CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Sutton
In the distance I hear the roar of a jet overhead. It’s too early for commercial flights so I know it’s him. Callahan Sharpe. My Johnnie Walker.
I love you.
Those three words repeat in my head just as they were on the tip of my tongue when he looked over his shoulder and met my eyes one last time.
I know he wasn’t called back early for meetings.
I know because if that were the case, Ledger would have told me that when I talked to him last night on the phone. When I set up a meeting with him in the office in Manhattan for the coming week.
Callahan left to make it easier on him . . . on me . . . on what? I have no idea.
While I’m hurting, I’m almost grateful to him for doing it this way. Long goodbyes are brutal and he just saved us that.
But he also proved to me that I’m right in my decision.
That I need to put myself first, because with Callahan Sharpe, I’d be at his whim. I’d be the one left behind when things got too real, and he didn’t know how to deal with them.
I pick up my phone to text Lizzy, to tell her what just happened, but my fingers don’t move.
Maybe I don’t want to believe it yet. Maybe I need to just sit in the silence for a bit more and have the moment to myself to realize this really is over. That he really is gone.
That I really did love him.
“Goodbye, Callahan,” I whisper into the silence. “Thank you for helping me find me again. Thank you for loving me regardless.”