Me After You Page 23

  The door shuts behind me as I walk out.

  “I bought you some Reese’s Pieces.” Grayson tosses the bag into my lap, but I don’t touch it. “I always see you eyeing them at the grocery, and you’ve been extra quiet recently so I thought you could use a little pick me up.”

  It was such a considerate gesture, but the thought of eating Reese’s Pieces still churns my stomach. They’re tainted by the past. Grayson notices the look of unease on my face that I’m not quick enough to conceal.

  “Do you not like Reese’s Pieces?”

  I swallow the emotion because I can’t lie to him. “No, they’re my favorite. Thank you.” I move them to the side table next to the couch, trying to avoid eye contact.

  He exhales, and I know what’s coming. “I know there’s something you aren’t telling me, S. Something you don’t think I can handle. Or maybe you can’t handle telling me, but I don’t keep secrets from you, and I feel like your life is made of secrets.”

  I bury my face in the novel I’m reading, trying to get lost in the another world. Grayson knows he’s missing something, but I don’t have it in me to tell him. “Gray, I don’t know what you want from me. I’m always honest with you. You know everything you need to know.”

  “Obviously not. Why don’t you trust me?”

  “I do trust you!” I insist, sitting up straighter and meet his eyes.

  “It doesn’t feel like it. I’m your husband, Sawyer. Nearly three years ago, I vowed for better or for worse, I promised to stay by your side. I give you all of me. I always have, and I always will. Are you really not going to do the same in return?”

  He’s right. He’s totally right. I didn’t want it to hurt him. I didn’t want him to feel any less important or special in my eyes. I’ve covered up the past because I couldn’t handle it, not because I didn’t trust him with it.

  I take a deep breath, prepping my heart, and scoot over on the couch. Tapping the empty cushion beside me, I start from the very beginning. When I’m finished, Grayson embraces me as I cry and doesn’t hold my past against me.

  He numbs the pain, but he doesn’t make it go away. And I don’t expect him to or blame him for being incapable of making it disappear. I know only one person can do that.

  DEAN

  MY FIST MEETS the wall as soon as the door closes, and I drop to the ground behind the counter with my head in my hands. I lean back against the wall below the hole in the plaster I made and cry like a damn girl.

  I lost her all over again, but this time it’s worse. I laid my feelings on the line this time. I gave myself to her and, in the end, she still rejected me, like I knew she would eventually.

  I knew better. I was smarter at eighteen. I should have stayed away. I should never have come back and tried to redeem myself, as if that was possible.

  I wasn’t going to say goodbye. I was going to leave after sneaking out of her window earlier that morning, but she deserves more than that. Even if it kills me to see her one last time. I need one last look at her face—for the long road ahead of me.

  I call her cellphone and ask her to come outside. I have to make this brief—short and to the point—but she can’t know the truth. I’ll have to lie to her. She’ll hate me, but she needs to hate me. It’ll make it easier to leave if she hates me. If she hates me, she won’t miss me.

  She walks down the steps of her porch to the pathway that leads to the end of the driveway. I don’t leave the side of my motorcycle. I keep my helmet in my hands as a reminder to keep me from touching her. When the sun touches her eyes, they sparkle. I’ve noticed that before, but today, rather than the lightheaded feeling I normally get. it makes me feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. She lifts up on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek, but I don’t move.

  When she pulls back and looks at me, she knows something’s off. “What’s wrong?”

  I do my best to get rid of any emotion in my voice and say, “I’m leaving.”

  “Leaving? Going where? I’ll get my stuff and go with you.”

  I clench my teeth and force out the words. “You can’t come with me.”

  “Why? Where are you going?”

  At least I can answer this question honestly. “I haven’t figured that out yet.” I shrug.

  “Wait.” Her rosy cheeks go pale. I see the understanding set in her deep brown eyes. “You’re leaving, leaving… like not coming back leaving.” Her voice is hardly audible on her last words.

