With the last few things in my arms, I looked to the blankets Sawyer had bought, folded on the bed, and walked from the room.
“Rae, come on—”
“I’ll be waiting,” I said softly, then looked into his anxious stare. “Once you ask Megan and start planning . . . I’ll be waiting for that invitation.”
He nodded and blew out a slow breath, resigning to the knowledge that he couldn’t keep me there.
Halfway down the stairs, I hesitated when I saw Beau Dixon waiting for me at the bottom.
“You’re terrifying,” I muttered when I reached the last step, but couldn’t meet his stare. “But your home is beautiful and so is your family. Thank you for letting people like me use it.”
“Was he right?” Beau asked when I started past him.
I stopped and swayed when that rush of pain hit me. Looking over my shoulder, I blinked the tears away and asked, “Does it matter?” Once I made it to the door, I faced him again and said, “If he would’ve thought back through everything I’d told him about my life and my faults, he would’ve known the truth. The fact that he didn’t means he was waiting for this to end just as much as I was.”
Outside, Savannah and the kids were by my car.
Quinn was crying.
And for some reason, that little girl whose name I couldn’t even remember throughout most of the trip broke me all over again.
I hugged her and Wyatt tight after putting the last of my things in the back of my car, and tried to find the strength to hold myself together when Quinn asked, “You’ll come back tomorrow, right? And we can bake all the things again? You can have the spoon, Wyatt said so!”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Life’s complicated sometimes. But if I were to ever go back anywhere . . . it would be here. I promise you.”
I released her and looked to Savannah, who was waiting solemnly by my door with a bag of brownies.
“You could stay,” she said soft enough to give the false sense that we couldn’t be overheard. “We could go talk about what happened, try to figure it out. You could take a couple days before deciding—”
“I’m sorry,” I said before she could continue . . . before her plea could weaken my resolve. “I know you’re worried about him but, trust me, this is what he wants.”
Her face pinched with concern. “He isn’t the one breaking right now, Rae.”
“I’ll be fine,” I tried to assure her, but the words sounded pathetic, even to me. “I always am.”
With a gentle hug, I climbed into my car and pulled away from Blossom.
The whirlwind of memories from my time in Amber washed over me as I navigated out of downtown and then the town altogether . . .
Twenty minutes later, I pulled off onto the side of the long stretch of road and grabbed my phone. My hands shook and my mind screamed that everything about this was wrong as I went through my social media accounts, blocking Sawyer, Emberly, Faith, and Gavin before tapping out a text to Sawyer.
A weighted breath filled with devastation and defeat fell from my lips as I blocked his contact completely, then dropped my phone in my bag, and began driving again.
Me: I will never forget you. I’m so sorry for everything. Goodbye.
Chapter 36
Sawyer
A heavy sigh announced her arrival seconds before she flopped onto the ground beside me, arms spread wide so her fingers brushed where my arms were tightly folded over my chest.
“Nine years,” she said after a minute.
I grunted.
Nearly another minute passed before she spoke again. When she did, her tone was softer but held so much more meaning. “Two weeks . . .”
“Shut up, Em.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Not today.”
I was laying in the exact spot I’d been in when Emberly had texted me two weeks before, letting me know that Rae had just arrived at Brewed and was crying. When I read her message, I’d wanted to stay in this spot, not moving, trying to digest what Rae had told me and what that Jack guy had informed me of.
But I’d found myself in my truck, tearing away from the hidden spot Leighton and I used to steal away to and racing to Brewed . . . only to storm in as Rae yelled at Emberly and her mom.
Letting her truths come spilling out as she destroyed and shamed two women who meant the world to me. As she revealed the real reason she was in Amber.
“Don’t fall in love with me.”
Rae’s demand had finally made sense.
Because she’d been lying. Because she really hadn’t planned to stay, she’d only been there to confront her mom. Because she was Emberly’s sister . . . and had known. Because she was fucking engaged.
“Well, then, when?” Emberly demanded, grounding me in the present as she sat up so she could look down at me. “Since she left, it’s been not today.”
“Today’s about Leighton,” I reminded her, in case she’d forgotten in the last minute.
“Every day is about Leighton.”
I slowly turned my head to look at her. “That isn’t fair.”
“I know,” she said on a breath. “You know, Rae said something the night on the ranch—she said that Leighton was talked about a lot.”
I clenched my jaw tight so I wouldn’t respond, watching as Emberly’s head bobbed.
“I’d told her it was just because she was here and, at the time, I thought it was. But I’ve been thinking since she left . . . that was only the rest of the town. Everything with us and your family comes back to Leighton.”
“What . . . you’re saying I’m the reason Rae left? Because of Leighton?” I asked incredulously since she and I both knew it couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Oh, you are absolutely the reason she left, and you know it. You told her to leave,” she added when a harsh breath punched from my lungs. “But y’all were both the reason y’all wouldn’t have worked, and you’ve been walking around town, pissed off at everyone, blaming her for it.”
