by Maisey Yates
She wrapped her arms around his neck and he slipped one hand down her back, holding her waist tight as he lowered her to the blanket, his body solid and warm above her. They sat together, his hands stroking her face, her hair.
He kissed her deeper and she laced her fingers through his hair. She felt everything happening on the surface of her skin. The scrape of his stubble against her neck as he kissed her there. As his hands moved over her T-shirt, the warmth of his touch seeping through to her skin.
But it was the echo beneath the surface that really hit. That anchored her to him, to the world. It was like a deep bass note that resonated through her, vibrating along every vein, moving deep to the core of her being.
They broke the kiss, looking at each other, and her eyes met his, emotion building in her chest, bigger and stronger than any sexual climax.
It was painful and beautiful. She didn’t think she could stand it for another moment, and she didn’t want it to end. In that moment, she felt it all, the good, bad and scary, bound together, inescapable.
She was drowning in it, drowning in him. In what he made her feel. She couldn’t run from it, couldn’t make light of it. Couldn’t shove it to the side.
All she could do was embrace it.
She held on to him, hoping his strength would hold her together because at this point, she didn’t trust her own. And that was a damn scary place to be. But she was with Eli, so it had to be safe, too.
“When I’m with you, I don’t want to be anywhere else,” he said, moving his hand over her hair, sliding his fingers through the strands.
“Me, either,” she said.
It was true. And for a woman who was always so keen to move on to the next place, the next thing, it was a huge and frightening admission.
He shifted their positions so that she was sitting between his thighs, her back to his chest, his fingers gentle as he laced them through her hair. She closed her eyes, a tightening moving from her chest, up her throat, making it hard to breathe. Making her ache.
“Is this what you used to do here?” he asked.
She laughed, a shaky sound that didn’t do anything to loosen the knot of emotion inside her. “Not exactly. I’ve never done anything quite like this.”
“Me, either.”
He tugged lightly on her hair, once, then again. She turned and looked at him, and he kept hold of her. “What are you doing?” she asked.
He cocked his head to the side, a rueful smile on his face. “Braiding your hair.” He kept his eyes on hers as he wove another section together. “Is that okay?”
She looked at his face, at the sincerity in his eyes. Sincerity and caring she’d never had directed at her before, and that she’d never hoped to deserve. The walls inside her cracked and she had to fight to keep the tears that welled up in her eyes from spilling down her cheeks.
Because when he said that, what she heard was I’m taking care of you.
“Yeah,” she said, the word a whisper. “It’s okay.”
She closed her eyes while he finished, focusing on breathing. On not breaking down completely over this moment. On not betraying everything she felt.
He slid his thumb down the side of her neck, his touch gentle. “Done.”
She turned back to him again. She wanted to say so much. And nothing, and everything.
He leaned in slowly, his breath fanning across her cheek. Then he kissed her, and she let herself get lost in it. In a kiss that wasn’t meant to start anything, wasn’t meant to arouse. A kiss that was meant to forge a connection. An outpouring of all the emotion their joining had brought to the surface.
Panic clawed at her as she realized the kiss would have to end. This moment would have to end.
She didn’t want the kiss to end, because when it did, they would have to deal with what happened next. And part of her was already panicking about that. Part of her was feeling the need to run.
This was deep. And it was real. And the most terrifying four-letter word she could think of was pushing into her consciousness, hovering on the edge of her lips, burrowing into her heart.
And that was the one thing she hadn’t wanted. The thing she feared more than anything.
But the kiss had to end. And it did. When they parted he slid his thumb over the edge of her lip. “Sadie...”
“We should go,” she said, terror gnawing at her. Terror that he was going to say what she was trying not to think. That he wouldn’t say it. That he would never say it. Or that he would now when she wasn’t sure she could deal with hearing it.
She reached back and touched her hair, ran her fingertips over the imperfect braid. “We really should go,” she repeated.
“Uh...yeah,” he said, letting out a big gust of air. “You’re right. The barbecue. It’s your baby. You...you should be there for it.”
“Well, yeah,” she said, wrapping her arms around her midsection. “I kind of should. Sorry about... Not much of a seduction, I guess.”
He met her gaze, his eyes intense. “I don’t know if I’d say that.”
She breathed in deeply through her nose, smoke burning her nostrils, and frowned. “I would have thought they’d be powering down the grills about now. It’s getting dark.”
“Maybe that many more people showed up,” he said, sounding slightly grim and serious, and it was probably her fault. For cutting him off. For bringing him out here and spilling her guts and then basically telling him nothing of what she was feeling because it all scared her too much.
“We can hope,” she said, rounding up the blanket and holding it tight against her chest. Like she was trying to apply pressure to a wound, and in some ways, she felt like that’s exactly what she was doing.
Eli picked up the uneaten food, and Sadie mourned it slightly, because she didn’t feel like eating at all now. She was too full. Of feelings she didn’t want to sort through. Emotions she didn’t want to have.
They headed back toward the ranch, cutting through the trees, Sadie taking the lead and not walking hand in hand with Eli, like she sort of wished she could.
You can’t bolt if he’s holding on to you.
