“I’ve spent years remaining disconnected, going from bed to bed, but I can’t do that with you,” he continued, voice weighed down. “I can’t fuck you and then leave and act like you aren’t everything. But I know telling you what you mean to me, or what I want with you, would be the end of us. So, I don’t. Only to find out you’re correcting people when they assume anything about us, and now my goddamn brother is warning me from getting in too deep with a girl who ‘doesn’t give a shit’ about me.”
My chest shook with my uneven exhale as the implication of his words hit deep.
Beau.
My conversation with Nathan.
Oh God . . .
“Then you look at me,” Sawyer said on a murmur. “One look and I know he’s wrong. But your panic tonight had his words getting louder and louder until they were all I could hear. Until all I could remember is that you’re leaving one day. Until I was grasping at how to keep you, and knowing I couldn’t because I would inevitably push you too far.”
“Yes, Sawyer, I leave. It’s what I do. But coddling me by trying not to upset me won’t keep me here. It will lead to more nights like tonight, where we keep exploding because you aren’t being you, until I do leave.”
“Other than holding back the thoughts that are sure to push you away, the possibility of upsetting you isn’t something I consciously try to avoid when I’m with you. What scares me is when I’ve already done or said something that has.”
“I don’t want that for you . . . any of that.” The claim was nothing more than a pained wheeze as fresh tears welled in my eyes. When I continued, each word shook with the emotion threatening to overwhelm me. “You shouldn’t have to go through that for someone who only wants your body for a few weeks.”
His eyelids slipped shut at the reminder of what had brought all this on, and his head tilted slightly as if he wanted to erase my words or argue over them.
“As I said, I can make that easier for you.” Not waiting for a reaction, I dropped my stare to the ground and turned to leave.
“I fell in love with you about the minute you crashed into my life,” he said, bringing me to an abrupt stop a few steps away. “I would give anything to make you stay in Amber with me . . . to make you stop running. Can’t you see that?”
No.
No, no, no.
I couldn’t hide the horror or pain from my expression and was thankful I was facing away from him. Sure that whatever was there would only solidify his argument.
I told you.
I told you.
I told you.
“I was in preschool when I met Leighton,” he continued, his firm tone betrayed by the waver of worry. “Mom said I talked about her every day, always referred to her as my girlfriend. By elementary, I was telling anyone who would listen that she was gonna be my wife one day. By the end of middle school, she was my girlfriend. When senior year came, I had our future planned out, because I wasn’t spending a minute of it without her. And then she destroyed herself.”
I turned then, sure I would find the brokenness I had seen the day I’d asked about her. But he was just watching me with the same look from when he’d found me walking away earlier.
“This girl, who was my world, took herself from me in a slow, painful way. She is why I haven’t actually seen another girl until you. But . . . in all those years, I never once told her that I loved her. She knew I did—I made sure she knew it, but those words never left me because I mocked them . . . thought people said them too easily. But it was all I could think about once she was gone. Wondering if things would’ve been different, if she would’ve saved herself, if I had. If we would be playing out that future I’d planned so many damn times.”
I didn’t even know what had happened with Leighton. I’d been given a deeper look each time he spoke about her, but only enough to leave more questions—questions I knew I didn’t deserve the answers to.
Even still, I knew if Leighton had been Sawyer’s world, she no doubt knew how much he’d loved her. Him saying those words wouldn’t have changed whatever it was she had done.
I wanted to comfort him from those thoughts, but I was still frozen in place, throat clogged with emotion and pleas for him not to continue where this confession was clearly leading.
“It took a while to realize that I’d stopped believing in love altogether when she died. After what she did to me, to us, I couldn’t. And then you came into town with your strange demand, like the idea of falling in love with anyone wasn’t the funniest damn thing to me. But you’d already gotten so deep in my head in a way no one’s ever been.”
A hitched breath ripped from me.
No.
At once, my body somehow felt both weightless and weighed down.
Don’t.
The brutal thundering of my heart clashed against my thoughts, betraying the way something inside me longed for him to continue as my mind screamed for him to stop.
“Rae, I love you,” Sawyer said roughly, ripping the ground out from beneath me and forcing a hushed, pained cry from me. His head began shaking in exaggerated movements, his hand gesturing between us. “But pretending with you? Acting like we’re nothing when you’re everything? I can’t do that anymore.”
I gripped at my chest, unable to handle the way it felt like his words had torn me open in an attempt to wreck what was so crucial to live. Each beat of my heart felt so strained and so agonizing, I was sure I wouldn’t survive another.
“I told you who I was,” I breathed. “I told you what this was and what it couldn’t be.”
“And you knew it was bullshit. You know it is. We’re not fucking friends, Rae,” he said through clenched teeth, his eyes searching mine. “I didn’t have to know you before to know I’m different for you. I can feel it, I can see it.”
I didn’t deny what he said.
I couldn’t.
“I told you not to fall in love with me,” I said, repeating what I’d already told him so many times before, the words sounding like an explanation and accusation.
His head dropped back as his hands slowly dragged over his face. When he looked at me again, the heartbreak written in his expression nearly brought me to my knees.
