by JB Salsbury
“Ricky! He lied to me.”
“He loves you. He will never be okay without you, and I’m getting the vibe that you’ll never be okay without him either.”
“I can’t forgive him for what he did.”
“Haven’t you ever done something stupid for love?”
I shake my head. “No. I certainly wouldn’t lie to someone I love. I wouldn’t pretend to be someone I’m not with someone I love.”
He raises his eyebrows as if to say I’m full of shit.
“What?” I throw up my hands. “I wouldn’t.”
“Have you never been so in love that it made you crazy and unpredictable?” He sinks casually back into his seat. “Do things out of character just to get closer to them?”
“You’re implying I should forgive him.”
“Am I?”
“Stop answering me with questions.”
He shrugs, grabs his garbage, and slides out of his seat. “I’ll be right back. I want to show you something.”
“So not the same thing,” I whisper to myself while Ricky heads out to his truck.
I watch him open the passenger side door and lean in. He grabs a big Ziploc bag from his glove box and comes back inside.
He holds eye contact when he drops the bag in front of me. “Read them.”
I glare at the offending envelopes. “You kept Jack’s letters?”
“The ones I could find, yes.”
“You stole my mail!”
He nods, quickly and confidently. “I did.”
Why doesn’t he sound sorry?
I stand so quickly my chair rocks back on two legs. “What is it with the men in my life trying to control—”
“That’s what you think I’m trying to do? Control you?” He sounds angrier than I’ve ever heard him, and his lips become a thin white line. He steps closer and stabs a finger at the letters. “I’m trying to keep you from making the biggest mistake of your life. Read the fucking letters. You owe it to yourself and to the relationship you guys had to at least hear him out.”
With my hands propped on my hips, I shake my head.
“What are you afraid of?” He studies my face, and his expression softens along with his voice. “Sadie, what are you afraid of?”
I take in a shaky breath and tears sting my eyes.
When I don’t answer, he drops his shoulders in defeat. “If you can’t be honest with me, at least be honest with yourself—”
“I’m afraid of loving him again.”
He jerks back as if surprised by my response. “Why?”
I run my teeth over my lower lip. “He left me once and forgot about me. I left him in New York and I will forget about him.”
He leans to the side to get my eyes. “Will you?”
Tears stream down my cheeks, the answer loud and clear without a single word.
He smiles sadly. “Read the letters. If you still want to try to forget him after you hear him out, then so be it.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jack
Six months and two days since Sadie left me.
I tell myself I need to stop measuring time using the day she left, but I can’t help it. Four months and two days since I started my new life in California. Three months and twelve days since I started working at Nitro Advertising, a small firm based out of Encinitas. I make less than what I made in New York, but aside from my mortgage, my expenses are low. I have no car payment, and I’m doing the remodeling myself. My life is simple. I have plenty of time to breathe, which I no longer have to remind myself to do.
Unless…
Unless I’m thinking of Sadie.
I stopped driving down to Hillcrest to watch her draw once she stopped showing up at her favorite coffee shop. I can’t say that didn’t hurt like a bitch. Now I can’t find her. The last couple times I drove by her house, her car wasn’t there. She could’ve moved to another state and I’d never know.
So I did the only thing I could. After months of being miserable, I tried moving on. I met a nice woman at work who invited me out for drinks.
But I couldn’t do it.
I’m not ready.
Maybe someday I will be.
Maybe not.
After an easy day of working on branding for a local vodka company, I grab a bag of Chuy’s famous mahi-mahi tacos and head home to watch the sunset with a few beers on my newly stained deck.
I wave to my neighbor, the Admiral, an eighty-year-old retired naval officer. He still wears the cap from his dress whites, yellowed from time, as he waters his lawn with a hose every night. I’ve offered to put in some underground sprinklers for him, but he told me if he didn’t keep moving, he’d die.
I can relate.
I move through life one task at a time, being productive but not really living. Sadie’s absence left me in a life without any flavor, and I can’t begin to imagine how I went five years in New York without her.
I’m so busy thinking about the parallels between my life and the Admiral’s that I don’t notice right away the red Honda parked in front of my house. Or the beautiful brunette sitting on the car’s hood.
My truck slows to a crawl then stops abruptly when I realize who’s at my house. “No fucking way.”
Sadie.
My pulse jumps, speeds, and makes me a little clumsy as I pull into my driveway, hopping the curb. “What is she doing here? How did she know where I live?”
My fingers shake when I shut off the engine, and the blood leaves my head when I slip from my 4-Runner and see her making her way toward me. The ocean breeze plays with her floral sundress. Her tan shoulders look soft under the warm light of the setting sun. Her flip-flops slapping against the concrete is all I can hear over the roar of my pulse. My lips part and I sway on my feet at the sight of her. She pushes strands of her long, dark hair off her mostly makeup-free face and stops a couple feet in front of me.
“Hey.” Yep, that’s all I got.
I’m stunned. What is she doing here? And how rude that she would show up here, looking so fucking beautiful I feel it in my lungs. I suck in a shaky breath and remind myself to keep the in and out of the oxygen thing going so I don’t pass out.
