All About Sage (A City of Sails Romance Book 2)

by Hill, Joanne

  He followed her gaze. “It suits me.”

  They were both silent as the mid-morning sun beamed down on them.

  “You look better,” he said finally.

  “I feel it. Almost back to normal.” She tilted her head. “Whatever normal is.”

  They were silent. Normal meant she went back to her house. It meant he went back next door to finish his work.

  Confusion welled inside her. She didn’t want normal. Not any more.

  She blurted, “I just talked to Barry.”

  He stiffened, but didn’t say a thing.

  “It’s over with us,” she said.

  His eyes flickered, but still he didn’t say a word.

  “He’s gone away with some friends of his, and I think it was fizzling out. Which wasn’t hard because we were more friends than—” She stopped so abruptly his eyebrows rose. She didn’t want to say lovers.

  “Should I be sorry?” he asked, but there was no sarcasm in his voice.

  “No.” He’d been honest with her – brutally honest – so now it was her turn. “Barry and I, we never slept together. It never came close. I mean, we went out, and we had fun together.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that. It’s not my business.”

  Her heart deflated. She wanted it to be his business.

  He had told her his. Moments from as far back as he could remember right up to the trial. He had told her why his marriage had failed, and although he hadn’t explained why he’d never had a relationship in the years since, she could guess what it was.

  He had no idea how to be cared for. How to accept love.

  He stepped away from the shed and repeated, “You don’t have to tell me. I don’t need to know.”

  “Don’t need to know? Or don’t want to know?”

  He paused a moment and she held her breath. She wanted him to want to know.

  “I’ll take you home,” he said suddenly.

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “And I’m not going to. I’m not going to analyze it. You can do that for me and come up with every answer under the sun, and you probably will. But I don’t need or want to know about you and Barry.”

  She stared at him, confused.

  “I’ll take you home,” he said again.

  So this was it. He’d told her the truth and they’d kissed and it was as if it had never happened.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. She was about to beg. She was about to tell him how she felt and see if he was going to throw it back in her face. She needed to know.

  “I’m not what you need, Sage,” he pre-empted her. “You are gorgeous, you’re an amazing mother, and I think you are wonderful, full stop. But I am not what you need.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “I don’t figure it,” he said. “I know it.”

  He hadn’t even given her the chance to say it. He didn’t want to hear it. He probably wouldn’t listen anyway. She could lay on him every brilliant reason why he was what she needed, but he wasn’t going to listen.

  She looked above his head to where clouds moved lazily across the sky.

  Her heart was shattering, splintering. The pain ached so badly in her chest, she didn’t think she could breathe.

  “Then if it’s possible,” she said, “can Josh drive me home?”

  I don’t want to sit in a car with someone who doesn’t want to hear what I have to say.

  He stared at her. “If that’s the way you want it,” he said finally.

  “No.” She shook her head. He knew she had feelings for him, and he was throwing them back at her. “No, Ethan. You know how I feel. I don’t even have to say it. You know it. So this is the way you want it.”

  Quarter of an hour later, Ethan watched them leave. Josh drove the truck down the long driveway with Sage alongside him. She had stuffed her gear in the backpack and called Harry, and Josh would take her to pick Harry up and then drive them both back to Sage’s place.

  When the truck swung out of the driveway, Ethan turned back to the house.

  It was the right thing to do. To stop this attraction, these feelings, before they went any further.

  He was doomed, but she didn’t need to be. She still had a daughter to care for.

  You’re doing it for her.

  Besides, Sage didn’t know what she was saying.

  She was free now. Free from Barry, free to find a better person. Someone she deserved.

  He stalked broodily inside. She didn’t need his baggage. His life story. His failings.

  He took a breath and looked around as he stepped through the living area to the kitchen. Despite the evidence of Anthony and Josh, there was none of Sage. But then she hadn’t been lounging on the sofa watching TV or getting competitive over a game console.

  How was he going to fix up Robyn’s old house now?

  How was he going to do it with her right next door, and even more, knowing she wasn’t with Barry?

  He clenched his teeth.

  Barry had meant she was a no-go. Barry had been that barrier between them.

  What was really stopping him? What was really preventing him from laying his heart on the line?

  He could handle rejection. He could take risks.

  He’d been taking them all his life. Some worked. Some didn’t.

  He didn’t want to screw up her life.

  Was it that simple?

  Jack had once said he never thought he could be a father until he became one. It hadn’t been until Eric, the son Jack never knew he had, had come to live with him that he knew he could do it.

  Because he’d had to do it. Eric’s mother, a past girlfriend of Jack’s, had died, so Jack had done it. He’d become a father, minute by minute, day by day, and week by week. He’d had no choice.

  But Ethan had choices.

  His spirits slumped further. Maybe that was the problem. He’d had choices all the time. He could have left the army. He decided to stay. He could have run out of that foster home and lived on the street. He’d stayed with the boys.

  He didn’t have to go with Sage over to Jack’s to take care of the kids. Sage, Harry and Mrs Parker were perfectly capable of managing.