The smoke got thicker as they got closer to the ranch, the wind bringing a wall of it their direction. “What the hell?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s not... That’s not normal.”
Eli picked up the pace, passing her, before he moved into a dead run. She followed after him, clutching the blanket against her pounding heart.
She was saying things. Worried things. Things with swearing. But she couldn’t really make sense of them. They were just pouring out of her mouth without any kind of specific order or reason. Fear, irrational at this point, but intuitively driving her on.
She knew something had gone wrong. She knew it as certainly as anything she’d seen with her own eyes.
And she knew it was bad.
They crossed the dirt road and back into the Garrett property line to see flames rising up above the trees.
“Oh, no. Oh, no,” she said, running after Eli, releasing her hold on the blanket and letting it fall to the ground as she picked up her pace.
They ran back to the main area to find the picnickers standing facing the barn. The beautiful barn that Connor had poured his money into. Now on fire. A wicked blaze that was eating through the beautifully stained wood, the newly shingled roof.
“The horses,” she said, gasping for air. “Animals?” She couldn’t think. She couldn’t remember the layout of things, not now. Her brain was just swimming.
“No animals in there,” Eli said, his brow creased, his mouth turned down. “Just the equipment. The feed. All Connor’s equipment,” he repeated. “Did someone call the fire department?” Eli asked.
“Yeah.” Sadie turned and saw Liss standing there, a tear rolling down her cheek. “I did.”
“Is there anyone inside?”
“Not as far as we know,” Liss said, her eyes not on Eli, but on Connor, who was standing nearer to
the blaze than anyone else, his posture stiff, staring right at it. Watching so much of his livelihood burn.
“There’s insurance,” Eli said.
“Of course,” Liss said. “It’ll be okay.” She didn’t sound convinced, not at all.
A group of boys, who must have been twelve, walked up to Eli, their faces ashen, their eyes wide. “We didn’t mean to, Deputy Garrett,” the smallest one said. “But it’s a Fourth of July thing and we were messing with fireworks...”
“In the barn?” Eli asked, his tone hard.
“Well, yeah, because we didn’t want our moms to see. And we didn’t think...”
“About the hay,” Eli said.
“We thought,” one of the other boys said, “that we’d gotten all the sparks doused and we left...”
And they’d left a smoldering firework in the hay, to burn it all from the inside out so that by the time anyone realized, the blaze inside had consumed the fuel and moved on to the structure.
Sadie was starting to shake. It was too similar to her last night in Copper Ridge. Too close to sins she’d already committed. Eli hadn’t wanted this on his property, Connor hadn’t wanted it and she’d pushed. She’d come onto their property, into their lives and destroyed their order.
And this was the result.
This is what happens when you try. You can’t fix it. You never could.
She was watching the Garretts’ world burn in front of her. Her handiwork. No, she wasn’t going to fall prostrate to the ground and take total fault. She wasn’t an idiot. It had been little boys with firecrackers, not her with a match. Not her at a party knocking over a lantern.
But it didn’t change how horrible she felt. Didn’t change the way it was unfolding. Or the fact that the boys were only here because of her.
“Eli...”
“Not now, Sadie,” he said, his voice rough.
“I’m so sorry... I...”
“I said not fucking now, Sadie,” he bit out, forking his fingers through his hair, his eyes on the scene in front of them. Sadie’s heart curled in tight around the edges, like it had been set on fire, too.
She took a step back from him, her head swimming. She wondered if she should do something with the crowd? Try to manage? But everyone was frozen, staring at what was happening, and she just felt useless. Helpless. Like she’d been as a child in her home growing up. Watching sick, unending horror playing out before her eyes while she cowered, powerless to stop it.
The fire department came, en masse, sirens rising up over the sound of the blaze. And when it was over, there was no question as to what was left: nothing.
Nothing but a charred husk. Unusable, unsalvageable. The crowd had thinned by then, families with small children taking them away from the upsetting scene. They’d all moved on to the main fireworks display down at the beach. Though mainly they’d left so quickly to escape the smoke and debris. Sadie wished she could get carried away from it, too, but she had to watch, her own eyes gritty with ashes. She felt honor bound in so many ways.
Finally, all that remained were Liss, Jack, Kate, Eli, Lydia, Ace, Bud and the fishermen.
And Connor. Who stood alone, silent and in sharp contrast to the blackened ruins in front of him. Unmoving.
Liss was the one who broke from the small crowd and went to him, her hand going to his shoulder. He jerked away from her and walked back toward the main house, leaving Liss standing there with her arms folded beneath her breasts.
A moment later she took a deep breath and marched after him, a stubborn set to her jaw and shoulders, and for a moment, Sadie could only admire the other woman’s strength. Liss was a woman who stayed. A woman who went the tough rounds.
It made Sadie feel painfully inadequate, standing there in the semi-darkness, with cooling ashes just in front of her.
“Whatever you need, Eli,” Ace said. “You know we’re here to help out.”
“I know,” Eli said.
“Anything,” Lydia said. And Sadie knew she was ready to offer comfort as well, and Sadie couldn’t even be mad because she felt so unequal to the task.