“You dick!” She slams her fists against my chest, knocking me back a step. “How could you do this to me?”
I open my mouth to defend myself, but having no defense, I close my lips.
She hauls off and knocks my chest again. “You promised you’d never hurt me!” She hits my chest, and I fall back against my truck. Her eyes fill with tears, her cheeks flush with anger, and she sucks in a shaky breath. “Not you, Jack!”
Her pain-laced words bruise worse than her hits. When she slams into me again, I grab her wrists and hold them to my pounding chest. She collapses against me, and I notice then she has a wad of paper clutched in her fist.
“Why?” she mutters, her shoulders jumping with soul-deep sobs that rip from her throat and tear through my soul.
I wrap my arms around her and hold her while she falls apart in my arms. “I’m so fucking sorry.” My eyes swell will tears, and I blink to keep them hidden while she soaks my tee with hers. “I’m so dumb. I know I hurt you.”
I bury my nose in her hair and tell her how sorry I am until my voice cracks and my throat is raw. She takes a shuddered breath and pulls back and out of my embrace. I resist the urge to pull her against me again. With shaky hands, she wipes her cheeks and blows out a breath, fixing her reddened eyes on mine.
Not an appropriate time to smile, but I never thought I’d have her eyes on me again.
She squints a little as if she’s unsure of my response, then her gaze slips over my shoulder. “I like your house.”
“Um.” I’m standing here like a dumbfuck. Speak words, idiot! “I… thanks.”
She chews her lip, her eyes darting from her car to me. “I should’ve called first. I shouldn’t have come—”
“No!”
Her shoulders jump in surprise.
�
��I’m sorry. I just mean—” Breathe. In. Out. In. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“I didn’t mean to come.” A stray tear still sits on her cheek, and I lick my lips, wishing I could kiss it away. She looks at the fist with the balled-up paper sticking from each end. “I read what you wrote and…”
I follow her gaze back to her fist as it opens slowly. I recognize my handwriting. “My letters.”
She clears her throat. “We need to talk.” She drags out each word as if she’s speaking to someone with only one functioning brain cell.
Say yes! Say yes! “Yes.”
Her blue-green eyes widen as if she’s cueing me to make a move. I snap out of it enough to register that my car door is still open.
“Right, so…” I turn around on autopilot because my brain is shitting itself, grab the bag of tacos, and close the door. “Come in?”
She nods. I think. I don’t honestly register anything except that she’s following me inside.
“I’m sorry about the mess.” I motion for her to walk in ahead of me. “If I would’ve known, I would’ve tidied up before work.”
She takes a look around, probably noticing the dated appliances and familiar living room furniture from my tiny apartment dwarfed in the gaping space. “Work?”
I set the tacos on the kitchen counter. “Yeah, it’s a small firm.” I assume she’s surprised I’ve been at work because of my T-shirt, shorts, and leather flip-flips. “Southern Californian companies are a lot more relaxed with their dress codes.”
When I turn around she’s standing at the windows, the ocean in front of her, but her eyes are on the cot with the rumpled blanket and pillow. I open my mouth to explain, but I can’t bring myself to utter the words. Instead, I get to the point. “You read my letters.”
She blinks up at me, and I swear I see regret in her eyes, but it disappears before I can study it too closely. “I did. Not all of them.”
Oh God, I poured my heart out in those letters. I should be embarrassed about some of the things I wrote, but I’m not because… “I meant every word.”
She unfolds the one in her hand. “You’re claiming temporary insanity?”
“Yes, it’s the only way I could think to describe how I felt when you wouldn’t talk to me. I needed you, needed to hear your voice, and when you ignored me, I…” I grimace at how fucked up I sound. “I’m crazy when it comes to you, always have been.”
“You lied to me.” Her voice hardens. “And all those trips to San Diego for work, all lies.”
“Yes. I lied.” My confessions looked better on paper than they sound out loud. I can’t blame her for wanting nothing to do with me.
Her gaze darts to the far end of the room, the corner where my guitar is propped. “You’re playing again?”
“A little.”
“I don’t, uh…” She blinks rapidly. “I don’t remember seeing it at your apartment.”
“A lot has changed since New York.”
She seems to stare right through me when she asks, “Has it?”
I suck in a fortifying breath. “I lost you, Sadie. And losing the best part of myself changed me.”
She breathes through what seems like a wave of emotion, and once she seems settled, she says, “I talked to my parents.”
I suppose that’s how she found out about my move.
“They, uh…” She clears her throat. “They found out about my exhibition in Los Angeles. I guess Rex brought them an article and… anyway. They had a lot of questions.”
“How’d they take it?”
“Pretty good. I mean, after I got a bloody and detailed rundown of how Fabian was going to die.”
I cringe, imagining. “Your dad is terrifying.”
“My dad? Oh no, that was from my mom.” She gazes out the window. “My dad shut down actually, got scary quiet for a long time. We had a long talk though, and he’ll be okay. Your view is amazing.”
Her subject change doesn’t go unnoticed. “It’s one of the reasons I bought the house.”
“It’s not what I would’ve expected.”
I step closer to her, but not close enough to touch. “No?”
