Chapter 21
Liberties
WALKER
Imake it back to the family about two minutes before she does.
Long enough to get my shit under control. To not look like I’ve been turned inside out by what just happened between me and Sadie.
Or so I think.
Tanner takes one look at me and his face splits into the widest, most irritating smile I've ever seen.
He opens his mouth.
“Don't,” I say. “Whatever it is, just don’t say it.”
“I was just going to ask if you wanted a beer. But also,” he adds, grinning now, “where's your girlfriend?”
“None of your business.”
Belatedly I realize I should probably correct him on the “girlfriend” part of it, but I don’t.
He smiles into his own beer like the smug son of a bitch he is, then hands me a bottle from the cooler on the porch. “You look like you could use something stronger. Should we break out the whiskey?” A pause. “Or you could just go find Sadie. Pretty sure she'd have the same effect.”
“Shut. Your. Fucking. Mouth.”
He just shakes his head, grinning.
When Sadie comes back out, her cheeks are slightly pink and her hair is freshly smoothed and she slides back into the conversation like nothing happened at all.
She's better at this than I am.
Jonah makes the rounds before we leave, hugging Grandpa, hugging Tanner, hugging Slade, and then circling back to take Sadie's hand like he's making sure she's still there. Like he's including her in the inventory of people he needs to account for.
Dad watches it with a look on his face I haven't seen in years.
Hope, maybe.
At home, Sadie and I both tuck Jonah in, at his insistence.
Now that Sadie is hanging out with us on weekends, doing family dinners with the Rhodes clan, the lines are getting blurrier.
I'm both elated and worried by that. Because she's set to leave at summer’s end.
And I already know it will break his tiny heart when she does.
What the fuck are we going to do without her?
Sadie and I spread out on either side of his bed and we all take turns reading a bedtime story. Jonah shows off his newfound ability to read some sentences all by himself. And I know that's all thanks to Sadie.
I watch her over the top of his head while he sounds out the words, her hair falling forward over her shoulder, her lips moving faintly along with his.
We’re so lucky she came into our lives.
My ex-wife told me once that I was incapable of falling in love. That I, like my music, was full of pretty lies and broken promises. That I didn't love her the way she needed, the way she thought she'd get from the man who wrote those songs. That's why she had to go find it elsewhere.
It was the last time we had a conversation that wasn’t through the lawyers.
She was wrong about plenty, but I’ve spent a lot of time wondering if she might have been right about me. Whether I was just good at writing love songs but incapable of letting myself feel it for real.
The truth is, my ex was right about me in that moment. The words in those songs had a lot more passion than I ever felt in reality. I told myself that’s just how it is. That art magnifies those feelings, that real life just can’t compare.
But meeting Sadie, turns out those songs I wrote were just waiting for her so they’d make sense.
When we finish the book, I give Jonah a hug and a kiss on the head, and Sadie does too. He wraps his little arms around her neck and holds on a beat longer than usual, like he’s getting more attached with every day that goes by.
This is dangerous territory.
Then I close the door and the two of us stand in the hallway.
We haven't had the chance to talk about what happened at the piano. Not about me touching her. Not about me shutting down when she asked me to play her one of my songs.
She asked me to be vulnerable and I went somewhere cold and guarded inside, the way I've been doing for years, since the music dried up, since I realized I was living a lie.
And I guess we're not talking about it now either.
Because instead of being the adult I ought to be and having the conversation I know we need to have, I just say a low “good night” and head to the main bedroom.
Tonight has not been my finest hour.
I touched her because I couldn't stop myself and then I pulled back because letting her feel good was one thing, but kissing her would have meant something different.
Kissing her would have meant I was in this.
And I can't be in it, because I don’t trust myself to be able to climb out of the wreckage when she leaves.
I go through the motions of getting ready for bed. Brush my teeth, splash water on my face, stare at myself in the mirror for probably too long. The guy looking back at me doesn't have any answers. He just looks tired and stressed and half-tortured.
I brace my hands on the edge of the sink and drop my head.
Then I pace.
Back and forth across the hardwood until I'm sure I'm going to wear a groove into it.
I can't stop turning the evening over in my head.
The piano. Her hands on the keys. The chords, the sounds she made.
