Chapter 38
Sometimes Not Enough
SARAH
The road out was plowed while we were in the conference room, our hopes for an extra night wiped away like the snow.
We left right after the truck came through, beating the mass exodus to come after the final luncheon.
None of the three of us spoke for a good hour as Jamie navigated the barely-cleared roads.
The tail end of the blizzard was still going, though it wasn’t white-out conditions anymore, just whipping snow and wind that made the truck shudder from time to time.
Jamie had told me the night before that he had some friends who’d attended the farewell luncheon we skipped. They assured him the blowhard in the breakfast line’s story was far more scandalous than ours.
“He got fired the night before. But he was so drunk he didn’t remember in the morning,” Jamie said. “His word is worth nothing.”
It helped. A little.
When I looked back at Sam in the backseat though, his face was contorted in guilt.
“You doing okay back there?” I asked.
He nodded. Then said, “Sarah, I’m so sorry. Jamie—”
“No,” Jamie’s voice was firm. It was the same as when he first got in. Jamie told him then he had nothing to be sorry for, and so did I. Sam still couldn’t get over it.
I put a hand on Jamie’s arm, but turned to smile at Sam. “Hey, listen to me. You’re a good one, okay? Neither of us thinks any differently. We’re the ones who didn’t set the best example at the conference.”
He shook his head. “I don’t care about any of that. Hell, you guys showed me you can be crazy successful and have a good time, too.”
I laughed, even as heat flooded my cheeks.
After another two hours of driving—and two hours of true crime podcasts, in which Jamie had to grasp my hand at the scariest parts, not for me, but for him—he pulled his truck into the driveway of the Four Winds B to flutter into the blustering wind.
But I closed the door. I never knew until that moment, that even the biggest love was sometimes not enough.