“It means goodbye,” I managed to say before he could speak or leave. When I continued, my voice cracked. “It’s something you mocked and thought died with Leighton, but, for me, it means pain and abandonment that I have spent years evading.”
Sawyer had gone still, head angled and confusion rippling from him in waves.
“I was three when my mom left my dad and me. She left us with a note that said, ‘I’m sorry. Forgive me. I love you.’” I shrugged because there was nothing more to say for a bullshit excuse for a goodbye.
I would know. I’d learned from the best—clearly.
“My dad was . . . not a good dad. He didn’t take care of himself or me. Didn’t really seem to care about me, or anything really. Just alcohol and that note.”
“Rae—”
I held up my hand, silently asking Sawyer to wait. “I’ve never told anyone this. You think I shut down and shut you out with everything, but what you don’t realize is that I’ve never been so open—that I’ve never wanted to be.” An uneven breath left me. “And this? This is why I shut down. This is why I leave.”
Sawyer nodded, stare eager as he folded his arms across his chest, waiting for me to continue.
“Three years later, my dad loaded me up in the car and said we were going on a trip. I remember being excited because he didn’t smell like alcohol,” I said with a deprecating laugh as I thought back to that car ride. “We ended up at his parents’ house, but they weren’t there. He told me to put my bag in one of the rooms, he was going to find us something to eat while we waited for them. By the time I went looking for him, he was already gone. In the kitchen, he’d left my mom’s note next to a scrap of paper, where he’d copied her exact words: ‘I’m sorry. Forgive me. I love you.’ It was the only time he’d ever said I l
ove you to me.”
“He was an asshole,” Sawyer said, a hint of anger weaving through his tone.
“Yeah, well, I found out he got it from somewhere.” I let my gaze drift away when pity fell across Sawyer’s face. I didn’t need anyone’s pity, never had. “When my grandparents came home, they were livid. Not that he would abandon me, but that he would leave me with them. But no one was ever able to find my dad again, and despite wanting nothing to do with me, they wanted to be seen as good people who would take in a child.”
Sawyer scoffed, and I lifted my brows in agreement.
“My dad’s entire family was that way,” I added, giving him a glimpse of what was to come. “I stayed with my grandparents for about five years. They were very unaffectionate people and never missed an opportunity to let me know how much of a burden I was to them. Other than that, Grandpa didn’t talk to me, and Grandma always made fun of my active imagination, rolling with laughter as she joked that it would take me places. Joke’s on her now, I guess.”
From the way Sawyer was straining his jaw when I risked a glance at him, he didn’t find that as amusing as I did.
“Anyway, one morning, my grandpa was leaving for work and said ‘I love you’ as he headed toward the door. I’d been caught off guard by it, but I couldn’t stop watching my grandma. It was like he’d said the most outrageous thing, shocking her so completely that she stood in place, looking in the direction of the door, long after he’d left.”
It wasn’t until Sawyer asked, “What happened?” that I realized I was staring at the ground, remembering that day.
I lifted a shoulder. “He hung himself in his office. Two weeks later, my grandma had a stroke. Not long before she passed, I was in my grandma’s hospital room while some relatives fought over what to do with me, and she looked to me and said, ‘We did love you, you know.’”
“Jesus,” Sawyer said under his breath.
“I think I hated her more for saying that than anything else she’d ever said to me,” I admitted, shaking my head to clear out the memory. “After that, I stayed with one of my dad’s sisters for a few years before they decided to send me to his other sister, and as they were dropping me off, they said, ‘We love you, we just have to focus on our own kids.’ The next family ignored me as much as humanly possible because they hated my dad. But they gave me a place to stay through high school . . . but then high school just . . .”
It had been the worst and most defining years of my life.
Then again, most people could probably say the same.
“The city I’d moved to was small—not Amber small—but small enough that it was very clear I was new to the school. I’d spent the first two years of high school going through the motions and trying to be invisible, just wanting to make it to graduation.” At Sawyer’s surprise, I gave him a hopeless smile. “I was very insecure in high school.”
“You’re one of the most confident women I’ve ever met.”
“Now,” I said pointedly. “But I’d been abandoned and labeled a burden my entire life. I couldn’t figure out why no one wanted me, and that’s a very dangerous path to stay on at that age. But it led me to writing, and that changed my life. I mean, I still tried to remain invisible at school and at the house, but I’d found something I loved that gave me a way to channel all those debilitating thoughts into something that made me happy for the first time . . . ever. And then one of the most popular guys in school asked me out.”
Sawyer straightened and crossed his arms over his chest, his eyebrows pulling low at the way my voice had thinned.
As if he were ready to defend my honor or beat up some guy from my past.
“I said no at first, but then I fell for him hard and fast. It was hard not to—he was extremely persistent and said everything right. Like he had a manual . . . or girls telling him what to say,” I hinted dryly. “Couple months in, he somehow talked me into going to a small party at his house and got me up to his room. He wanted to have sex, I didn’t . . . and then he said the words I didn’t realize I’d craved to be told in a genuine way my entire life.”
