Chapter 5
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” If that boyfriend of hers did anything to her, I’ll kill him.
“Have you seen Facebook?” She’s already pulling out her phone before I can answer.
“Facebook?” I step back to let her in. “What’s going on?”
“It’s about Sadie.” Her face is serious in a way that makes my stomach drop.
I reach for her phone. “Show me.”
She hands me her cell, and I see a post in the Sierra Rose Ridge Community Group. It was posted a few hours ago at 10:14 PM by Macy Brooks. Sadie’s employee.
My chest tightens reading it. Macy sounds excited. Proud, even.
Like she has no idea what she just did. I scroll through the comments. Hundreds of them. Mostly supportive. Friends excited for Sadie. Residents eager to feel like they’re a part of something big. Book club members confirming they suspected.
But as of 30 minutes ago, the tone shifted.
Completely.
Judith Ashford’s comment starts the downward spiral.
Two hundred and thirty-four likes. Over a hundred replies.
I keep scrolling, each comment landing heavier than the last.
“Fuck.” I hand the phone back to Isabel. “Does Sadie know?”
“I don’t know. I tried texting her, but she hasn’t responded. I hope she’s asleep and hasn’t seen anything.”
“I’m worried she’s seen the messages and turned off her phone.” I’m already grabbing my keys.
“Mateo—“
“I need to go.” I’m pulling on my boots, not bothering to change out of the gray sweats and t-shirt I slept in.
The Hendersons’ railing is due on Monday. I’m supposed to work on it all day today and finish the scrollwork on the top rail. It’s a $4,000 commission, and it’s the biggest one I’ve landed this quarter.
But none of that matters right now.
“What are you going to do?”
“Whatever she needs.”
Isabel follows me to the door. “The comments are getting worse. Judith’s calling it pornography. People are saying she’s disgraced the town. Someone even suggested boycotting Wildflower Books.”
I pause with my hand on the doorknob. “Who?”
“Does it matter?”
“It might.” Because if someone’s actively organizing against Sadie, I need to know. I need to be ready.
Isabel’s expression softens. “Just be careful. This is messy, and if you get involved, you could become a target too.”
“I don’t care.” I leave without another word, climbing into my truck and speeding away.
The drive to Sadie’s apartment takes only a matter of minutes, but the entire time, my brain is racing through the comments.
The way Judith framed it, like writing a love story with sex in it makes Sadie dangerous.
Like the woman who’s poured five years of love into this town is suddenly a threat because she put some of that love on the page.
Writing pornography set in Sierra Rose Ridge?
Bullshit.
Sadie wrote a romance novel. A love story. She created characters, built a world, and poured her heart into something people are connecting with all over the country.
And now they’re crucifying her for it because it has sex scenes.
I park outside Wildflower Books, take the stairs to her apartment two at a time, and knock on her door.
No answer.
“Sadie?” I knock again, harder. “It’s Mateo. Open up.”
Still nothing.
I pull out my phone and call her. It goes straight to voicemail.
I try the door handle. Locked, obviously.
“Sadie, I know you’re in there.” I keep my voice calm, even though everything in me wants to break down this door. “Your car’s parked outside. I just need to know you’re okay.”
A long moment of silence.
Then the lock clicks.
The door opens a crack, and Sadie’s face appears in the gap. She looks like she hasn’t slept. She probably hasn’t. If this all exploded a few hours ago, she probably hasn’t been able to settle her mind.
Red-rimmed eyes, hair pulled back in a messy bun, and wrapped in an oversized sweater that swallows her whole. She looks like she’s been crying for hours and trying to pretend she hasn’t. She’s a beautiful mess.
But when she sees it’s me, something in her expression relaxes, just barely, like seeing me here made this whole nightmare fractionally more bearable.
That look does something to my chest. Makes me want to pull her into my arms and promise her everything will be okay, even though I have no idea if that’s true.
“You saw,” she says flatly.
“Isabel showed me.”
She laughs, a hollow, broken sound. “Of course. Everyone’s seen it by now. The whole town knows. The whole damn internet knows.”
“Can I come in?”
She hesitates, then steps back, opening the door wider.
Her apartment is dark, curtains drawn so not even the moonlight can shine in. Only the dim light from her kitchen spills into the living room. There are boxes in the corner—half-packed. A suitcase is open on the couch, clothes spilling out of it.
No.
“You’re leaving?” The words come out harsher than I intend.