Something like a laugh or a moan of frustration built in my chest. “I can’t do this today, Em. Seriously. Not today.”
“From the day you met her, you compared her to Leighton in different ways,” she continued, as though I’d never spoken.
“Emberly,” I said in warning.
“The food. The way she made you feel and forget. Things you wanted with her that you hadn’t wanted with Leighton,” she said pointedly. “Not that Rae shouldn’t have known about her, because the person you love should know about your life. But you, your brother, Savannah, and I put a lot on her by endlessly bringing up Leighton and what she meant to you. We were all continuously, unknowingly, pushing Rae to live up to someone who died nine years ago—even before y’all were . . . well, anything.”
“I wasn’t,” I said firmly. “I never wanted her to be anything remotely close to Leighton.”
Emberly waited a while before gently saying, “We kinda were, Saw. Think about it, you’ll see how.” She touched my arm when I looked toward the sky, her brows drawn together in concern. “And maybe, because of what you knew about her history and what you went through with Leighton, you were more prepared for the goodbye than you should’ve been.”
“Em, you’re out of your damn mind if you think I wanted her to leave.”
She scooted closer, bending forward so her hushed words could be heard on the breeze. “I think you were so ruined by what Leighton did that you couldn’t handle someone like Rae taking herself from you too. I think you would’ve done anything to make her stay, just as you did everything to be the one to end it.”
“You’re wrong.”
Her expression clearly showed she didn’t believe me. “She loved you.”
“She’s engaged.”
“She isn’t,” she argued, sitting back and jamming her fingers into her hair as she let out an irritated sound.
We’d had this argument countless times—usually as she tried to get me to stop and talk while
I told her to leave it alone.
“You know what I don’t get?” I asked, sitting up and causing Emberly to shift backward to give me room. “After what she did to you and your mom, you’ve been on her side.”
Her shoulders sagged a bit, and nearly a minute passed in silence before she admitted, “It hurt. It was humiliating, especially because it was in front of so many people, but it would’ve gotten out to the entire town regardless.”
“Not like that.”
“Not like that,” she agreed. “But even as it was happening, I was just as mad at my mom as I was at Rae.” She gestured to her chest in that way she did when she was so overwhelmed by things, she didn’t know how to handle it. “I wanted to defend my mom. I wanted to stop Rae from doing what she was. But I didn’t know how to respond when I was horrified that my mom not only left her own daughter with a man she told me was so abusive she thought he would kill her, but then named me after her.”
Right.
That.
As if the guys saying Rae and Emberly looked alike hadn’t been enough—they’d ended up actually being sisters with the same name.
Mindfuck.
“It would’ve been disturbing if she’d named me after a daughter who had passed. But to name me after one she abandoned?” Emberly continued, looking away as she did. “I just kept thinking, why was it okay to leave Rae and not me? And then I couldn’t help but think that Rae must’ve had those same thoughts and how much that had to hurt her.”
“I’d just heard about her family the night before,” I said. “I obviously didn’t know who they were, but I couldn’t understand how people could keep abandoning their daughter, or pawning off their relative to the next family member. How people could tell her over and over that she was a burden. But Rae doesn’t hold any resentment for them. Or, well, the rest of them.” I met Emberly’s stare and gave her a knowing look. “What your mom did was fucked up. I thought that before I ever knew Rae’s dad was abusive. But she didn’t know the domino-effect of abandonment and hatred that would follow, and Rae blames her for all of it.”
“Kinda like how you blame Rae for everything?” she mumbled, one eyebrow raised in defiance.
I blew out a slow breath, ignoring the jab, and said, “I just don’t understand how you can be on her side.”
“She didn’t know I existed and found out in an extremely jarring way. If I were her, I think I would hate me for having the life she should’ve had and probably wanted.” She sat back and shrugged, the movement fragile and showing all her vulnerabilities. “And, I don’t know . . . she might, but it didn’t feel that way.” The way her words trailed off screamed how much time Emberly had spent wondering exactly that—worrying over it.
As much as it should’ve been, it wasn’t comforting to know I wasn’t the only one trying to figure out what had been real with Rae Jacobs before she disappeared.
“There were times she was short and closed off, yes,” she continued. “But there were also times—including that last night and the morning before it all went to shit—that she was amazing and funny and open. Why would I take up against her?”
“For dumping all your mom’s skeletons in the middle of Brewed and not giving a shit,” I said soberly before laying down again.
Seconds later, Emberly leaned over me, peering down at me with a frustrated look. “I know you can’t get past this whole Rae’s-engaged bullshit, but it isn’t true, so I need you to stop being an asshole for a minute and try to so that you can see the situation.”
“I think I’d rather you just hit me and get it over with.”
“I’m strongly considering it,” she said in low warning but continued on. “You walked away from Rae at a bad time and left her crying. If you remember, I was trying to get you to go to her. Yes, the engagement thing happened, but I have sources, so I know how she reacted to it, and I also saw her when she came to me. I heard her. She was panicked and frantically trying to find you to make sure you didn’t believe something that clearly wasn’t true.”
