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)
“You can’t just hang around Sawyers Bend, waiting to rescue me from my fuckups,” I said.
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “First of all, none of those things were your fuckups. And second, I can go anywhere I want to. You can’t tell me where I can live.”
“And what if I tried? What if I asked you to leave?”
Forrest let out a huff of air. “I don’t know. I love you, Sterling. I think I love you more now than I did when we were together. I know more about you now.”
A bitter gust of a laugh sprung from my chest. “If you know more, I’m surprised it didn’t make you fall out of love.”
He shook his head, his eyes sad. “The irony is that if you’d trusted me enough back then to show me the things I’ve learned since, I would have come clean a lot sooner.”
“Way to make it my fault that you lied,” I muttered.
He sat as straight as he could under the low ceiling. “That’s not what I meant. It’s my fault. I was wrong. But it’s also the truth. I didn’t understand. I saw you that first day at the inn and—” He swallowed, staring at the rough beam above his head. “You dazzled me. You’re so fucking beautiful. Funny and crazy smart. You were dazzling, and I didn’t see. I didn’t see how much my lies would hurt you. I didn’t think I could hurt you at all. And then I was so in love, I couldn’t do a decent risk/reward analysis because I couldn’t tolerate the idea of losing you. And I didn’t know how much you needed the truth.”
He fell silent. So did I. I didn’t have anything to say. I wanted to yell at him, everybody needs the truth, but I knew what he meant. I liked to act like I didn’t have any vulnerabilities, like I didn’t have a soft, mushy center. Sterling Sawyer was solid badass, all the way to my core.
But that was a fucking lie. I’d loved Forrest more than I’d ever loved anyone, except maybe Darcy and Parker and Quinn and Griffen. But I’d never let Forrest in enough to see my truth. To see how much need I held inside me. How much I needed him to love me. How much I needed his devotion, his loyalty. I needed it like water on parched soil. Like the sun after the winter.
I needed everything he had to give me so fucking badly, and I hadn’t let him see it at all. I could give a thousand excuses—it was the way I was raised; we didn’t show vulnerability in our house, not unless we wanted to be punished for it. And that was true. But it was also bullshit. Because I loved him. I loved Forrest. And if I loved him, didn’t he deserve to see all of me? Shouldn’t I have trusted him enough?
But I hadn’t. And then, when he lied, I’d punished him for it as if he’d known everything all along.
I let out a long sigh, pulling my knees up to rest my forehead on them. “God, we fucked this up.”
“Yeah, we did,” Forrest said, and I realized I’d spoken aloud.
My lips parted, and I almost asked, “Can we start again?” But I clamped my mouth shut. It was the heat and the dark. I was tired. I needed a nap. I grasped for excuses.
It was too late for us. It had to be too late for us, didn’t it?
The slam of a car door struck our ears. Slowly, Forrest uncoiled his long frame and shuffled to the small window at the end of the attic.
“They’re leaving,” he said.
“What do we do?” I asked when he came back.
“We go down and keep searching the boathouse. Maybe my father wrote something on one of the beams.”
“Maybe,” I said. “It’s worth a look, I guess.” I wasn’t ready to accept that the boathouse was a dead end. We hadn’t had a chance to search thoroughly before we fled to the attic. Maybe the next clue was waiting for us on the side of a beam or hidden underneath one of the benches. My heart started to pound in anticipation once more. “We have to find it.”
After a peek through the hole in the attic floor, Forrest called, “All clear,” and we climbed down the wooden ladder.
Forrest surveyed the inside of the boathouse. “Grab that step stool and check the beams on that side,” he ordered. “I’m going to check out those built-in benches by the door. I think I remember that my father built them. The life jackets hung above them.”
I watched him get on his back to examine the underside of the benches before I climbed up on the step stool to examine the beams running the width of the boathouse. They were old, weathered, draped in cobwebs in the corners, unadorned except by nature. Alan hadn’t left his clue on the beams.