Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
If there was any clue left by Alan for his son, it wasn’t in the attic of the boathouse.
I let out a sigh and sat cross-legged in the center of the attic. “I give up,” I said. “Whatever we’re looking for, it’s not here.”
Forrest moved to sit a few feet away, also cross-legged, one elbow on his knee, his chin propped on his fist. He looked glum. I felt glum, but not like Forrest. He looked more than glum—he looked defeated. I wanted to tell him everything would be okay, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know what was going through his head. Was he angry I’d dragged him here? Were the memories making him sad? I couldn’t fix it if I didn’t know what was wrong. And why the hell did I want to fix anything for Forrest Powell?
But I found myself saying, “You said you know I want nothing to do with you. But it isn’t that simple.”
Forrest’s hazel eyes showed a flicker of acknowledgment. He didn’t say anything, and I kept talking. Maybe I just needed to get it out, like lancing an infected wound.
“I’ve never had good judgment. With men, with sex, with love, with any of it. I don’t trust anyone. I never have.” I sucked in a ragged breath, both surprised and not, to find my eyes stinging. “Everything was so different with you.”
Tears hit my eyes, and I turned my face away. I didn’t want him to see me cry. It felt too raw. Too intimate. Too much to share with the man who had shown me what I could have and then taken it away. My chest ached, but I pushed through. I needed him to understand that I wasn’t just being petty and bitchy. His lies had broken something in me. For the first time in my entire life, I’d fallen so hard I couldn’t help but trust. I couldn’t help but believe. And the truth had shattered me. It had been so hard not to fall back into drinking, just to dull the pain a little. Some days, I’d felt like it was all I could do to get out of bed in the morning and not take a drink before I fell asleep.
“Everything was so good with you,” I choked out. “I thought this time—” I sank my teeth into my lip, fighting back the well of tears and trying to swallow through my tight throat. “I don’t know how to let it go,” I said. “Sometimes I want to.” I raised my eyebrows, lifting my chin and looking past him at the flash of late afternoon sunlight on the water through the dusty window. “Sometimes I want to forgive you and just live our lives together, but I can’t go through that again. I can’t be wrong again. Not like that.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I calmed. It was what I’d needed, to let this out, with him. The pain of the last year settled, not gone, but not quite as sharp.
“I know,” Forrest said, his voice heavy with pain and regret. “And I don’t know how to fix it.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, needing an answer to this one thing. “Why did you stay? I know you weren’t that desperate for a job. And I know my brothers aren’t that amazing to work for. So why did you stay in Sawyers Bend?”
Chapter Twelve
STERLING
It had been plaguing me since I let my pride goad me into telling my brothers not to fire him. I wanted to pretend he hadn’t hurt me that badly, that Forrest sticking around town was no big deal. But it was. It was a very big deal, and it had fucking sucked. If it hurt me, I knew it had to hurt him. So why?
He shifted, turning to face me, pulling his feet in and resting crossed arms on his upraised knees. In the dim light of the attic, I thought I could see all the way to his soul and the open wound inside.
“I wanted to see you.”
I shook my head. It didn’t make sense. He’d only seen me a handful of times in the year we’d been apart. It wasn’t enough to stay in Sawyers Bend.
“I wanted to be there if you needed me.”
If I needed him. It was a weird thing to say, but I knew what he meant. A month after I dumped him, I’d almost died in a fire when my sister’s estranged husband had tried to kill her. When I came to, in the hospital, Forrest had been sitting outside my room. He stayed there, almost around the clock, until I was discharged. He didn’t bother me, he didn’t get in the way of the nurses, but he was there. Looking after me. Protecting me.
And more recently, when my sister Quinn’s guide business had been vandalized, Forrest had been there. I worked with Quinn, running the shop and answering the phones while she was leading hiking or fishing trips. Someone looking for evidence proving who had killed my father had destroyed the inside of the shop. At the first glimpse of the destruction, my heart had cracked. And Forrest had been there, bringing coffee and cookies, helping Hawk board up the windows. We hadn’t exchanged a single word, but he’d been there.