I started to remind her we had no way of knowing that, but she sank her fist into my side and spoke over me.
“Then the woman she’d spent a lifetime resenting appeared in front of her.” She looked at me expectantly. “What happened with her and my mom was very public and very harsh, I know. But what she’d gone through in those hours? That’s a lot, Sawyer. People react harshly when a lot is weighing on them—my best friend happens to be one of those people.”
I slanted a glare at her before looking away, taking in everything she’d said and absorbing it.
“Do you really think she’s engaged?” she asked softly.
Those three pictures flashed through my mind again, as they had so often over the past two weeks. Emberly already knew about them. I’d shown them to her to get the drink that day.
If I had never seen them, I could’ve answered no without hesitation.
But I had.
“With the way she flipped out on Faith, the pictures I was sent, and different things she said and did . . . everything points to yes. It makes sense, Em.”
“I asked if you thought she was,” she said, a hint of curiosity weaving through her otherwise somber voice.
“No,” I admitted for the first time since Rae had left. “She wouldn’t be tied down like that. She wouldn’t—” I stopped before I could continue with the thoughts rushing to the surface and lifted a hand before letting it fall to my stomach. “I don’t know . . . I don’t know if I even really knew her.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” she said on a groan as she lay down.
We stayed that way without speaking, lost in our own thoughts—mine on Rae, as they had been before Emberly had shown, even though I’d come here to think about Leighton.
After a while, I said, “She’s gone dark.”
A questioning hum rumbled in Emberly’s chest, but she didn’t respond otherwise.
“Rae. She’s gone dark.”
“I’m not . . . yeah, I don’t think I’m following you,” she said slowly.
“I was at the ranch the morning after she left, having breakfast with Hunter and Mom and helping get everything ready for the first day of peach picking,” I began, not that that was news to her. “He told me Rae had come to the ranch before she left town, looking for me. Said she’d been crying. That’s when I remembered something Rae had mentioned about not letting people know where she’d gone, so I tried to check on her . . .”
Her words were a pained whisper when she said, “That’s when you realized she’d blocked you.”
“Yeah. I was posting from the orchard’s social media pages that peach picking was open, so I tried to find her through those accounts. When I did . . . I got so fucking pissed by the whole thing that I just walked away. Last weekend, I checked on her again . . . and realized she hadn’t posted since she was here.”
I’d scrolled through her weeks here, trying to figure out how that girl had gotten under my skin so damn fast only to destroy everything within a second.
And yet, even through my anger and pain, I couldn’t help but study those daily pictures from her time here.
Pictures of her. Her laptop. Coffee. Books. Barbecue and jars of honey.
Random things around town that never identified where she was, but always made me feel like I was right there with her.
Probably because I had been for most of them.
All of which stopped the day before she left.
“Checked again today,” I said numbly, “still nothing. Probably for the best though.” A defeated huff left me. “Probably would’ve hurt more if she’d just moved on.”
“Or maybe you’re an idiot, and you need to see that she’s just as wrecked by this as you are.”
“Rae doesn’t get wrecked over men. She doesn’t let them affect her at all,” I said as I pushed to stand. I took a few steps away before turning to look at where Emberly was sitting up, watching me. “Doesn’t matter though, because she isn�
�t my type . . . right? She’s just a girl who doesn’t matter. Who doesn’t mean anything.”
My next laugh was sharper, fueled by the anger that had filled me these past weeks, and so clearly a mask to conceal my lies and pain as I headed to my truck.
That girl had stumbled into my life before quickly becoming it.
Everyone knew it.
And I was terrified nothing would change it.
Chapter 37
Rae
“Hey.” The word came out all kinds of hesitant as I stepped into the kitchen, interrupting a hushed conversation between the couple.
I would have tried to back quietly away without the disruption, except Nathan had already seen me before I’d realized what I was walking in on.
“Hey!” Megan said as she turned in her chair. “I didn’t realize you would be up so early. Did we wake you?”
“No, I’ve actually been awake for a while.” I pointed behind me, toward the hall I’d just come from. “I figured you’d still be asleep, so I was writing.” Taking a step in the direction I’d just been gesturing toward, I hurried to excuse myself. “But I can disappear for a while longer, I’m really good at that.”
“No, no,” Megan said as Nathan echoed her. “Please, come . . . sit.” A small, slightly awkward laugh tumbled from her mouth. “I still can’t believe you’re in my house, it’s all so surreal. Let me start the coffee.”
I watched as she hurried to the other side of the kitchen, my lips parted to let her know I could do it myself and feeling like I was already burdening her more than necessary, when Nathan caught my stare.
“Sit,” he said gently, gesturing with his chin toward the chairs at the small kitchen table they’d been at.
After another moment of hesitation, I did.
From about the minute I’d left Blossom, I’d been getting panicked messages from Megan.
Asking if I was okay, wanting to know what had happened, telling me what she’d heard from Nathan and how worried they were.
A handful of days later, the messages doubled when Nathan started sending them too.
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