  But there’d been a choice and he’d made a decision.

  He had options now.

  He could take the one that said ‘stay away’.

  Or he could take the one that said, Tell her. Tell you love her. Beg for whatever crumb she gives you.

  If she rejected him, he’d handle it. He’d live with a broken heart, but that was his choice.

  How could he be the man Sage wanted and needed and deserved?

  He stared up at the sky, at the clouds drifting across the brilliant blue, wishing there was an answer up there. Wishing there was some way he could know the answer just by snapping his fingers.

  Fear began to prickle through him.

  But it didn’t work like that. It never had and it never would. Life had to be lived to get to where you wanted to be, and the truth was, he realised, that there was only one way to do that. To jump off the edge. To take the step. To see how far he fell, and what he hit when he landed.

  And who was he kidding? This was no ‘stepping off’ the edge. This was leaping off the cliff and not knowing if you were even going to land.

  There was, he shuddered, no other way to know.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Sage stepped inside her house with Harry leading the way, and it felt as if they’d been away weeks, not a few days.

  Sage had judiciously avoided looking over at Ethan’s place once Jack had dropped them off, and now she was inside, she closed the blinds so she didn’t have to see his house by accident.

  “Why did you do that?” Harry dropped her bag in the middle of the kitchen floor.

  Sage shrugged. “Just—because.”

  Harry rolled her eyes.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I know what’s going on. You and Ethan had a
fight and now you want nothing to do with him.”

  Au contraire, Sage felt like saying. He wants nothing to do with me.

  She glanced at the microwave clock. It was one pm.

  She’d ended up staying at Robyn’s for an hour, and Jack had offered to drop her home so Josh could head on back to Ethan’s. Robyn had talked non-stop about the contract she’d signed with the Melbourne retailer, about getting her kid’s clothes into Australian stores, and all along Sage marveled at how Robyn’s life had come together so incredibly.

  Mrs Parker had been there but had looked at Sage in a way that said she knew more than Sage was letting on.

  She can’t know anything, Sage had told herself. There was no way Mrs Parker knew how she felt about Ethan.

  Even Sage hadn’t realized it. Not completely. She’d just put it all down to attraction, because who wouldn’t look at Ethan in that way.

  Now, back in her own kitchen, Sage realized Harry had left the room. Music sounded from her room and Sage was standing in a semi-darkened kitchen on her own.

  She folded her arms tight around herself. Her daughter was here, her best friend was a phone call away, and she had never felt so lonely in her life.

  She stared at the window a moment before she went over and pried the blinds apart.

  Ethan’s house. There was no doubt. It was going to be hell. Hell in suburban Auckland.

  Maybe he’d sell the place before he’d finished the renovation. She pulled her hand away from the blind as if it had burnt her.

  She chewed her thumbnail, picked up her bag, and carried it through to her room.

  At least Ethan had never actually been here in the house. In her house.

  She dumped the bag in front of her closet. At least she didn’t have reminders. At least she didn’t have to picture him standing in the kitchen being domestic, or sitting out the back on the deck, or sprawled in the lounge on a sofa like he’d been at Jack’s, watching the sports channel.

  As she sat on her bed, she looked around. Her home had been her sanctuary. It wasn’t flash, it needed work like next door, but it had been her sanctuary and she had always felt so lucky when so many didn’t have their own place.

  She lay down and closed her eyes.

  Only now, it didn’t feel like a safe place at all.

  Now, she realized, as something like grief settled deep in her heart, she didn’t think it would ever feel peaceful again.

  Ethan chickened out.

  He got to the end of his drive, and paused, the indicator of his truck ticking.

  Sage had told him, without having to say the words, that she wanted him.

  A feeling he wasn’t prepared for swept through him and he laid his forehead on the steering wheel.

  She wanted him.

  For all the crazy, for all the fact they would most likely forever drive each other nuts, she had wanted him.

  And he wanted her.

  He raised his head and stared out at the quiet rural road. The odd truck or car drove down, past the ten acre blocks and new houses on land that had once been all farm. It wasn’t cheap living out here, and he’d bought because it was as far removed from his brutal early years and the confines of the army as possible. There was peace and freedom and privacy.

  He could do what he wanted.

  He thought that had been all he needed.

  And it had, up until a week ago when Sage had just been Robyn’s annoying friend he had the hots for.

  And now he was going after her.

  He’d rejected her, and she had every right to never want to see him again, and he was going after her.

  Fear began to compound in him, a different kind of fear to the one he’d known most of his life.

  Just when he’d got his life together, he had to get the balls to go after her, and hope with everything he had, that he hadn’t blown it.

  Because Sage had a life.

  She didn’t need him.

  He closed his eyes again, said a prayer, cranked up the volume on the car stereo, and stuck the car into gear.

  Balls, McGraw. Now let’s see what you’re really made of.

  Harry knocked on Sage’s bedroom door, and Sage called out, “Come in.”

  She’d hoped she’d fall asleep but she hadn’t and she couldn’t. All she could do was analyse, over-analyse and then go and do it all over again. He likes you but not enough.

