Chapter 15 Weston
Weston
I never understood why Savannah would look up at the night sky when she was overwhelmed. It was pretty, yeah, but nothing about it was helping me figure out what to do with my life.
Here I was, barely managing to recover from my injuries, and torn between a picture-perfect career I couldn’t let go of, and the love of my life, who I’d already lost once because of it.
It should’ve been an easy choice—her or riding. But the thought of waking up without either scared the hell out of me.
Beau had given up the partnership with Cavendish Academy for Claire. A partnership that would’ve made not only him, but our whole family multi-millionaires. And he gave it up in the blink of an eye for her.
Why couldn’t I make the same decision for Savannah? I loved her just as much, if not more.
I took a sip of whiskey, wondering if I could find answers at the bottom of the bottle. I knew I wouldn’t, but it was worth a shot. “Haha, shot,” I chuckled.
The grass rustled behind me, and my heart skipped, knowing who it was before I looked. I tilted my head back, and there was Savannah walking towards me with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her eyes tired.
She dropped onto the blanket I had laid out, lying next to me. “Can’t sleep?”
“No. You too?”
“I don’t sleep that great most nights,” she said, and I frowned. “What are the stars saying tonight?”
“Nothing.”
She let out a heavy breath. “Typical.”
It’d been a week since I’d gotten the chance to be alone with her, and now that I was, I had so many things I wanted to say that I didn’t know where to start.
“My head is so loud, Sav,” I said with a sigh, not daring to look at her. She used to say that when her thoughts became too much and she needed me to talk her down.
Her fingers brushed against mine, tentatively, soft and warm. She let out a heavy breath when I laced mine between them and gripped her hand like it was the only thing keeping me tethered to Earth, because it truly felt that way. “Mine too.”
“Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine?”
“I’ve just got too many fires going at once,” she said. “The merger, fighting Sterling and Preston, figuring out my life in Dallas, stuff going on with Tess, and then there’s…you.”
I turned. I wanted to ask what she meant by me, but I knew that’d probably stress her out more. “What about your life in Dallas?”
She licked her lips, still staring at the stars. “My boss sent me an email about my bereavement leave running out a few weeks ago, asking when I was coming back. I haven’t responded yet.”
I was tempted to say that wasn’t like her, but she had hidden from me for a decade, so maybe it was. “Why not?”
Her head lolled to the side to look at me.
“I don’t know what to say. I was working seventy, sometimes eighty hours a week on multi-million dollar cases.
I’m good at what I do, really good, but I’m not sure my heart is in it anymore.
Or if it ever was. Things are easier here.
Slower. Just not sure if or where I’d fit. ”
You fit with me, angel, I wanted to tell her, but didn’t. “Anything I can do?”
She shook her head. “Just be here.”
“Done.” I kissed the back of her hand on instinct, something I did all the time when we were together, normally when we were in the car.
“Give me more yarn,” I said, knowing that wasn’t the end of it.
She grinned, eyes glimmering with surprise. “I can’t believe you remember that.” The first time she explained her anxiety to me, she said her mind was like a tangled, never-ending ball of yarn. So then we joked that her thoughts were pieces of yarn that she’d give me when we talked.
“I remember all of it, Savannah.”
Her smile faltered, her eyes searching mine. “I’m scared to start over with you,” she whispered.
“It wouldn’t be starting over. It’d be hitting the resume button.” As painful as our ending was, I wouldn’t erase the two years we had together for anything, and refused to just wipe the slate clean as if it hadn’t happened.
“Same thing.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, pretending to think. “Mmm, not exactly. I thought lawyers were supposed to be smart?”
Laughing, she swung her blanket at me. I caught it and pulled until her face was hovering above mine.
Her laughter died as her top half fell on top of me.
Her hair was draped down over her shoulder, and I couldn’t resist it.
I brushed it back behind her ear, letting my fingers skim her jaw.
Her breath hitched, her body tensing on top of mine, but she didn’t pull away.
“You don’t need to be scared, angel,” I whispered. “But I understand why you are.”
“You do?” Her voice was quiet, unsure.
I nodded. “You can’t be with me if I stay with Pbr.” She tried to pull back, but I slid a hand to her low back, gently keeping her close. “You don’t need to deny it, Sav. I wouldn’t believe you if you did anyway.” Not after the way she broke down in the barn.
