Her eyes landed on Steven’s favorite recliner. “If I could’ve had just one chance to talk to my mom about it I know I could’ve changed her mind, made her see what she was risking.” She turned back to Sawyer with heavy-lidded eyes.
“Yeah well, none of us got the chance and we never will.”
The clock ticked.
Stella pushed herself off the couch and staggered with a head rush. She rubbed her head, searching for her shoes. “I should get going.”
“Stay.”
She smiled down at him. “I was hoping you would say that because I may never be able to go back home again.”
“Oh come on, you know that Daddy’s girl is always welcome in Daddy’s house.”
Stella folded her arms across her chest and stared down at him, indecision flickering across her face. “Did Debbie ever date anyone after…”
“No,” he replied, pulling her by the hand back to the couch.
She fell into his arms and stared up at him with her hair sprawled across his lap. “Would you have been okay with it if she had?”
He looked up to the flat screen against the wall and watched it like it was turned on. “I don’t know. Probably. The thing that gets me the most is there weren’t any huge fights or arguments going on between my mom and dad back then. Not in this house anyway.” His eyes swept across the room, watching ghosts relive the past. “Everything seemed so…perfect, and then one day it all just blew up in our faces. Gone.” Sawyer ran the back of his fingers across her cheek, the contact making her skin tingle. “It’s tough to lose that and just move on like it’s the only choice you have. Believe me, I get it.”
Stella studied his face, hedging before asking the one question she’d been saving for the right moment. “How did your mom…?”
He pulled his fingers from her cheek. “They don’t know yet, but it wasn’t suicide if that’s what you’re thinking. She hadn’t taken more than her prescription allowed for that night.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she wouldn’t do that.”
“Then what was it?”
His throat clicked when he swallowed. “I think she died from a broken heart. No, I know she did. She was never the same after that night, not even close.”
“None of us were.”
“I know, Stella, but you should have seen her – always walking around with this dazed look on her face, not caring one way or another about anything.” Sawyer barely shook his head. “She had no idea her marriage was crumbling behind her back and it hit her hard.”
“Do you hate him?”
“My dad?”
Stella nodded, her violet eyes reading his face like brail.
He stared at her for so long she was certain it was the one question he wouldn’t answer. “Sometimes, especially when I think of where you and I could’ve been today.” His smile was faint but warmed her just the same. “Together, I mean.”
“I hate my mom most of the time.”
He laughed a little. “That’s not conducive to moving on – at least that’s what my shrink said.”
She sat up, surprise opening her eyes. “You have a shrink?”
“Had a shrink,” he corrected, staring off into the TV again. “Just for a few months after the accident.” A tear pushed out from his good eye and slid over his cheek. “I loved my dad so much and to lose him like that...” He turned back to her, darkness cloaking his golden gaze. “Then I lost you too.”
“I’m so sorry, Sawyer,” she whispered, caressing his cheek. “I just...”
“I know.”
Stella looked away, regret rising in the back of her throat. “Do you want to know what the last thing I said to my mom was?”
Lines carved through his forehead. He hesitated before responding. “What?” he breathed, the look on his face contradicting his desire to know.
Stella brushed the hair from her eyes and shifted on the couch. “The night before the accident, I told her about us and she was not happy.”
His eyebrows dipped. “What? I didn’t know that.”
She wiped away a tear. “Now I know why she wasn’t happy. It was going to screw up her plans with your dad.” Her eyes drifted to a sofa table against the wall, pulse thumping in the crook of her neck. “The next morning, she was still insistent that we stop seeing each other and blamed it on Jase. Said it would break his heart but I knew that was bullshit.” Stella got silent. She twisted the water bottle, her voice falling to a grave whisper. “And just before she walked out the door to go to work, the last thing I said to my mother was that I hate her.” Stella blinked a teardrop into her lap, watching Sawyer’s blank face, a stabbing pain slicing through her. “And I never got to tell her I’m sorry.”
