“You don’t seem to be seething all that much,” Sadie said.

“It’s a quiet seethe. Like I said, I know he’s not mine.” She smiled a little more genuinely now. “Kind of bummed I never got to...”

Sadie coughed. “Yeah...that’s kind of... He’s good at the sex.”

Lydia cleared her throat, her cheeks turning pink. “I was going to say kiss him. But sure.”

Sadie winced. “Well, he’s good at that, too.”

“I can’t decide if it sucks to know that or if it’s gratifying to realize my fantasies were on track.”

“It sucks to know. Because I know it sucks that I know. Because it’s over. And I wish it weren’t.”

“So fight for it, badass,” Lydia said. “Fight for him.”

“I don’t think there’s anything to fight for.”

“Well, then, maybe you should go. Because I happen to think he deserves someone who will fight. I thought that might be you.”

“Maybe you should fight for him,” Sadie said, feeling mean, small and not at all in the mood to watch another woman fight for the man she loved. But not brave enough to go and get him herself.

Lydia looked at her sadly. “It was nice to meet you, Sadie. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for. And I really hope that you don’t realize it was here when it’s too late for you to come back.”

Sadie watched Lydia toss the brochures on her passenger seat and drive away and felt a whole hot ball of rage grow in her chest. Who was Lydia to tell her what she should do? Seriously. She hadn’t been there. She hadn’t heard the way Eli talked to her. What he’d said.

Lydia probably had no idea what it was like to be certain that the only way attachment could end was rejection.

And hell, he’d rejected her. Why subject herself to it twice?

Because for the first time, you felt complete. Because for the first time you want to stay. Really, really.

Well, it didn’t really matter. Because he’d pushed her away.

You’re just too pathetic to fight for him. Too afraid.

Yeah, well, because what if she was wrong? Sure, maybe Eli was as afraid as she was. Maybe that was half of why he’d pushed her away. Maybe.

She jerked the backseat door open and pulled out the pet carrier, depositing it on the porch, checking to make sure Toby’s food, water and litter weren’t disturbed.

Then she looked out into the forest.

The place she’d always gone to escape, before she’d run for real.

She took a deep breath of the pine and salt air. And then she ran.

* * *

The way Eli saw it, he had two options. The Connor option—really, the Garrett option—that meant drinking until you couldn’t remember why you were sad.

Or the handle-your-shit option, which was a lot harder.

He stared at the bottle of Jack on the counter and placed his palms flat on the marble surface, looking at the bottle. As if it might tell him what to do.

“Drink it and it might,” he said.

Then he shoved off from the counter and started pacing the room. What was he doing? He felt like hell. Or something worse than hell, whatever that was.

But he had order. He didn’t have a blonde whirlwind with a strange emotional connection to a cat. He didn’t have distractions. He had what he’d spent a lifetime cultivating.

“Loneliness,” he said to the empty room. “You have loneliness. Give the man a prize.”

And it was all he ever had to look forward to. An orderly life and an empty bed. All because he was too afraid to let someone in.

All because it was so much easier to keep everyone out and to never lose anyone or anything again. All because it was easier to blame himself so he could pretend he had some control in the universe when the simple fact was he didn’t have control over any of it.

Mothers left. People died. Barns burned. And no amount of diligence on his part would ever stop it.

He slammed his fist down onto the counter and swore as pain shot up his arm, straight through to his heart.

What a terrible realization. And too late. Dammit, if he was going to have to deal with the fact that he had no control over his life, over anything, the least he could have done was grasped the concept before he’d lost her.

Sadie...

He looked at the spotless counter, where she’d once put her damned tennis shoes. Who did shit like that? And even though the shoes were gone, and there was not a speck of dust from the tread left behind, the memory lingered so strongly there might as well have been a muddy footprint there.

It would have been easier to erase.

He turned away from the counter and looked out the front window, and his heart about burst. Her azalea. Her apology azalea with its pink flowers. Another Sadie invasion that had been obnoxious at first, but that he couldn’t imagine life without now.

She was everywhere in his house. At the counter, drinking a beer. In his bed. His shower. His yard. His heart.

Dammit, she was in his heart.

He loved her.

The realization sent warmth blooming through him. Like a burst blood vessel around his heart, flooding his chest and making him feel weak.

He loved her.

He hadn’t loved anyone but Kate and Connor in...ever. Hadn’t wanted to because he’d been so busy trying to hold the world together. Trying to make sense of things that just didn’t make sense.

Trying to keep his family from falling apart, so that no one else would leave. So that he would matter.

But Sadie had always acted like he mattered, even when he was screwing things up. Sadie had held him, stripped him of his inhibitions in a way nothing and no one else ever had, accepted him when he confessed his shortcomings. Sadie, who had shared herself with him when she hadn’t shared with anyone else.

An offering of herself, but also a demonstration of the trust she put in him.

And he had turned her away to keep wandering through life, holding on with an iron fist, trying desperately to earn the trust of strangers. To be seen as good enough.