  He likes you but he doesn’t want a relationship with you.

  At some point, no better than a love sick teenager, she had cried until her skin had burnt with the steady stream of salty tears.

  She struggled up as Harry came in.

  Harry stared at her and for a moment looked confused.

  “I’m just tired.” Sage patted the space on the bed next to her, and Harry joined her.

  For a long while they just lay there, side by side.

  Suddenly, Harry turned so she was on her side, facing Sage. She put her arm over her.

  Sage closed her eyes as her heart began to break even more. How could she feel so desolate when she had the love of her own flesh and blood? How?

  After a moment, Harry asked, “Are you in love with Ethan?”

  Sage swallowed, tried to get herself together. She’d never cried in front of Harry, unless it was watching a movie or reading some gut wrenching novel.

  “I think I am,” she said finally.

  Harry reached up to stroke Sage’s cheek and Sage felt tears begin to slide down her face all over again.

  “Is it over with Barry?” Harry murmured.

  Sage nodded. “We’ll be friends, though. He’s a nice guy.”

  “Yeah, he is. Not my type but he’s okay.” She put her arm across Sage’s stomach, and hooked her leg over Sage’s like she used to do when she’d been small. “But Ethan’s amazing for an old guy.”

  Sage pressed her lips together to stop them from trembling.

  “He is,” she said finally, and she out a shaky breath. “He really is.”

  “Does he love you?” Harry asked.

  The heaviness sitting over Sage intensified. Get used to it, Lockwood, because you might not have any choice. “I don’t know. I hoped he did, but I don’t know.” She opened her eyes to find Harry watching her. “He had a really bad past. I’m not sure he can put it behind him.”

  “Bad parents?”

  “Bad birth parents and bad foster parents. He told me about it. It was bad, Harry. I don’t think I’ve ever—” Her voice broke.

  The bed creaked and Harry had moved to sit up. She looked down at Sage. “You have to go to him.”

  “I did. But he just… I don’t know. I tried. I tried but he can’t or he won’t accept it.”

  Harry bit down on her bottom lip. “So it really is over with you and him?”

  Over? There hadn’t really been anything.

  “I think so,” Sage said.

  “I’m sorry,” Harry said finally. She looked sad, and Sage realized Harry had gotten to love Ethan, too.

  “So am I.” With all she had, Sage managed to reign in the need to cry. She had a job to do. Be a mother. Be the best mother she could be and not make this any worse for Harry than it was. “What say we pop corn and watch movies?”

  Harry nodded. “I think that’s a really good thing to do. Let’s give love the finger. Salted caramel?”

  And with her heart heavy and her body equally as heavy, Sage put her feet to the ground and knew Harry was wrong. She hadn’t given love the finger; love had done that to her. And she said, “Salted caramel it is.”

  Five minutes from Sage’s place, Ethan stopped his truck at a red light.

  Straight ahead was the way to Sage’s. If he turned right, he could detour back on to the motorway and be home again.

  He’d live with the regret that he’d baled, but at least he wasn’t going to sweat blood facing Sage. Facing her and begging her.

  She had every reason to have already wiped him from her mind and he had given her every reason beca
use he’d been running scared.

  Scared of his feelings for her, scared that she’d reject him. Scared that she was too good for him, too everything for him.

  The light turned red, and he pulled away slowly, matching the speed of the slow traffic on the Auckland roads.

  As he drove, each minute saw his nerves increase. Even his heart rate had sped up.

  You’ve been through several kinds of hell, McGraw. Why are you letting this one come close to breaking you?

  He knew the answer. Because it was the unknown.

  Because if she said no, there was nothing he could do.

  He couldn’t make her take him. Couldn’t make her say, all is forgiven, let’s start this thing properly.

  She was going to reject him. He’d been a prick. His face heated thinking of the cricket and how completely childish he’d been over it. He knew what it was, now. Psychology 101. He’d been subconsciously denying how he felt about her. What did they call it? Displacement anger? He could apologise all he liked but she was no child who was going to just lap up his apology and be grateful. She was bigger than that. She had more going for her than that. She had a daughter. She even had Barry to fall back on.

  You’re on your own and you damn well deserve it.

  His fear mounted, and along with it, his courage dived.

  He pulled to another stop, and in the distance spotted a supermarket.

  His mind raced.

  He took a deep breath, changed lanes and headed away from Sage’s place.

  They were on the second movie, and Sage had paused it as Harriet went to the bathroom.

  Sage dug her hand into popcorn, heard the noise of a vehicle and went abruptly still. She turned her ear to the direction of the driveway, stopped rustling around in the popcorn bowl, and concentrated.

  The vehicle had stopped in front of Ethan’s house.

  Sage set the bowl on the coffee table where she and Harry had stretched out their legs, got up off the couch and went carefully through to the kitchen and over to the back door. She hesitated, and then pulled it open a fraction. She could see Ethan’s house but only the edge. She listened intently; the engine stopped. It was a truck. Not a car, but a truck.