problem?" Right now her own felt like it was going to beat out of her chest.
"Don't worry—it's just atrial fibrillation—an abnormal heart rate. Nothing that can't be treated," he said and brought the bottle to his lips again. "Nothing that will keep me from a healthy civilian life," he sneered.
A wave of relief washed through her. While she'd be lying if she tried to deny there was a big part of her that was happy he wouldn't be facing death in combat on a regular basis, her heart ached at what she knew had to be a crushing disappointment.
"I know how hard this must be for you." She laid her hand on his arm.
He snatched it away, turning to her with a face so full of rage she recoiled. "Do you? Do you have any fucking clue how it feels to have your entire future ripped away from you?"
"I'm sure it feels that way now but you're smart, you're capable, you'll find something else—"
"Like what? Like take over my father's fucking garage? Or go to work for my brother in his mini empire?" He took another swig of scotch.
Part of her knew it was a bad idea to even engage with him right now. But she didn't know this Dylan, this person fueled by a toxic mixture of rage and scotch. Somehow she felt if she just kept talking, she could get through to the Dylan she knew and loved. "Not if you don't want to. This could be an opportunity to pursue something else. Go somewhere new."
He slammed the bottle down and erupted from the couch. "I've been a soldier for the past ten years. What the fuck else am I supposed to do? Where the fuck should I go?"
She threw her hands up. "You could go anywhere—you could come with me to San Francisco and work on your writing, maybe take some classes—"
"Come with you to San Francisco? Yeah, that's exactly what you need, some loser mooching off of you."
"It wouldn't be like that. We would be together. We talked about seeing each other—now this way neither of us would have to fly."
If the undertone of desperation in her voice wasn't enough to make her wish for a hole to open in the floor and swallow her up, the way his shook his head, an almost pitying look in his eyes, would have done it.
"Come on, Sadie. You know girls like you aren't supposed to end up with guys like me."
Pain wrenched at her chest so hard she was surprised there wasn't an audible crack. Her vision wavered, and just like that she was seventeen again, mooning over Dylan, as Jennifer Kramer set her straight.
She could tell herself all the lies she wanted, hang on to the false hope he'd given her by saying he didn't want to end things yet.
But the truth had been staring her in the face all along. She might have outgrown the skinniness, and the awkwardness to become what many people considered beautiful. But in the end, Dylan Decker was as unattainable now as he'd been in high school.
"Fuck, Sadie," he started towards her, hand held out, and she took an instinctive step back. Certain that if he so much as brushed her with his fingers, she would shatter into a million pieces. "That didn't come out the way I meant it—"
"Don't—don't explain," she said, marveling at how steady she sounded. "I always knew, going into this. I always knew."
She fled for the door, ignoring him when he called after her, determined to salvage what little pride she had left.
###
Sadie managed to avoid Dylan for the next two days as she packed her belongings and said her goodbyes.
"But you're not supposed to leave until next week!" Molly protested frantically when Sadie stopped by the restaurant between lunch time and the dinner rush, when she knew her friend would have a break. "We were going to throw you a party!"
"Some things came up, and they wanted me to start sooner." It was only a partial lie. In truth, Sadie had called Cynthia and asked for an earlier start date, even though she knew Molly wanted to plan a big send off.
She wasn't in any mood for any kind of celebration, and she saw no reason to linger in Big Timber longer than necessary.
Not when the two men she cared most about made it clear that there was nothing to keep her here.
Just yesterday she'd gotten her period, confirming their indiscretion in the barn hadn't resulted in any lasting consequences.
Though she was nowhere near ready to be a mom, and would never use a baby to tie Dylan to her, her heart pinched a little just the same.
She left Molly with a tearful hug and a promise to visit at Christmas, if not before.
The next morning, her car packed, she was ready to say goodbye.
"You drive safe," her father said in a hoarse voice as she returned his uncharacteristically fierce hug.
"I will."
"Promise to call me as soon as you get into your hotel tonight," he said as he released her.
"Promise."
Next came Pete, who gave her a quick sque
eze and assured her that no matter how things had changed, she'd always be welcome home.