After a few taken aback seconds, Sawyer rested a hand on hers. “She knew you didn’t mean that and you know it.”
“I wake up every day heavy with this regret, and it haunts me whether I’m awake or not.”
Pain flashed in his eyes and, for a moment, she thought he would kick her out of his mother’s house, unable to continue associating with such a vile creature. “Come on, Stell, she knew how much you loved her. Don’t bullshit yourself. It was just the heat of the moment.”
Her faint nod lacked conviction.
He squeezed her hand. “You two were like best friends. It was just a stupid fight mixed with some bad timing. You can’t beat yourself up over that.” Sawyer brought her in for a hug and Stella wrapped a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him closer. He cradled her cheeks and turned her head to give his mouth a better angle, a hot flash quickening Stella’s pulse upon contact. In his lips, she was home. They kissed hard and it felt right. He pushed her back onto the couch and hovered above her, staring into her eyes. He was about to say something when Stella cut him off with another raw kiss. She gasped when his hand slid up her top and cupped her breast with urgency.
“Sawyer,” she breathed against his lips.
“I’ll wait for you forever if I have to,” he said, kissing her again.
Blood rushed thickly in her temples as his erection pressed against her, igniting the fire smoldering beneath the ashes inside. Stella broke their kiss for air, moaning as he nibbled on her neck and pinched her nipple between his fingers. “Please,” she begged, running her hands through his hair.
Chapter Twenty-One
FOUR YEARS AGO
Debbie was still crying over in the corner when Hank finished explaining what happened. Stella traded a wide-eyed look with Sawyer before turning back to Debbie a few seats down in the emergency room waiting area.
“Your mother is going to make it,” Hank said, drawing Stella’s blurry gaze. “Stay positive.”
She shook her head, trying to clear the fog of tragedy from, but her tears made that impossible. “Wait, why were they in the same car together?”
Hank exhaled a grave breath, his eyes black holes to nowhere. “It’s complicated, honey.”
She looked to Sawyer and nothing was getting through the shell-shocked expression blanketing his face. He was still trying to process the fact that his father just died at the age of forty-three after clipping an oncoming pickup on some two-lane highway out in the middle of nowhere.
“I don’t understand.”
“They were having an affair,” Jase muttered, staring vacantly at an empty wheelchair across the room.
Creases forged through Stella’s forehead, leaving dark lines behind. If that was true, her mother’s resistance to Sawyer would make sense and that stark realization made her shake. Stella’s last words to Sarah that morning stabbed through her mind. Stella turned back to her father, unable to get the words out. Clarity, she believed, was the only thing that could stop her world from crumbling around her feet. If she understood it, she could fix it. She managed a shallow breath and spoke in a chilled whisper. “Is that true?”
Hank opened his mouth and then closed it, letting his silence do the talking for him.
“Oh my God,” Stella muttered, co
vering her mouth.
Hank cleared his throat. “Now is not the time to be making judgments. Now is the time to stay positive. Your mother’s not out of the woods yet.”
Stella couldn’t breathe, the plastic chair numbing her back end almost as much as the shock numbing her mind. How could she have missed the signs? How did she not see her parents’ marriage spiraling down the drain? She turned to Sawyer, anger clouding her thoughts. If she hadn’t been so focused on him she could have saved her mother’s marriage and none of this would’ve ever happened. Now, Stella could only pray for the chance to apologize to her mom, to tell her how much she loves her and that she didn’t mean what she said. Sarah would understand. They could put this all behind them and start again.
Stella’s eyes jerked to Doctor Goldstein when he emerged from Sarah’s room – located directly across the hall from where Sawyer’s father was lying with a blood-stained sheet pulled up over his head. Hank, Jase and Stella popped from their chairs at the same time, chests rising and falling too quickly while Sawyer consoled his mom in the corner. Hank pulled his children against him and rubbed their arms like it was cold. Stella’s pulse pounded in her ears, drowning out Debbie’s cries, interfering with her ability to read the doctor’s exhausted face. His blue booties shuffled much slower than Stella preferred, his surgical mask hiding the truth. Hank squeezed hard when Goldstein stopped in front of them and pulled his mask down.