  I nod once because I can’t actually say yes. The word gags me when it finally hits that I’m leaving. How cowardly am I?

  “Dean, don’t leave.” There are tears building in her words. I expected anger. I wasn’t prepared for sadness or begging. How could I leave her now? “Or let me go with you. I don’t have to stay here. I would go anywhere with you.”

  “You can’t go with me, Sawyer,” I say sharply.

  She flinches when I call her by her name. I never call her Sawyer. She knows something has changed. “What about us?” she asks earnestly, and I realize this is it. This is where I have to make her hate me. I don’t have another choice.

  “What about us?” I counter, emotionless.

  She doesn’t get it. She flinches, but it’s in confusion not pain. I’m trying to keep my face blank when her expression contorts from confusion to sadness to anger. She finally gets it.

  “So that’s it?” she asks with more force.

  The cruel things I have to say hurt when they come out of my mouth. “Did you really think more would come out of this? Did you really think we were going to get married and have kids and live happily ever after in Willowhaven?”

  Her face falls. Of course she did. I did, too. But those were pipe dreams. I must have been delusional to believe that we could have been possible. How could I possibly deserve that kind of happiness? I can’t trust myself to give her what she needs, what she deserves.

  “You can’t leave. You’re crazy if you think I don’t know what you’re doing. You’re scared and you know it!” Tears stream down her cheeks, and she steps toward me to call my bluff. She knows me so well. I hate to see her tears, especially because I know I’ve caused them. I know I cringe, but as soon as my brain kicks back in, I make my face blank. I have to be a better liar. She has to believe I don’t want her, that I don’t love her.

  “It’s over, Sawyer. There’s no way I can stay in this town one more day.” My voice sounds so bleak. “I don’t want this. I don’t want this town. I don’t want you.”

  And that seals it. The searing pain that flashes in her eyes is instant. It’s so fierce that it burns through me and scorches every last nerve ending.

  “Fine!” Her hands shove my chest with all the force she can muster, but I don’t budge. “Leave! If that’s what you want! Go! What we had was obviously a huge joke. I don’t want to see your face ever again. I hate you!” Another shove. I grab her hands to pull her against me. I want one last kiss, but I know that will make this worse and contradict everything I accomplished. So, I push her hands to the side, away from me and it sends such a sharp pain to my chest that I nearly drop to my knees. If I get on my knees, I could ask for forgiveness.

  I take a deep breath to collect myself. “I promise you never will.” I throw my leg over my bike before starting the ignition. I hear her hollering at me, but I put my helmet on to drown her out. If I hear her, begging me not to go, I won’t be able to leave. But I can’t stay. It’s not possible.

  This is for the best. She will find someone better than me. She will find someone who can give her so much more than I can, who will actually deserve her, and who will treat her the way she deserves to be treated. And she won’t get the chance to toss me to the side in the process.

  The farther I drive, the more it hurts, a life altering hurt—one I know that will leave a scar on my heart forever. But I tell myself the pain will lessen. I will move past this, and so will she.

  What I didn’t realize was that I would have to repeat those words over and ov
er every day to keep me from going back. I would have to repeat those words to make myself believe that our lives were better apart.

  I learned how to live away from Willowhaven before. It shouldn’t be too hard to start over somewhere else again. I could try and get Rob to reconsider buying the garage, and with that money, I could start over in a new town, a new state, somewhere completely different. Sawyer did it. She somehow found happiness elsewhere. Why couldn’t I?

  When I calm down, I get up and turn the corner of my office to see Sawyer standing inside the door of the garage. She shifts from foot to foot with a confused look in her eyes as if she doesn’t know how she got there. Everything inside of me screams to go to her, to grab her and hold her and never let her leave again.

  When she sees me, there is resolve. She has a purpose.

  “I was pregnant, Dean.”