She barely squeezed her thanks around the lump in her throat. "I know the ranch is in the best of hands."
Sadie started for her car as the two men ambled off.
"Sadie."
Every nerve electrified at the deep, too familiar voice. Fighting the urge to run to her car and drive away like a coward, she turned to face Dylan.
His face was somber as he walked toward her, his thumbs hitched in the waistband of his faded jeans. Like a dying woman in the desert, she drank in the sight of him, as though committing him to memory.
Not that she needed to. Every last detail of him, their time together, the way he made her feel, was seared into her soul.
"So this is it, you're taking off," he said as he stopped a few feet away from her.
She pressed her lips together and nodded.
He took a hesitant step forward, then stopped. He was silent for several seconds, his eyes running over her face, her body, as though he too were trying to imprint her into his memory.
His mouth moved, as though he was searching for words.
She could think of several things she would die to hear.
I made a mistake.
I want us to be with you.
I love you.
"I never meant to hurt you."
Something inside her collapsed into itself, and she blinked against the sting of tears. Her mouth pulled into a tight, mirthless smile. "I never meant to get hurt. But we've both learned the hard way things don't always go the way we want them to."
###
It was for the best, Dylan told himself as he stood rooted in place as Sadie's car disappeared down the drive.
Never mind that he had been haunted by the memory of her face the exact moment that he broke her heart.
Never mind that he had spent the last two days resisting the urge to go to her and explain himself. Tell her that he didn't mean he didn't want to be with her.
But that a smart, beautiful, successful woman like her shouldn't tie herself to a man like him.
A man who was adrift. Rootless. Completely clueless as to what his future held.
A man who could only drag her down.
So even though he knew she was hurting, he resisted the urge to soften the blow. Now she could move to San Francisco free and clear, get back to the life she was supposed to lead.
Leaving him to stagger around until he found his own path.
It was for the best.
Yet, no matter how many times he repeated it to himself, it didn't do a damn thing to help heal the giant sinkhole that had opened up where his heart used to be.
###
The next few days passed in the same grinding pattern. Dylan spent the daylight hours doing whatever mindnumbing, physically exhausting task Pete would throw at him. As soon as the sun went down he worked his way through a bottle of scotch, trying to drown out the memories of Sadie that lived in every corner of the tiny cabin.
Trying and failing.
If he had any sense, he'd move, start working at his father's shop and pick up odd jobs from Damon until he figured out what to do with the rest of his sorry life.
But part of him liked the torture of remembering what it was like spending his days working with her, his nights with her in the cabin. Having her sit across the table from him, making him laugh, chasing some of the demons away.
Having her fall into bed with him, her mouth and hands moving eagerly over him, wanting, needing him as much as he needed her.
Bam! Bam Bam! He jolted awake, heart pounding against his ribs, fully expecting to see the Taliban forces from his dreams looming over a far ridge.
He blinked, slowly realizing that he was not in a Central American jungle but on the couch of the cabin's small sitting room.
And the banging wasn't the sound of enemy gunfire but of a heavy fist slamming against the heavy wooden door.
"Dylan!"
He winced, as much at the headache pounding in his temples as at the sound of his brother's voice.
He reached for the bottle in front of him and took a hefty swig.
"Open the goddamn door or I'll break the fucker down."
Dylan grunted, heaved himself off the couch, and weaved his way over to the door. "What?"
Damon's face was set in harsh lines as he shoved his way inside. His nose wrinkled as he took in the dirty dishes stacked in the sink, the empty bottles strewn around the kitchen and sitting room.
"So this is what you've been doing? Getting shit faced while you avoid our calls?"
Dylan shrugged, his brain too fogged from scotch to come up with a snappy comeback. "What do you want?"
"I wanted to make sure you're okay. Nobody has heard from you since you got back—"
"I'm fine," Dylan snapped. "Now you can leave."
"Yeah, I can see that." Damon lifted an empty bottle and slammed it back down on the counter.
He stomped over to a cabinet and grabbed a glass. Then he went over to the couch, sat down and helped himself to a pour from Dylan's not quite empty bottle.