The way she looked up at me after, all flushed and undone, like she'd never felt anything like that before.
She probably hadn't.
I have to talk to her. I'm the older one here.
I need to take charge of this situation, even though it feels like it's spiraling rapidly outside of my control.
Even though it feels like my emotions are already on a runaway train off a cliff, picking up speed, and she cut the brakes somewhere around the first week she walked into my house.
I head to her bedroom and rap softly at the door. “Sadie?”
“Come in.”
When I swing open the door, I find her already in bed. She's curled up beneath the fluffy white duvet, reading a book, a small lamp throwing warm gold light across her side of the room.
She's in a simple camisole: thin fabric, no bra, the outline of her nipples just visible. Her copper hair is loose around her shoulders.
Fuck. How am I going to concentrate with her looking like that? How am I supposed to say what I need to say when she looks like my every dream come true? When all I want to do is sink to my knees at the side of her bed and beg her not to go to New York?
I'm a grown fucking man. I can do this.
I sit down on the bed.
“Hey.”
Not the most spectacular opening line. That's about all I'm capable of at this point.
Her eyes flick up from her book briefly. “Hey yourself.”
She goes back to reading. Turns a page. Casual, like I'm not sitting here coming apart at the seams two feet away from her.
“Can we talk about tonight?”
Her finger pauses mid-page turn. “Okay.”
Her voice is steady, but I know her well enough now to read the tells. The slight stiffness in her shoulders. The way she sets the book down very precisely, like she's buying herself a half second. She's nervous. Trying not to show it.
God, I'm such an asshole.
I push a hand through my hair and take a deep breath.
Words. I need words. They used to be my strength. I built a whole career out of finding the right ones. Right now I've got nothing.
“I, uh…” I clear my throat. “I took certain liberties tonight.”
A giggle escapes her. She claps a hand over her mouth, blue eyes going wide, and that helpless vertigo overcomes me, the kind that knocks me off-balance and reminds me I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to her.
“I'm sorry,” she says, still laughing. “‘Certain liberties?’ Should we discuss my scandalous lack of chaperone and what a dastardly scoundrel you've been?
One moment you're ogling my ankles, the next, introducing me to forbidden carnal pleasures. For shame, you heartless rogue. How will I ever be a respectable woman now?”
I glower. “Damn it, Sadie. I fucked up, okay?”
The laughter fades. Her clear blue eyes settle on mine.
“How?” she asks. “Because I have to tell you, I had a pretty good time tonight.”
“I shouldn't have done that.”
“Don't you dare say you shouldn't have touched me.” Her voice is firm. “You asked. I said yes. I have no regrets. So why do you?”
“Because… because of this whole situation.”
“Which is what? Two consenting adults, attracted to each other, and acting on it?”
None of this is going the way I expected. I had a whole speech. I rehearsed it while I was wearing a hole in the bedroom floor. It’s completely abandoned me.
“You work for me,” I say, grasping at the very real, very good reasons why her and I together is a terrible idea. “I'm paying you to be here.”
“You’re paying me to look after Jonah. And I can separate the paycheck from the sex.”
That's one objection, struck down. I grasp desperately for another, feeling slightly ashamed of myself for the grasping.
The real reason lives somewhere I don't want to take her. Somewhere too raw and vulnerable.
“I'm older than you,” I point out.
“Twelve years. Not exactly ancient.”
“Not exactly nothing, either.”
I take her hand in mine before I offer the next one. Her fingers are small and soft between mine. I rub my thumb across her knuckles.
“Baby, I've been married. I'm a father. And you've never had a serious relationship. You're a virgin.”
Her look turns guarded. “I'm not defective.”
“I'm not saying that.” And I mean it. I need her to know I mean it. “I'm saying there's an experience gap between us so big it's a fucking chasm. It’s something we have to think about.”
Whatever she sees in my face makes her expression soften.
“The only way to get more experienced at something,” she says, “is to get more experience. But listen, I'm not going to sit here and beg you to deflower me.”
My body jolts like she just poked me with a live wire.
Just the thought of being the one who does…
The first.
The only…
Well, that thought makes every rational argument I have line up and walk off a ledge.
No. I can’t let it.