The gravity in the doctor’s eyes stretched his entire face like a funhouse mirror. One by one, he met each of their troubled gazes before speaking in a calm voice. “I’m sorry, there was too much internal bleeding. We couldn’t stop it.”
Hank’s legs buckled. He used Jase and Stella for support, blinking tears down his cheeks.
“What do you mean?” Stella screamed at him.
“I’m sorry, Stella.”
With a high-pitched grunt, she threw her father’s heavy arm from her shoulders and bolted down the brightly lit hallway, everything unfolding in jumpy snapshots.
“Stella!” Jase shouted, helping Hank to a chair and running after her.
But Jase was too late. The door handle to Sarah’s room was already in Stella’s hand. She tossed one last look back at what was left of her family and rushed inside the room, skidding to a horrified stop at the foot of her mother’s bed. The machines next to the bed were as quiet as the person in it. Balanced on rubbery legs, Stella stared at the bloody bed sheet clinging to the lifeless body beneath it like Saran Wrap.
Stella covered her mouth and stepped closer, heart wrenching. It couldn’t be her mother under there. It must be someone else because things like this don’t happen to her family. The hospital simply made a grave mistake. That’s all. In fact, this whole thing was one giant misunderstanding and there was only one way to prove it. She stepped closer to the bed and held her breath, ignoring the tears in her eyes. It couldn’t be.
Jase burst into the room, breathing heavily. “Stella don’t!”
She looked back at him, the bloody sheet already pinched between her fingers. The room whirled around her, everything a blur.
Jase shook his head. “Please.” His voice cracked and he held out a wet hand. “Just don’t.”
Stella held her brother’s beseeching stare, heart slamming inside her chest. She turned back to the bed, her mind already made up. Don’t worry little brother. It’s all just a mistake. She filled her lungs and pulled the sheet back until it slipped down Sarah’s chin. The world stopped spinning just long enough to give Stella a good look that crippled her from the inside out. She stopped breathing.
There was no mistake.
No way to fix this.
And no way to wake up.
Her scream echoed down the hall.
Chapter Twenty-Two
PRESENT
Stella woke up unable to breathe but she didn’t panic. It would pass. It always did. When air stubbornly crept back into her lungs, she looked over to find Sawyer sleeping next to her in his clothes from the night before. She looked down to find herself in the same boat and a relieved breath seeped from her lips. Quietly, she slid out of his childhood bed and snuck into the bathroom, avoiding her reflection at all costs. She put herself through enough already. Her head hurt and her throat was itchy. The cold tap water felt good against her face as snowballing images from last night replaced the fleeting remnants of her dream. She curled with embarrassment and dried her face on a hand towel stained with eyeliner. She ruined everything, including Tulipfest.
Exiting the bathroom, she watched Sawyer sleep as she put her coat on and grabbed her purse from an armchair. He looked so peaceful in the faint light coming through the window she used to sneak in and out of, rousing emotions inside that had turned to strangers. Other than the short hair and rippling muscles – and black eye – he almost looked the same as he did back then. That Sawyer was in there somewhere, trying to get out. Without giving herself more time to think about it, she dropped her purse into the chair and shed her coat, letting it slip to the floor with her boots. The sheets were still warm when she climbed back in bed and snuggled up next to him. Sawyer rolled over and rested an arm across her chest, his heated breath warming her cheek. To her surprise, a deep tranquility washed over her, lulling her eyelids shut once again. She exhaled a complacent sigh and let her lips curl at the corners, drifting off to a place free of the nightmares stalking her since that rainy night.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Oh my God,” Sawyer said, leaning against the headboard.