“What else am I supposed to do?” She crosses her arms, defensive. “Stay here and let them tear me apart? Let Judith Ashford organize a boycott of my shop? Let Owen—“
She cuts herself off, shaking her head.
“What about Owen?”
“Let Owen do what Owen does best. Manipulate and leech.” She grabs a shirt that sits on the arm of her couch and haphazardly tosses it into the suitcase. “It doesn’t matter.”
I step closer, and she backs up.
“Has he contacted you since the other night?” I ask.
Her expression darkens. “He’s been texting nonstop. Messages about how I should ‘prepare for the fallout’ and ‘think about damage control.’” Her voice shakes. “He’s probably loving this. Watching me burn.”
Rage floods through me. “Is he the one who told Macy?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably not. Owen is more calculating, and honestly, I think Macy just figured it out on her own.
” The pain in her voice when she says Macy’s name guts me.
“Being excited can cause you not to consider the consequences.” Her voice cracks.
“She thought she was celebrating me. She had no idea what she was doing.”
“You’re not angry at her,” I realize.
“How can I be?” Sadie’s eyes are wet. “She loves the book. She’s proud of me.
She thinks it’s cool that I wrote it.“ Sadie plops onto her couch. “She’s twenty-two years old and doesn’t understand why anyone would hide the fact that they write romance novels.
” She wipes at her eyes. “She doesn’t know what it’s like to have your family call your work pornography.
To be told you should be ashamed of the thing you love doing most. My mother sent me an ‘I told you so’ text an hour ago. ”
Something hot and protective flares through me. Her mother can’t even let her have a crisis in peace. She has to twist the knife in while Sadie is down.
“I don’t even know how the word got to her so quickly.
It couldn’t just stay contained in the Sierra Rose Ridge Facebook group.
Nope. It had to explode over the internet, and now any comfort I had in hiding behind a pseudonym has been completely washed away.
Woosh!“ She swipes her hand through the air. “I don’t know how I can continue writing under Sienna Saguaro after this, and starting a new pen name would mean starting over. I can’t believe I was so stupid and careless. ”
She’s spiraling. I can see it in her eyes, hear it in the way her words are tumbling out faster and faster.
“You’re not stupid or careless, Sadie,” I say quietly.
“Aren’t I?” She laughs again, that same broken sound.
“I wrote a book about this place. Used real details. Real landmarks. Renaming them didn’t hide them.
I set the story in a town that’s clearly recognizable to anyone who lives here.
And I thought what? That I could hide forever?
That no one would ever connect Sadie Pierce to Sienna Saguaro? ”
“You wrote a book that people are obsessed with,” I tell her. “People literally can’t stop talking about it. Readers on the internet are losing their minds over it, Sadie.”
I sit next to her. Without warning, she leans her head on my shoulder. For five years, I’ve wanted to be the person she turns to. Just not like this. Not when she’s breaking.
I wrap my arm around her and kiss the top of her head before I can stop myself. She doesn’t pull away. She just leans in closer, and I can feel the moment she stops trying to hold it together. The way her shoulders shake with silent tears.
“Writing romance isn’t something to be ashamed of,” I murmur into her hair.
She lets out a half-hearted laugh. “Tell that to my mother. Or Judith. Or the hundred people commenting on that Facebook post calling me a liar, an exploiter, and a slut.”
“There will always be people ready to tear others down. That doesn’t make them right.”
She picks up her phone from the coffee table, screen still dark. “I turned it off after the millionth notification. I can’t... I can’t look at it anymore.”
One thing I know is I’ll be by her side through the whole ordeal. I refuse to watch her pack her life into boxes and run.
“Where are you planning on going?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Portland, maybe. Jess said I could stay with her while I figure things out. Or maybe somewhere new. Somewhere no one knows me. Start over again.”
“Again.” She’s staring at the half-packed suitcase with the same look she must have worn the day she left home.
“I thought it would be different here,” she says quietly. “I thought I’d built something they couldn’t take from me.”
“Sadie—“
“But I was wrong.” She finally looks up at me, eyes glistening from tears she refuses to let fall again.
“I should’ve known better. Secrets always come out eventually, and people always find a way to make you feel small for being you.
” She huffs out a laugh. “Like Owen. Maybe he was a warning that Sierra Rose isn’t meant to be my home. ”
Fuck no. Owen was an asshole who tried to make her small. That has nothing to do with whether she belongs here.
There are tears on her cheeks now, and she wipes at them angrily.
“Except it is your home and you don’t have to leave,” I say.