Chapter 23
The love she has for me is so deep and wide, but I’ve failed that love. I have a bad feeling we pushed it too far this time. That our crimes are about to catch up with us. In another time, maybe I could have given her a love to last a lifetime, not just a few happy years.
—Austin Wilder’s journal, June 10, 1867
T hey wouldn’t let Millie back to see him right away, and she was vibrating with rage by the time she was told she could go in.
Heather had been blowing up her phone ever since news of the incident had gotten out.
She was threatening to put together an angry mob, complete with torches to break him out.
Millie was just going to give the cops the scolding of a lifetime. Nobody wanted an angry librarian’s finger in their face. And she was about to go completely off.
When Officer Jamison met her in the hall, he put his hands up in a defensive gesture. “He’s going to be out in a few minutes. I had the mayor screaming that I had to arrest him. There wasn’t a lot else I could do.”
“Well. . . .”
She hated that he was sort of right about that.
He led her back toward the holding cell, and there was Austin, standing right in the center of it, the bars crossing his handsome features. She wanted to burst into tears at the sight of him, but she tried to hold them back. Still, she felt her lips quiver and her throat get tight.
“You didn’t need to come here,” he said.
And then she did lose her grip on a couple of tears, because what else could she do?
“How could I not come here? I had to come and get you.”
He looked pained but didn’t say anything as Jamison unlocked the cell and let him out.
“That’s it?”
“I called the county, and they just think it’s silly, so I’m going to let you go. Now if someone had an issue, it’s with the DA. Not me.”
She couldn’t really fault Jamison for trying to cover his rear. Because Michael and Danielle were petty.
But they’d better not cause an issue, or....
The feeling of not having power was a terrible one.
She was a Talbot, but that had never given her any clout before.
Not the kind they wielded.
No. But she did have influence. She could influence people the way her mother had.
With firm and unwavering kindness. Because her mother had been kind, but she also hadn’t let people get away with nonsense. She was no pushover. She pushed back when it was necessary. But not in the ways that Danielle and Michael did, making petty power grabs.
As soon as Austin stepped out of the cell, she rushed forward and wrapped her arms around him. He didn’t hug her back.
He looked tired.
“Austin. . . .”
“Let’s go,” he said.
He didn’t take her hand, he didn’t say goodbye to Officer Jamison either, but she couldn’t really blame him. And she wasn’t going to go getting all weird about manners or anything.
“I drove your truck over,” she said, pointing to the vehicle as they stepped outside.
He realized he must’ve left his keys somewhere.
“I actually found them on the ground,” she said. “Your keys.” He looked spooked that she had read him so easily.
She handed him the keys, then went around to the passenger side.
“I’m going to take you home,” he said.
“Okay. You can stay.”
“I can’t stay.”
“Austin, will you please talk to me?”
“There’s nothing to say. That wasn’t a onetime thing. That’s the state of things. Great. I’m out. But what’s going to happen next to put me back in?”
“You’re not going to get arrested. That was weird, and he was being—”
“Agreed. But I’m Austin Wilder, and no matter what we discover, nothing is ever going to change that. You’re Millie Talbot. And everybody is always going to find the two of us to be some kind of object of fascination. Or something to poke at. And you don’t deserve that treatment.”
“You just ordered Michael not to tell me what I deserve. Now it’s your turn. You don’t get to tell me what I deserve.”
He started the truck engine and began to drive toward her house. She felt panic clawing at her breast. He was trying to end it. She knew he was.
“Austin, I love you.”
He didn’t say anything. The only sound was the truck engine, the tires on the road. They passed the bar, the neon sign, and she wished they could go inside. And that it would be a different day. A different moment. Maybe a couple of weeks ago, and they would go dancing.
As long as it wasn’t now. But they’d always been heading toward this moment. Toward the end. She wanted to go back to the middle. She wanted to go back to a time when she didn’t know what was going to happen. She wanted to go back to when she could imagine that they might be able to love each other from now until forever.
“Austin, please,” she said.
“Millie, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And you know that. Bad boy, good girl—it’s a great idea, it’s a great love song, it’s a great book. But it’s not a great life, for people who are as different as you and me.”
“No,” she said. “No, no. Because we aren’t different. We’re the same. We lie in bed at night reading books, and we think about why people do things, and we both love it here, even though it can be a difficult place to live. We never run out of things to talk about. We are not that different from each other. We are more the same than I have ever been with any of those other people. With Michael, with Danielle. I love you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I’m never going to be able to give you the things you need. I want to. I do. I wanted to figure out how to be that guy. But when I looked at your face after I punched him and realized how badly everything was fucked up, I understood that I can’t make all those set pieces fall into place. And that’s what they were in my head. Set pieces. It wasn’t real. I don’t know the first thing about having a happy family. I did my best to piece one together, but my dad was useless, and my mother didn’t love us. There are only two outcomes when it comes to loving a man like me. You leave like my mom because you can’t stand it anymore, or you stay. And the staying just about kills you too. Because what did Katherine Wilder get for her loyalty?”
“But the thing is,” she said, her heart beating hard, tears sliding down her cheeks, “you’re not him . And you never were. It was always wrong for the town to make you feel that way. Always. And you knew it. In your heart you knew it. So why are you giving in now?”
“It’s not the town. It’s my own mother. She left us. Because she knew. She knew that it was a dead end. That we were.”
“But you aren’t. Look at you. You’re alive, and that was supposed to mean something to you. I thought your thirty-fifth birthday mattered. I thought. . . .”
“I wanted it to. But this arrest reminded me of who I really am. I can’t spend my life waiting for the other shoe to drop, Millie.”
He pulled up to the front of her house. And she sat. Because she couldn’t face getting out of the car, because when she got out of the car, then they were over, and this breakup was real.
“But didn’t we mean something?”
He swallowed so hard, she could hear it. He was staring straight ahead. “Yes. The worst part is that we did.”
That was what did it. That was what propelled her to unbuckle her seat belt. To get out of the car.
Because what could she say to that? He wasn’t denying the reality of what they were to each other. He just didn’t want to take the commitment on.
She could almost understand. Because there was a heaviness to this loss. It wasn’t insubstantial. It also didn’t feel like the grief she had experienced after losing her parents, or the pain she had felt when her relationship with Michael had broken up. It felt like a deep cavern of sorrow that existed alongside those other things. She was mourning the end of the growth she had experienced with him, the love she still felt for him.
“I guess I was right,” she said.
“About what?”
“When I warned all those girls away from you back then. It was because I was afraid you would break their hearts. You broke mine. So I guess I knew more than I thought I did.”
She got out of the car and stumbled to her front door. She unlocked it, and everything felt as though it was moving in slow motion. While he was just sitting there watching her.
She went inside and closed the door behind her, leaning up against it, dead-bolting it. Then she pressed her hands to her face and held in a scream that wanted so badly to escape.
She had lost so many people, so many things. Watched so many of her hopes and dreams shatter.
But this was the worst. Because it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Because they were good for each other. Because she did love him.
Because at least losing your parents was the natural order of things, even if she had lost hers before she wanted to.
There was nothing natural about this. Nothing right.
They were supposed to be together. They were. And he wasn’t going to let it happen.
She felt like she was being stabbed in the chest. She felt like she was dying.
Because she truly loved him. And it wasn’t a matter of finding another man someday so she could get married.
She wanted Austin.
That wasn’t going to change.
And nobody would ever be him. Not ever.
He was her one and only outlaw.
He was her hero. And she didn’t have him anymore.