Stella lifted her heavy head from the pillow, alarm in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re still here! I can’t believe it.”
Stella blew out a breath that ruffled her tangled hair. “You drove me here, remember? I’m stuck.”
His shoulders sank. “Oh yeah.”
She laughed and it felt good, almost as good as waking up next to Sawyer for the first time in nearly four years. They stared at each other as a stripe of sunlight cut across the comforter, dividing them in two.
“You haven’t changed this place a bit.”
“I’ll be glad to unload it.” He winced when his fingertips found his swollen eye. “You hungry?” he asked, sparing her any further mention of Tulipfest.
“Not really.” On cue, her stomach growled.
Sawyer got out of bed and ran a hand through his messy hair. “Chocolate chip pancakes it is.”
*****
Downstairs, Stella tended to the scrambled eggs and bacon while Sawyer flipped pancakes on a huge griddle. She let him keep the looks he stole down the flannel shirt he loaned her, secretly enjoying the way she could still draw his smoldering eyes. It was wrong, which made it more enjoyable. His restless gaze took in her bare legs, quickening her pulse. She should have kept her pants on but Sawyer didn’t seem to mind. The silence between them was relaxed, like when they used to gaze at the stars out by the lake. Stella couldn’t remember the last lazy morning she’d spent with a man and it left her feeling like a part of something else.
The kitchen looked nothing like it did when Debbie used to make them grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch on Saturday afternoons. The cabinets were gone and the wallpaper stripped, a layer of dust coating the floor and dated appliances. Outside of the kitchen, everything was the same, including the framed photos adorning the living room walls. Stella found it sad. Sad that Debbie hung onto something that didn’t exist for so damn long and sad that she would never get the chance to escape it. Stella imagined Debbie sitting at the kitchen table, eating dinner alone, a warm plate of meatloaf where Steven used to sit at the head of the table.
“What are you thinking about?”
Her eyes jerked to Sawyer, who had swapped out last night’s outfit for some sweats and a Star Wars t-shirt.
Stella looked away, careful not to get grease on his flannel shirt. “How’s your Bigfoot comic book doing?”
Sawyer pointed a spatula at her. “My graphic novel is doing great, thank you for
asking.”
Stirring the eggs, she watched him when he wasn’t looking. “Who’s Tabitha?”
He flipped a pancake. “Tabitha?”
“The girl that Bigfoot saves out at the lake.”
A faint nod registered his understanding. “Oh, she’s a great girl.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me about her.”
He flipped another pancake, his gaze pinched. “Tabitha was in the prime of her life. Everything was going better than she ever dreamed. She had a great job, a loving family, and the best boyfriend in all of Cottage Grove.”
“Sounds like a lucky girl.”
“Then one winter night, a fire wiped out her parents’ house, leaving this black hole of misery in its wake.”
A cold chill swept through Stella’s bones. She turned off the burner under the eggs.
“Tabitha lost her family, her house, and, eventually, her boyfriend, whom she loved very much.” Sawyer found her eyes. “But that night changed her,” he whispered. “Darkness began to follow her everywhere she went and, no matter what she did, she couldn’t shake it. She became a magnet for evil.”
Stella struggled to find her voice. “Until Bigfoot saved her?”
A tight smile stretched his lips. “Until Bigfoot showed her that she was stronger than she knew, that she was never alone and never would be.”
Her pulse raced. She swallowed thickly. “And who’s Bigfoot?”
He held onto her intense gaze, lost in her eyes as much as she was in his, sharing a moment she would never forget. “A big furry creature in the woods.”
She frowned and threw a piece of scrambled egg at him that he dodged with a quick laugh. “You’re not funny.”
He turned back to the griddle and scooped the pancakes onto a plate. “I beg to differ.”
“Do you remember the time we closed the bar and took out the garbage after everyone else was gone?”
Sawyer laughed a little. “You mean the time you screamed so loud I spilt a bucket of grease on my shoes?”
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