"If you don't mind, I'm not really in the mood for company."
"Too fuckin' bad," Damon said and took a sip of his scotch. "I'm not leaving until you talk to me."
Shoulders bunching with tension, Dylan joined his brother on the couch. He grabbed the bottle by the neck and took a sip of his own. "Nothing to talk about."
"Other than the fact that you're doing nothing out here but moping and getting shit faced every night. Ignoring the people who love you and want to help you—"
"My career is over!" Dylan exploded off the couch, pacing the small space like a caged jungle cat. "Everything I did, everything I worked for, is fucking gone. I have nothing."
"Bullshit. You your family, who loves you and will help you any way we can."
Dylan closed his eyes. He knew they loved him, but he couldn't depend on them to pull him out of this hole.
"And what about Sadie?"
"What about her?"
"You to seemed to have a pretty good thing going.
He shook his head. "Sadie is..."
"Sadie is an amazing woman," Damon interjected. "And she loves you."
Dylan shook his head, but his brother barreled on. "Are you really going to throw that away just because you can't escape from this pity party you've thrown for yourself?"
Anger surged in his chest, his vision burned with a red haze. "You have no idea what it's like to lose everything you've worked for, to have every plan you had for the future ripped away—"
"Oh really?" Now Damon stood and stalked over until he was nearly nose to nose with his brother. "Did you forget that the woman I wanted to marry since I was sixteen broke up with me when I joined up? You think that didn't fucking gut me?"
"You ended up together eventually," Dylan mumbled lamely.
"Yeah, but only after a lot of years and hurting each other almost beyond fixing. I don't recommend it."
Dylan shook his head. "Sadie needs a guy who's got a plan, who knows what the fuck he wants to do."
"I won't argue with you there. And unless you crawl your way out of that bottle and pull your head out of your ass, that guy will never be you."
###
Two Weeks Later
Sadie sat back in her chair and scrubbed at her eyes. The top corner of her computer monitor told her it was almost nine p.m., and the stiff muscles in her back reminded her that, barring a couple of afternoon meetings, she'd been in this chair for over twelve hours.
Though there was still plenty to be done—there was always plenty to be done in her new role at ShopToYou—it was time for her to go home.
She packed up her laptop and notes about the current project she and her team were working on, noting as she walked out of her office that the cubes were mostly quiet and all of the office windows were dark.
She wasn't the last one to leave—ShopToYou was a Silicon Valley startup after all,
and some of the QA engineers and software developers practically slept here—but as usual Sadie was among the last to leave.
Home was a blissfully short ten minute drive up highway 101 to Palo Alto. Her San Francisco friends had given her a hard time about not moving back to the city proper.
"Don't you want to go out, meet people?" asked her friend Gina, who worked a few miles south of Sadie's office but braved the hour plus commute from the city.
Sadie brushed her off, saying she could always drive up on weekends, and with her intense work schedule, it wasn't like she had any time to go out anyway.
But in truth, it was more of a chicken and egg thing. Since she had no interest in going out, she figured she might as well spend the extra time in the office. And the little bungalow she rented was close and convenient to work.
Not to mention, after all the time spent out at the ranch, she found she couldn't bear the idea of living in a little apartment, sharing walls with her neighbors. In the past, living in the city had been new and exciting, a stark contrast to the rambling house where she'd grown up.
Now, she found herself craving the big spaces, the open sky.
A small house with a private yard in a tidy suburban neighborhood was an acceptable compromise.
Though she'd only been gone a couple of weeks, her time on the ranch felt like a hundred years ago, she mused as she pulled into the carport at the top of her driveway. A million miles away, despite her frequent phone calls with Molly, who kept her up to date on all the goings on in town.
The restaurant was doing fine, even with Brady gone, Molly had reported earlier today, although her work load had increased now that Ellie had revealed that she was pregnant and couldn't stand the smells coming from the kitchen.
"We tried swapping having her at the bar and me in the kitchen, but the first time she tried to make a margarita and caught whiff of tequila she ended up puking in the sink behind the bar. Luckily it wasn't busy, but still. She's out for at least the first trimester."