  SAWYER

  I KNOW WHY I came back, but I’m not sure if I’m making the right decision. Do I want to cross this line? Do I really want him to know? Having him know will change everything. It will make it real.

  Yes. Alix is right, as much as I don’t want to admit it. It’s important for him to know that it was so much more than losing him. I lost a piece of myself, a huge piece of myself, and I never got it back.

  Dean appears from the back with bloodshot eyes. He looks pathetic. Was he crying? It takes everything I have to keep from rushing to him and wrapping him up in my arms. I’ve taken on a lot over the last few years. I could handle his pain, too. I want to make his hurt disappear, and yet I know I’m about to be the one to intensify it.

  My heart beats once… twice… three times. “I was pregnant, Dean.”

  My heart beats once more.

  “What?”

  I take a deep breath, reining in the courage to repeat it out loud. Only a few people know. I want to keep it that way. The less I talk about it, the less it hurts. “After you left I found out I was pregnant.”

  “How? How is that possible?” he says, breathless. “Did you cheat on me?”

  The fact that he thought me capable of that shoots a bullet to my heart. “What? No!”

  “But we only did it that… that one time.” He’s grasping for a reasonable explanation, but there isn’t one.

  We hadn’t planned it. As soon as we did it, I felt instant guilt and regret. Not because it happened with him, but because I always promised my parents and myself that I would wait. We weren’t ready. It took one time in the heat of the moment, and we lost control. It felt right at the time. But that didn’t last—especially since the following week he was gone.

  “It only takes one time, Dean,” I try to explain calmly. “We weren’t careful.”

  The color drains from his face as he realizes what a pregnancy means. “I’m a father? Do we…?”

  The tears rise and fall without my permission. “No.” I shake my head. I’m not ready to say the words I know I have to say to him. Please don’t make me say them.

  “But you just said—”

  “I miscarried,” my voice breaks. I feel that word deep in my bones. I’ve never had to say that word out loud before. Everyone that I confessed to knew, when they saw my face and the words I couldn’t speak out loud, that I lost him. I lost my baby. “At almost twelve weeks.”

  “Well, that’s…” He doesn’t have the words, and neither do I. His face contorts. I see tears filling his eyes, but he angrily blinks them away. His arms latch around his torso, and I see his hands curl into fists. His fists only clench when the emotions are too much for him to handle. It’s the only way he can cope. “I guess that happened for the best, right?”

  “You don’t get it.” I choke on my tears. “Do you know what it’s like to be pregnant at eighteen and not married? Do you realize how scared I was? I could hardly tell my mom.”

  His head shakes, trying to dispel the words from his mind. He sucks in a breath of air as if it will help his words flow more smoothly. “I… I’m so sorry, Sawyer.”

  “No!” His apology makes me angrier. “Do you know how guilty I felt? I not only learned what true loss feels like after having another human being inside of me taken away, but that miscarriage was combined with relief.” I gasp through the emotion taking control over me, and look to the ceiling, trying to find oxygen. Even after all these years, it guts me. I can still feel the cold tile of the bathroom floor on my cheek as I breathed through the pain. I still feel Alix’s hand stroking my back as my body slowly rejected the baby inside of me.

  “I felt relief because I knew I wouldn’t have to do it alone,” I confess and shift my eyes back to him. “I wouldn’t have to look at the face of a child who would remind me of you every day for the rest of my life. How could I feel relief? How selfish is that?”

  “It’s not selfish,” he softly reassures me, stepping closer. “You weren’t ready for that kind of responsibility yet. And I wasn’t here the way I should have been. I should have been here,” he says, gritting his teeth. I see his anger toward himself. “Of course, you didn’t want to do it alone. No one could blame you for that.”

  I don’t know why I can’t leave it alone. Why can’t I walk out? Why do I feel the need to tell him everything? I don’t want to tell anyone everything. “Every day there are women who yearn to get pregnant and try over and over again to have a baby and can’t. I wished mine away. What kind of a mother does that?” I choke. “And now… now there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t ache for that baby—our baby—who never got a chance. Because I wished it away,” I sob. “I wished it away, Dean.”

