“Stay here and eat pie, I’ll be back for you,” he said.

“I...I could walk to my car.”

“Wait for me,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”

He looked pointedly at Jared, who chose that moment to obey him. “Backseat,” Eli said, then he walked over to Alison. “Call me,” he said. “Call someone if he gives you any trouble, do you understand me?”

She shook her head. “He doesn’t.”

“You’re lying to me,” Eli said, his voice low and soft.

“I’m not.” She met his gaze, her brown eyes defiant.

And he wanted to punch something again. A wall. Jared’s face. Why did she protect him? Why did they always protect them?

“Well, even so...” He reached into his jacket and took out his card. “Call me.”

He walked back to the patrol car, back to his drunken, asshole backseat tenant. He would drive Jared home. The guy would sober up for a while. And the cycle would go on and on.

He knew it would. It was what he saw in a town this size, over and over.

Times like this he could understand why Sadie didn’t stay.

CHAPTER TWELVE

SADIE SAT IN THE BOOTH, a cup of coffee and a piece of pie in front of her. The fishermen were back in their corner booth, and Alison was pacing behind the counter.

She took a bite of the lemon meringue. “It really is good pie,” she said, loud enough for Alison to hear.

Alison tried to smile. “Thank you.”

“Could I get more coffee?” She didn’t need more coffee, but she needed Alison to come to where she was sitting, and to stop hiding.

So yeah, this wasn’t her favorite thing, but obviously she wasn’t avoiding Alison, or the facts about Alison’s life today. Fate had handily intervened even when she was trying to jump ship.

She felt a little like Jonah. Thrown overboard, swallowed by a giant fish and vomited into the diner, the very diner she’d been avoiding. Yes, it was an analogy of Biblical proportions, but appropriate, she felt.

Alison walked across the diner and looked into Sadie’s full cup.

“Just kidding. I lied. Sit down.”

“I’m working,” Alison said.

“Yeah, and I’m eating pie. Sit.”

Alison did, her hands folded tightly in her lap, the carafe placed in front of her on the table.

“So, hi,” Sadie said. “It’s been a while. Or since last week. But you know.”

“Yeah,” Alison said.

“I feel... I feel like I should apologize.”

Alison looked startled by that.

“For dropping off the earth after high school. For never calling. For never coming back. Because we were a team, in some ways. We laughed together, and I don’t think we laughed very much when we were apart. You spent all those years sticking by me. All of you did. Josh Grayson was my first kiss. Hell, my first...everything. And I just left you all. Without looking back. I had to leave... I had to. But I should have thought of you.”

“Sadie...we never knew what happened to you really. Your mom just said you’d run off. And...”

“You believed her because I used to say I would,” Sadie finished. “And I did run off. It’s true. I mean, I ran off to college. And a career and things. It’s not like I was pole dancing, not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just...the long and the short of it is, I ran.”

“We missed you,” Alison said.

She looked so tired and sad. A sharp contrast to the Alison whom Sadie remembered. A girl in black clothes, with a fierce light of determination in her eyes.

A girl who’d looked ready to fight.

The fight was gone from her now. Drained out of her slowly over the years. Years when Sadie had been gone.

But if Sadie had stayed...the same thing might have happened to her. She and Alison had started out in the same place. A couple of teenage girls who’d never had innocence. Who’d always seen the hard, ugly side of life. Neither of them had illusions about love.

And still Alison had ended up with that man. Sadie was very aware that it could very well have been her sitting there, sad-eyed and defeated.

Sadie sucked in a sharp breath, feeling like something had cracked in her chest. “I...I didn’t expect to be missed.”

“I don’t think any of us would have,” Alison said.

“That’s a problem,” Sadie said. “It’s not...healthy, that’s for sure. So...Josh left?”

“Yeah, he’s doing business somewhere. Washington first, and I haven’t heard anything about him in a while.”

“Hmm.” Sadie allowed herself a brief, nice memory of him. He’d been hot, at least in her teenage estimation. But the memory of him didn’t make her shiver or anything. Not like Eli.

“You stayed,” she said, turning her focus back to Alison.

“I thought about leaving, but my mom’s health wasn’t good. Then right after she died, I met Jared.”

“Ah, yes,” Sadie said, the ache in her chest inverting, splintering and sinking down to her stomach. “I believe I met him today.”

Alison cleared her throat and looked determinedly at the carafe. “I know it looks bad.”

“It is bad,” Sadie said. “Don’t BS me. I’m a therapist by trade, when I’m not renovating bed-and-breakfasts. I see women who have come out of abusive relationships all the time. I see men who are afraid they might be abusers. And more than that, I lived with a man who solved problems with violence for my entire childhood. So, I repeat, do not BS me. I am the wrong person to try that on.”

“He’s not that bad.”

“We can skip that part. We can skip the part where you tell me why you make him do it. And he’s a good guy. And his past was hard. Because I’ve heard it. Just...five months ago maybe, I saw a woman who was in the hospital. Recovering from the wounds her husband had inflicted on her. I’ve seen where it ends, Alison. Unless you make the decision to leave.”

Alison grabbed the napkin to her left and started twisting it, her hands shaking.