“Probably we all just need sleep right now,” Eli said, forcing a smile.
Kate was standing silent, tears streaming down her cheeks, her shoulders shaking. Sadie moved nearer to her and put her arm around her. Feeling so inadequate to do anything to stanch the flow of grief around her.
“Of course,” Ace said. “We’ll get out of your hair. I’ll come by tomorrow if you want, help assess the damage?”
“Thanks. I imagine we’ll just be making an insurance claim. And they’ll have to send someone out. Best we leave it untouched for now.”
“Fair point. Come by for a drink, though,” Ace said, touching the brim of his ball cap before walking away.
“Guess I better let you get rest, too,” Lydia said, putting her hand on Eli’s shoulder in a decidedly nonsisterly way. “I’ll come by and check in on you tomorrow.”
Eli didn’t protest.
Lydia squeezed Sadie’s shoulder, too, as she walked by her. “I’m happy to check in on you, too.”
That tipped her over into utter misery. Because she didn’t deserve that kindness. Not at all. “Thanks,” she said, her throat raw.
“I’ll go talk to the firemen,” Jack said, “see if there’s anything we need to know. I’ll report back.”
“I’m going to go find Connor,” Kate said, her voice thick as she pulled away from Sadie and walked in the direction of the main house.
That left Sadie and Eli, and a pile of glowing, charred wood, alone in the darkness.
She swallowed and tried again. “Eli, I...”
“We have to be done,” Eli said, cutting her off.
“What?”
“This. Us. It has to... I can’t do this,” he said.
* * *
ELI’S HEART TWISTED into a knot in his chest, but it had to be said. It had to be done. Because yet again, while he’d been out enjoying himself, the whole world had fallen apart. All of this, the time spent with Sadie, had been an illusion.
When he didn’t keep control, the world burned. In this case, literally.
It was just too damn close to his other failures. Too damn close.
“When I’m with you, I forget what I’m doing. I forget other people. I forget myself. No, I don’t forget myself, because myself is all I think of. Myself and my dick, and it can’t happen like this. There is a reason that I’ve lived my life the way that I have. A reason that I can’t ignore for good sex.”
Sadie blinked rapidly, her eyes glossy in the dim light. And his stomach twisted, sick regret forming. But there was nothing else he could do. He needed to stay on top of this stuff and he wasn’t doing it.
His sister had just stood there in tears, his brother watching the one thing he’d held on to since losing his wife burn to nothing.
It was all way too reminiscent of the night when he hadn’t taken the keys. Of the last time Eli had let himself become distracted.
And it didn’t matter what Sadie said, because in the end, this was the result. It didn’t matter if he shouldn’t feel at fault. He did. And it didn’t change the fact that when he wasn’t holding up the world around him, it all seemed to fall apart.
For a second today, he’d thought he could be something different, have something different. And then all this had swooped in and reminded him just why that wasn’t possible.
Why he had to forget their moment in the woods, and every moment before. Why he had to stop wanting more, when more would never be in the cards for him. He knew that. He’d known that before Sadie Miller had blown into his life like a windstorm and rearranged his existence. Made him think that maybe everything he’d believed about his life, about himself, had been a lie.
Which was a whole lot crueler than never having hope had ever been.
For one moment, he’d thought he could do it. Thought he could punch the hell out of a guy who deserved it, thought he could sneak into the woods for a
moment alone with the only woman who’d ever driven him that crazy.
Thought he could go to sleep with her every night and wake up with her every morning.
“Good sex, Eli?” she asked. “Really? Good sex? Because I think, I mean, I pretty freaking well think what we have is a lot more than that. I mean, I think we’d both had good sex before we ever met each other, and that...this is something else entirely. What we share is something else.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It can’t happen.” He wanted to lash out. To blame someone other than himself. He was so tired of carrying it all. And this was just another failure. “It seems like when you’re around barns tend to burn down,” he said. “You have a knack for spreading disaster, I guess.”
“Eli, please don’t do this. Not now, not... Please.”
“Sadie, I can’t afford any more distractions,” he said, the words scraping his throat raw. “And that’s all this was. All you are to me is a distraction.”
She stumbled backward and he felt like his heart lurched through his chest to follow her, leaving nothing but a bloody, vacant hole behind. This felt like he thought dying might. But he couldn’t take the words back now.
He wouldn’t.
It was the right thing to do. Other men could have wives and kids. Other men with other lives.
Not him. Never him.
“Well,” she said, her voice thick as she put distance between them. “Don’t let me distract you any longer.”
She turned and walked back in the direction of the B and B, which he only thought of as hers now. What a difference a few weeks made.
But he couldn’t afford the difference, and neither could any of the people who depended on him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SADIE DIDN’T SLEEP AT ALL. She spent the whole night out on her newly stained deck, a mug of coffee clutched tightly in her hand, tears rolling down her face as she slowly accepted what had happened. As she slowly accepted what she’d let herself do.
She loved Eli Garrett.
He was the first person she’d loved since she’d lost hope in her family a decade ago and run out of town.
He was the first person she’d been close to in as many years, if not more. If not ever.