  At some point, he strides closer to me and pulls me into his arms. I resist at first, pounding his chest for him to release me. I can’t stand his caring touch. I don’t want his sympathy, but the more I resist, the tighter he holds me. Finally, I relent. For the moment, I want to pretend his touch can heal me. “I needed you there, Dean, and you weren’t there. I needed you so badly.”

  “I know.” His hand runs over my head, combing through my hair over and over. “I know, Sawyer.” I cry for everything. For everything I lost over the last six years. For everything that could have been. And it’s crushing and liberating and it might all consume me until I fade away.

  DEAN

  AFTER A WHILE of holding her as she cries, she calms down. I pull back and hold her tear-stained face in my hands. Her eyes stay closed—looking so brokenhearted I can’t hold back any longer. I kiss her cheeks and her nose. I kiss her eyelids and her forehead. I kiss away every tear, and between every kiss, I tell her how sorry I am. I pour my remorse into every word and touch. My mouth memorizes every curve of her face and when I find her lips she gasps, but doesn’t pull away, and that’s all I need.

  Our lips meet with a fierceness I’ve never known until now. We kiss for every day missed, for every kiss lost. We kiss as if it’s the last kiss we will ever have. And I know that I will never let another day go by without kissing her. For as long as I live, my lips will belong to her.

  Sawyer breaks away, and I know if I don’t say what I need to say, I’ll explode, because it so desperately needs to be heard. “I love you, Sawyer.” She blinks her tearstained eyes at me. “If I had known… I swear, if I had the slightest idea, I never would have left. I hate that I didn’t know. Knowing you had to do that alone kills me. I hate that you hurt so deeply. I hate that I hurt you at all.”

  She nods, closing her eyes, and more tears fall down her cheeks. “I know,” she says in a raspy, drained voice.

  She draws her left hand back from my face to wipe her eyes, and I catch sight of the patch of black. My eyes narrow in on the sparrow. She follows my line of sight. When I look her in the eyes the tears are back, glistening ever so slightly.

  “The sparrow,” I say reverently.

  Her eyes hold the sparrow. She looks at it tenderly. “I loved that baby, and I wished him away. This is my reminder to never go a day without thinking of him.”

  “Him?”

  She shrugs, blinking her wet eyel
ashes up at me. “Just always felt like a boy to me. I hated referring to him as an ‘it.’ He was so much more than that.” Looking back down at her wrist, her shoulders sag.

  I kiss the corner of her mouth to try and bring her back to me, but I already see I’m losing her. She’s slowly slipping away.

  With crestfallen eyes, she peers up at me. She shakes her head, and my hope plummets. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…” she says. “We shouldn’t have…” Sawyer backs away out of my grasp with one step.

  “Sawyer,” I say softly.

  “This. Us. It’s a fatal disease. We’re never going to be able to work. I’m not the same person I was in high school. I don’t think I could ever put complete faith in you to never leave me again. We could try, but we’d only fail. Our relationship is already destined to self-destruct. There’s just too much that’s already broken to fix it, Dean.”

  I drop to my knees and my vision clouds with tears. “No,” escapes my lips.

  “I forgive you. Okay?” She nods, peering down at me. “I know that’s what you need to hear me say. And I do. But this… this is never going to happen again. This can never happen.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I say gruffly. “Please don’t do this. Us. That’s all I know. We are what makes life bearable.” My arms wrap around her waist.

  “We don’t make sense anymore,” she says gently. “This will be better for the both of us, Dean.” Her hand rests on the back of my head. As she speaks, her fingers tighten in my hair. “It’s a fresh start at life. We’ve been through enough. Don’t you want a life that doesn’t continuously bring us back to the past? I do. Being together would be a constant reminder of what we lost. I can’t do it.”