Chapter Seventy-One
Isla
Feeling like a voyeur, I watched them.
I watched him.
Linc.
Gut-wrenching sobs coming out of him, clinging to his father, he broke every single piece of me.
I couldn’t do this.
I couldn’t do this to him.
My own tears falling, they made cold streaks across my cheeks as the air-conditioning chilled more than my face.
My heart hurt, my soul wept, and not one word in that journal had a fix for this—I’d looked.
I’d looked all damn week at hundreds of sayings and paragraphs of advice, but nothing told me how to not break a young man if I broke.
Will was everything I’d ever wanted. He fit my ragged soul so perfectly, I no longer felt the sharp edges, but I couldn’t risk putting Linc through another loss.
I wouldn’t do that to him.
I had to leave now, before either of us got any more attached. It would hurt, but not as much as it would a month or a year from now. This was best. I knew it was. Because the alternative was unacceptable. I would not risk doing that to him.
Linc needed to live his life, a beautiful life. Without me.
Will needed a woman who was… whole.
He needed—
Choking on my own sob, I quickly stepped away from the glass slider that was separating my heart and soul from my body. I needed to go.
I needed to go now.
Me and my backpack. One foot in front of the other.
I could do this.
I am strong. I am safe.
I needed to do this.
My feet already moving, my tears free-falling, my brain taking over, I was in the giant walk-in closet, pulling clothes off hangers in the dark before I could think twice.
Then I was grabbing my backpack and shoving everything inside as I rushed into the bathroom.
A minute later, I had all my stuff crammed into a pack I hadn’t thought about in what felt like a lifetime.
But as I shouldered it, the familiar heaviness settled, and for one second, I breathed in deep.
Except that feeling, that weightless emotion of freedom, the endless possibilities that came with it and made your head float, and your heart beat with the kind of hope that was contagious…
It didn’t come.
Not even the security of having everything I needed on my back came.
No easy breaths.
No sense of being free.
No thoughts that were absent of every step I’d taken in life.
All I felt was… heavy. The kind of heaviness that came from carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders by yourself instead of sharing it with two green-eyed blonds, but I couldn’t think about that now.
Jamming my feet into my boots, not bothering to lace them, I quickly made my way down the hall, telling myself not to look.
Do not look out the glass sliders.
Don’t do it, Isla.
Don’t even walk that way.
Avoid.
I snuck through the kitchen, I walked adjacent to the dining room, I headed toward the garage… and I almost made it.
My heart already in my throat, my body trembling, I grabbed the handle on the back door, but then I glanced up.
My sightline obstructed, the house dark, the distance immeasurable, I still saw them.
A warfighter and his son.
Will’s arm under Linc’s head, his hand holding his shoulder, two heads of blond hair.
They both looked up at the sky.
Will pointed at something.
Linc swiped at his face.
I took a mental snapshot.
Then I walked out the door.