“I…” Her eyes searched mine. Her body went limp. “It’s not just that.”
I reached for her hair again, spinning it around my finger like a ribbon. I didn’t even try to resist touching her, especially since she didn’t seem to mind it. “Tell me what else it is, then.”
“Everything. What if we don’t work out again?”
“We will.” It wasn’t optimism or ego or prediction—it was a fact. Just like it was a fact that having her on top of me like this was making it hard to focus on anything but the way she kissed me last week at the Bull Pen.
“You don’t know that. You can’t possibly know that.” She laid down beside me, and I rolled onto my side, facing her. I forced my smile away when she reached across me to pull the blanket over us, and interlocked our hands again.
I felt nineteen again, lying here with her like this. We’d spend hours talking under the stars, sharing our hopes and dreams and…other things. It was here she told me she wanted to be a lawyer, where I told her I loved her the first time, where she encouraged me to go pro.
“Didn’t I tell you? I’m from the future,” I teased, covering up the fact that I wanted to pull her closer, that I was desperate to kiss her.
She scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Then why do you still look thirty?”
I shrugged. “New technology. Wanted to look sexy for you.”
She deadpanned. “I’m serious, Weston.”
“I’m serious, too. It’s like a metal detector you walk through, really neat.”
She gave me an exasperated smile. “You’re impossible. Give me some of your yarn.”
My playful grin vanished, and I looked up at the sky, searching for courage. I didn’t know how to get the words out. How to tell her I was struggling. I didn’t want her to think that I loved her any less than I did because of it, or doubt me and us more than she already did.
Looking over at her, her eyes were sparkling under the moonlight. They were soft, open, but not too eager. Safe. I was always safe with her, something that my heart sensed faster than my head had all those years ago when I told her about my parents.
“I don’t know if I can give it up,” I finally confessed, the words catching in the back of my throat. “I don’t know who I am without it.”
Savannah’s face softened with empathy. She placed her hand on my cheek, stroking my face tenderly. “No one’s asking you to, baby,” she said, her voice soft yet sure. There wasn’t any judgment or hurt, just understanding. It made me feel even worse.
My eyes drifted shut, holding on to that word, to her touch. She hadn’t called me baby in years, and yet it felt like the first time. I placed my hand over hers, needing the contact. “But I love you so much,” I choked out, my voice shaking. “I don’t know what to do.”
It was more than just the simple act of choosing between her and riding.
I was thirty, my body couldn’t take a beating like it used to.
Even before the accident, I woke up every morning in pain from years of wear and tear.
Most guys were retiring around my age for that very reason, so it wasn't like this decision was coming out of nowhere.
I knew I had a few good years left in me, but after this accident, I’d started to wonder if maybe it was time to hang it up, and Savannah coming back into my life was just another reason that I should.
“You’ll figure it out,” she said, and I opened my eyes, finding her smiling softly. “You always do.”
I swallowed roughly. “Can I hold you?” She tensed, looking at me, unsure. “Please.”
“It won’t hurt your shoulder?”
“No.” Even if it did, having her in my arms would be worth it.
Slowly, she nestled her body into mine, her head resting on my chest. I wrapped my arm around her, pulling her in close. I kissed the top of her head and buried my nose in her hair. Her shampoo smelled different, but everything else about this was the exact same.
And before I knew it, I was falling asleep.
My eyes shot open at a shriek, and then the water hit like ice.
I sat up with a strangled yell and wiped my eyes, looking around.
Savannah was soaked to the bone, bearing her teeth and breathing hard.
Beau, Claire, Emmett, and Delilah stood over us with the hose and empty buckets, grinning like the assholes they were.
“I’m going to kill you!” Savannah screeched, slinging wet hair off her face.
“It’s time to rise and shine, lovebirds,” Delilah chirped.
In all the years we had spent nights out here like this, we never got caught until now. I slicked my hair back, laughing at the ridiculousness of it.
Savannah looked over at me, livid. “You look good wet,” I said, biting my bottom lip and grinning like the fool I was when it came to her.
Her eyes nearly popped out of her head, her cheeks going rosy. She scrambled to her feet and yanked the blanket off me before storming off and mumbling to herself about how she was going to have to do her hair now. Delilah and Claire followed after her, probably wanting to ask what happened.
“You know, there’s these things called beds,” Beau said, smirking.