“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.
When she’d already seen him that way.
“Probably not now, asshole,” he said into the empty room.
No, probably not now.
And he couldn’t blame her.
But he had to ask. He had to try. He had to beg forgiveness.
He had to tell her he loved her.
And damn the consequences.
Order meant nothing without her, control meant nothing without her. And the only acceptance that mattered was hers.
He shoved the Jack Daniel’s bottle back into its place in the cupboard and walked out of his house. He strode toward the B and B, his heart in his throat, his hands honest-to-God shaking. Everything in him was shaking.
He’d never loved anyone. And he’d never asked anyone to love him back.
He’d tried to earn it, every day. But he’d never asked.
Today he had to ask.
He walked across the driveway and into the clearing in front of her house, and saw her car, the back door open, suitcases inside.
“What the hell?”
Just then, Sadie came down the stairs, a couple of pine needles stuck in her hair, tears on her cheeks, her face pale. Her eyes widened and she froze, staring at him like he was some kind of ghost. He walked toward her.
She was packed. She was leaving.
She was leaving him.
Hell no.
He reached out and wrapped his arm around her waist, tugging her to him, his lips crashing down on hers. He tried to make her feel what he did. To understand what he’d just started to understand. That he loved her. That she’d changed him.
She clung to him, grabbing his T-shirt and holding it tight, holding him tight.