“I would’ve expected you to go for something flashier.”
I nod but don’t defend myself. The New York me absolutely would’ve gone for something flashier, something that people would look at with envy. A house that took the focus off what a piece of trash I was becoming.
“I can see why you choose to sleep out here.” She tips her chin toward the cot. “Waking up every morning to the waves.”
“It’s not the view that keeps me out here,” I say, unable to take my eyes off the gentle curve of her jaw, the fluttering pulse at her neck. “I can’t sleep in my bed without thinking of you.”
Her gaze slides to mine with such feeling that I’m knocked off center, thrown. Dizzy.
“I lied to my parents,” she says.
I blink, focus, and try to follow.
“I love them so much, I lied to avoid hurting them by telling them what happened to me.”
“No one would fault you for that.”
“But I also lied because I was selfish. I knew if they found out about what Fabian did to me, they’d want me to move home. And worse, I was afraid they’d think I was careless for being alone with someone I hardly knew.”
“Bullshit. It wasn’t your fault—”
“I know, I do. My point is, they didn’t react in any of the ways I thought they would. I lied because I thought I knew what was best for everyone. I was wrong.”
What the hell do I say to that? “You had no way of knowing how’d they respond.”
“I didn’t even give them the chance to do or say the right thing, to support me. I made them guilty without any proof.” She tucks her hair behind her ear and licks her soft, pink lips. “The summer after what that asshole did to me? I let my family believe it was you who hurt me.”
I nod, because I already know that. As much as I hate it, I’ll take their anger if it means protecting Sadie.
“Using Dawn, you betrayed me.”
“Yes.” I swallow hard.
“You lied to me because I wouldn’t let you in.”
“I did. It’s a pathetic excuse.”
“Because you worried about me. Because you loved me.”
“Yes.” My throat swells more with every word she speaks, and I stand as still as a statue, fearing any move I make might shut her down.
“I understand now why you did it.”
“It was wrong, I know. I should’ve told you sooner. I planned to, I did—”
“I want to forgive you, but…”
But. That last word knocks the breath from my lungs.
She steps closer, and my breath stalls when she cups my jaw. I lean into her touch. Her thumb brushes along my jaw and she smiles sadly. “I’m sorry, Jack.”
I turn my cheek into her touch, my eyes sliding closed. “For what?” The words crack as they leave my lips.
Her hand slides from my face, down my arm to my hand, where she puts the letter in my palm and closes my fingers around it. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
I don’t need to read the letter she gave me. Every word is emblazoned on my heart. I shove the wrinkly page into my pocket.
I drop my chin, my eyelids close, and the first tear slips free. I don’t wipe it away, but instead nod and give her the freedom to walk away. “I broke us. I know I don’t deserve you, but if you need me, I’ll always be here for you. I know you’ve moved on, but I never will.”
Her brows pinch together. “Did you move here for me?”
“Yes. And I’d do it again a million times over. I regret that I didn’t do it years ago.” God, I sound pathetic. “You must think I’m a stalker.”
“I’m afraid.”
My gaze jerks to hers. “Of me?”
“I’m afraid of what I feel. Terrified of letting you in at the risk of being hurt again.”
I close the distance between us
but don’t touch her. “You have every reason to be terrified. I’m far from a perfect man. I’m going to fuck things up over and over again. I’ll say the wrong things and smother you with my overprotectiveness. I’ll hold on to you too tightly.”
“But…?”
“No buts. Just the truth. I’m never going to lie to you again.”
Her expression grows serious. “Does my butt look big in this dress?”
“You’ve never looked more beautiful than you do right now. I haven’t looked at your butt because I’m not able to stop staring at your eyes, lips, and hair.”
“What do you really think of my art?”
“You’re insanely talented. I hate that you have a painting of a good-looking guy with a huge dick in your living room. Your exhibition was intense and disturbing, but the world needs more artists like you who don’t shy away from the ugly truths of life.”
She tucks her chin in as if surprised by my response, but I wasn’t kidding. I will never lie to her again. “Did you feel guilty pretending to be Dawn?”
“Yes. But the happiness I felt that I was finally talking to you overshadowed my shame.”
“Do you love me, Jack?”
That one’s easy. “With every single part of my being, I am in love with you. There hasn’t been a single second of my life that I can remember when I wasn’t in love with you.”
“And you’ll promise to love me and never lie to me again?”
I study her expression, the shine in her eyes as she leans toward me. “What are you saying?”
“If it’s not obvious, I guess I’ll have to spell it out for you. I’m scared, but I’m more scared of living a life that doesn’t include you.” She bites her lip then releases it to press hers to mine. My brain zaps and short-circuits. “I love you too.”
My mouth gapes as the feel of her lips lingers on mine. “What about…” Words! “Ricky.”
She grins. “Oh, yeah, I guess I need to apologize for that. He lied. We were never together.”
“Why not?”
Her eyebrows drop and she backs up a step. I clench my hands to keep from grabbing her and pulling her close.
“You want me with Ricky?” she asks.
“No!” What are you saying? Shut up! I run a hand through my hair. “Sorry, I-I want you to be happy.”
