17. Sawyer #2
I get up and pull on Owen’s sweatshirt before opening the bedroom door.
Mom’s asleep on the couch, the TV still on. I move quietly through the cottage, carefully avoiding the creaky floor board in the kitchen, and ease the front door open just enough to slip through.
Knox is sitting on the hood of his Jeep.
He’s in sweats and a dark Henley, his elbows on his knees as he stares out at the driveway. He doesn’t turn around when I come out but I know he hears me. He always hears me.
I cross the small patch of dried grass between the front door and the driveway and stop a few feet away. The night air is cool and damp, the kind that feels so much colder after a day of summer heat. Crickets chirp and a dog barks in the distance.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.”
He finally looks at me, his eyes raking over my body, taking in Owen’s sweatshirt.
I climb up onto the hood beside him, leaving a few inches of space between us.
The metal is still warm from his drive over.
We sit there, looking at nothing in particular—the dark tree line, the empty road, a moth circling the porch light behind us.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I ask.
“No.” His knee bounces, making the Jeep shake.
“Me neither.” I pull my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. “I fell asleep for a little while. But I had a weird dream.”
“About what?”
I think about lying, but I don’t have the energy. “When I was thirteen. That thing with Rachel and Chase Henderson.”
He goes still. I’m sure he remembers. He has the memory of an elephant.
“You called me spineless,” I say.
“I said ‘no backbone.’” The corner of his mouth shifts. “Different thing.”
“It really isn’t.”
He looks back out at the road, and his knee starts back up. “I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
It’s the closest thing to an apology I’ve gotten from him in years. Maybe ever. It does something to my chest.
“You weren’t wrong, though,” I say.
He’s quiet. No argument, no comeback. I’ll take it.
I stare at the trees, wondering if I should mention Ella’s texts. I want to. I intend to. But I don’t think now’s the time. I’ve been carrying the weight of them since yesterday and it’s killing me. I don’t want Knox to have that burden. Not yet, at least. Not until we get through Owen’s funeral.
Night settles around us. It’s peaceful here next to him. Not uncomfortable, like sitting in silence would be with some people. It feels natural. For the first time in a while, I’m not thinking about the accident.
I should probably brace myself for Knox to do or say something hurtful again. That’s the pattern. Warmth and then the rug pulled out. I know better than to let my guard down completely.
But he’s quiet for a long stretch, and when his knee stills, I turn to him.
“Do you ever think about that summer?” He pauses, looking out toward the road more than at me. “Before your dad’s arrest.”
My breath catches.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think about it all the time.’
He nods slowly.
“I think about what would have happened if he never…” He stops, squeezing his fists together. “If things were different.”
The words hang in the night air between us. I don’t breathe.
There are a hundred ways I could respond. So many things I could say that would either shut him down or crack this conversation wide open. I feel the options all lined up inside me, pressing against my teeth.
“I do too,” I say, so quiet it’s almost a whisper.
He turns to look at me. His gaze is so intense—the way it was on the ride, the way it was when we spoke alone at Wonder World, the way he’s been watching and stopping himself from watching for years. But now, in the dark, at 2 AM, he looks completely unguarded and it’s…a lot to take in.
I stare at his lips. Picturing the way they felt on me yesterday. The pull to touch him is so strong, I’m almost shaking.
He sees it. Of course he does.
His eyes drop to my mouth for just a second before he looks away, grinding his teeth, and staring somewhere over my shoulder into the night. The muscle in his throat moves as he swallows.
“Sawyer.”
There’s so much restraint in that one word. It kills me.
“I know,” I say. And I truly do. Owen. Ella. All of it sitting between us like a wall neither of us is supposed to climb. I’m the one who said never again. I need to keep my word.
He reaches out and I think he’s going to pull me in, close the distance, finish what keeps starting and stopping between us. And despite everything, I’d let him. I’m weak. The pull is too strong.
His thumb traces once along my cheekbone the way he did in the entryway yesterday. It’s barely a touch. He’s being careful with me and that makes me want him that much more.
He drops his hand and jumps down.
“Go inside.” He sounds seconds away from changing his mind. “Please.”
That gets me.
I slide off the hood. We’re standing close enough that I have to tilt my chin up to look at him. His hands are back in his pockets, which I’m starting to understand is what Knox does when he doesn’t trust them.
One of us needs to be the responsible one right now and it’s clearly going to have to be me.
“Goodnight, Knox.”
He exhales slowly through his nose. “Night, Thorne.”
I make myself turn around. One foot in front of the other across the damp grass, up the wooden porch steps, through the door. I don’t look back because I know if I do, I won’t keep walking.
Inside, I lean against the closed door, listening to his engine turn over, standing there until the sound fades completely down the road and there’s nothing left.
I reach up and glide my finger over the path he traced on my cheek, but of course I feel nothing. It’s not the same without him.
Back in my bed, I toss and turn. This will be my last night here in the cottage. My last night in the place Owen picked for us. I wonder if Knox is leaving Lake Mercer tomorrow too. I should have asked.
I think about Owen’s texts. Knox’s thumb on my cheek. How I’ll have to stand next to both of them soon. One in a casket. One in a suit. And I still don’t know which one I understand less.
There’s too many things left unsaid. I don’t sleep at all.