“No . . .”
“Oh yeah,” I said with a soft laugh. “He pulled out the big guns. And, at seventeen, I would’ve done literally anything after being told I love you when it wasn’t by a family member who was saying it as an apology. And I did. Went to school the next day and found out I no longer had a boyfriend right about the same time I realized our night together was plastered all over the school.” At Sawyer’s confusion and anger, I explained, “He and a few of the football players apparently had a bet going to see who could take someone’s virginity first. He won.”
“Dick,” Sawyer growled. “Your family, him . . . they’re all dicks.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said easily.
There would be no argument from me, no defending any of their actions. I’d had years of living with it and coming to terms with the cold hearts and deceit that had made me into the person I was.
“But,” I said softly, throat tightening. “I love you, goodbye. I love you, goodbye. I love you, goodbye . . . and always as an apology for not wanting me or as a way to use me. I hate those three words, Sawyer. I run from them.”
He let his arms unfold, his palms out in a silent plea before they fell limply to his sides. “But I’m not them. I’m not going anywhere, Rae, and all I want is you.”
A sad smile shaped my lips and my shoulders lifted in a faint shrug. “Letting someone in, letting someone close, terrifies me because my mind associates it with being left behind. And I’ve let you in more than anyone because I can’t help myself with you. You terrify me, Sawyer. But that manifests in what you see, in what you perceive as you fucking up.”
His entire body seemed to sag—regret and understanding pouring from him.
My chin trembled and voice betrayed my emotions when I continued. “All I wanted was for you to be there—be with me. Not force you to worry over every single thing, and I’m sorry that I have been.” Lifting my hands in the air, I took a step back. “Now you know where I come from. You deserve better than that.”
“How can I deserve better than the one person who can make me believe in something I was sure was gone—who can make me feel anything?”
“I can’t love you,” I cried out. “I can’t give you what you want, Sawyer. Don’t you get that?”
“No. For so many damn reasons including everything you just told me and the fact that you’re standing here, trying to help me understand you instead of walking away from me like I don’t matter. You wouldn’t have been crying when I found you, because nothing and no one from your past elicit even a hint of emotion from you. No pain or bitterness, no affection . . . nothing.”
“It doesn’t matter. It won’t change anything—it can’t.”
“This doesn’t have to end the way every other fucked-up relationship of yours has. Let me show you what it feels like and looks like when it’s us, when it’s different.”
My head shook as he spoke, the movement becoming wilder. “I will still leave,” I said, choking over the sobs building in my throat. “I’m sorry, but I can’t stay here. I can’t—” I covered my mouth with a trembling hand to mute my cry, or maybe to stop the words that nearly escaped.
Probably both.
Sawyer couldn’t understand, and I didn’t know how to tell him . . .
The real reason I was here. The only reason I’d decided to extend my stay. And I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand another moment in this town once I’d accomplished what I’d come for.
Once I’d put an end to the one piece of my life I couldn’t seem to get past.
He watched me for a while, pain and desperation bleeding from him. “When are you leaving?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” I said honestly. I’d lost track of the days here with him, not that I’d had a solid timeline to begin with. “Soon.”
He nodded, his eyes glimmering in the moonlight and threatening to bring me to my knees.
“Stay.” Pain, hope, and fear laced his plea and pierced my chest.
I wanted to give him anything he asked for, but I knew it would only bring him more pain later. I’d never wanted to spare someone that pain so much in my life.
I spent a minute that felt like an eternity and a second, watching him, memorizing him. My chest wrenched with anguish when I asked, “Why are you more to me than you were ever supposed to be?”
The lifelessness of my tone had Sawyer’s expression falling with dread. “Rae,” he breathed, stepping closer and reaching for me. “Rae, don’t do this.”
“It has to happen one day.”
“Not tonight,” he ground out, curling his hands tenderly around my neck and tilting my head back so he could search my eyes. “Don’t do this.”
“Why not?” I said through the overwhelming emotion. “We keep ending up here. Pushing each other and fighting, just to do it again a couple days later.”
“Because neither of us wanted or were prepared for the other,” he said adamantly, his voice dropping lower when he continued. “And because our baggage runs deep and makes this terrifying. Because we kept trying to stop it from happening—because you still are.”
My head shook faintly. “But you’re exhausted by this,” I said, reminding him of that painful confession.
“Rae, no—”
“You’re always worried,” I continued over him. “I don’t want that for you for even another night. There’s no reason to continue doing whatever it is we’re doing.”
“There’s every reason,” he said, the words nothing more than a rumble from his chest. “I worry when you start panicking that you’re about to leave. I worry every time I leave you that you won’t be there the next time I come back. Yes, it’s exhausting, but that’s on me, Rae. That’s my own shit.”
“But I don’t want that for you!”
“I know what it’s like to lose the girl I love, Rae,” he said, his voice twisting with pain. “That is why I can’t stop worrying. That is why I exhaust myself with it. Because I’m fucking terrified of losing you.”
Fall in Love Book Bundle: Small Town Romance Box Set Page 160
