This is what happens when you try. You can’t fix it. You never could.

She was watching the Garretts’ world burn in front of her. Her handiwork. No, she wasn’t going to fall prostrate to the ground and take total fault. She wasn’t an idiot. It had been little boys with firecrackers, not her with a match. Not her at a party knocking over a lantern.

But it didn’t change how horrible she felt. Didn’t change the way it was unfolding. Or the fact that the boys were only here because of her.

“Eli...”

“Not now, Sadie,” he said, his voice rough.

“I’m so sorry... I...”

“I said not fucking now, Sadie,” he bit out, forking his fingers through his hair, his eyes on the scene in front of them. Sadie’s heart curled in tight around the edges, like it had been set on fire, too.

She took a step back from him, her head swimming. She wondered if she should do something with the crowd? Try to manage? But everyone was frozen, staring at what was happening, and she just felt useless. Helpless. Like she’d been as a child in her home growing up. Watching sick, unending horror playing out before her eyes while she cowered, powerless to stop it.

The fire department came, en masse, sirens rising up over the sound of the blaze. And when it was over, there was no question as to what was left: nothing.

Nothing but a charred husk. Unusable, unsalvageable. The crowd had thinned by then, families with small children taking them away from the upsetting scene. They’d all moved on to the main fireworks display down at the beach. Though mainly they’d left so quickly to escape the smoke and debris. Sadie wished she could get carried away from it, too, but she had to watch, her own eyes gritty with ashes. She felt honor bound in so many ways.

Finally, all that remained were Liss, Jack, Kate, Eli, Lydia, Ace, Bud and the fishermen.

And Connor. Who stood alone, silent and in sharp contrast to the blackened ruins in front of him. Unmoving.

Liss was the one who broke from the small crowd and went to him, her hand going to his shoulder. He jerked away from her and walked back toward the main house, leaving Liss standing there with her arms folded beneath her breasts.

A moment later she took a deep breath and marched after him, a stubborn set to her jaw and shoulders, and for a moment, Sadie could only admire the other woman’s strength. Liss was a woman who stayed. A woman who went the tough rounds.

It made Sadie feel painfully inadequate, standing there in the semi-darkness, with cooling ashes just in front of her.

“Whatever you need, Eli,” Ace said. “You know we’re here to help out.”

“I know,” Eli said.

“Anything,” Lydia said. And Sadie knew she was ready to offer comfort as well, and Sadie couldn’t even be mad because she felt so unequal to the task.

“Probably we all just need sleep right now,” Eli said, forcing a smile.

Kate was standing silent, tears streaming down her cheeks, her shoulders shaking. Sadie moved nearer to her and put her arm around her. Feeling so inadequate to do anything to stanch the flow of grief around her.

“Of course,” Ace said. “We’ll get out of your hair. I’ll come by tomorrow if you want, help assess the damage?”

“Thanks. I imagine we’ll just be making an insurance claim. And they’ll have to send someone out. Best we leave it untouched for now.”

“Fair point. Come by for a drink, though,” Ace said, touching the brim of his ball cap before walking away.

“Guess I better let you get rest, too,” Lydia said, putting her hand on Eli’s shoulder in a decidedly nonsisterly way. “I’ll come by and check in on you tomorrow.”

Eli didn’t protest.

Lydia squeezed Sadie’s shoulder, too, as she walked by her. “I’m happy to check in on you, too.”

That tipped her over into utter misery. Because she didn’t deserve that kindness. Not at all. “Thanks,” she said, her throat raw.

“I’ll go talk to the firemen,” Jack said, “see if there’s anything we need to know. I’ll report back.”

“I’m going to go find Connor,” Kate said, her voice thick as she pulled away from Sadie and walked in the direction of the main house.

That left Sadie and Eli, and a pile of glowing, charred wood, alone in the darkness.

She swallowed and tried again. “Eli, I...”

“We have to be done,” Eli said, cutting her off.

“What?”

“This. Us. It has to... I can’t do this,” he said.

* * *

Eli’s heart twisted into a knot in his chest, but it had to be said. It had to be done. Because yet again, while he’d been out enjoying himself, the whole world had fallen apart. All of this, the time spent with Sadie, had been an illusion.

When he didn’t keep control, the world burned. In this case, literally.

It was just too damn close to his other failures. Too damn close.

“When I’m with you, I forget what I’m doing. I forget other people. I forget myself. No, I don’t forget myself, because myself is all I think of. Myself and my dick, and it can’t happen like this. There is a reason that I’ve lived my life the way that I have. A reason that I can’t ignore for good sex.”

Sadie blinked rapidly, her eyes glossy in the dim light. And his stomach twisted, sick regret forming. But there was nothing else he could do. He needed to stay on top of this stuff and he wasn’t doing it.

His sister had just stood there in tears, his brother watching the one thing he’d held on to since losing his wife burn to nothing.

It was all way too reminiscent of the night when he hadn’t taken the keys. Of the last time Eli had let himself become distracted.

And it didn’t matter what Sadie said, because in the end, this was the result. It didn’t matter if he shouldn’t feel at fault. He did. And it didn’t change the fact that when he wasn’t holding up the world around him, it all seemed to fall apart.

For a second today, he’d thought he could be something different, have something different. And then all this had swooped in and reminded him just why that wasn’t possible.

Why he had to forget their moment in the woods, and every moment before. Why he had to stop wanting more, when more would never be in the cards for him. He knew that. He’d known that before Sadie Miller had blown into his life like a windstorm and rearranged his existence. Made him think that maybe everything he’d believed about his life, about himself, had been a lie.

Which was a whole lot crueler than never having hope had ever been.

For one moment, he’d thought he could do it. Thought he could punch the hell out of a guy who deserved it, thought he could sneak into the woods for a moment alone with the only woman who’d ever driven him that crazy.

Thought he could go to sleep with her every night and wake up with her every morning.

“Good sex, Eli?” she asked. “Really? Good sex? Because I think, I mean, I pretty freaking well think what we have is a lot more than that. I mean, I think we’d both had good sex before we ever met each other, and that...this is something else entirely. What we share is something else.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It can’t happen.” He wanted to lash out. To blame someone other than himself. He was so tired of carrying it all. And this was just another failure. “It seems like when you’re around barns tend to burn down,” he said. “You have a knack for spreading disaster, I guess.”