Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
SADIE
My sneakers soak through with every step through the damp field, but I don’t care.
I couldn’t stand another second in that cabin with Tori. She wasn’t the perfect best friend—not even close—but I never thought she’d betray me like this.
I keep moving because if I stop, if I let myself think, I’m afraid I’ll shatter completely.
Maybe it’s me. Maybe I expect too much from people. Maybe I ask for too much.
My throat aches from holding back sobs. I don’t even realize where my feet have carried me until I stumble through the brush and into the clearing. Even subconsciously, my body knows he’s exactly what I need.
He’s off to the side by the saw, cutting lumber, but his head lifts the second he hears me.
Still, I keep walking, propelled forward by something indescribable.
I crash into him, burying myself against his solid chest. He pulls me close without hesitation, arms banding tight around me.
His scent alone is a comfort, cedar and fresh rainfall, wrapping around me, grounding me. I fist his shirt, fingers trembling, and he just holds me. Doesn’t ask. Doesn’t prod. Just holds me, until the noise inside my head begins to dull and the rest of the world falls away.
“Wanna test out the porch swing?” he murmurs into my hair after a long while.
I nod, my raw, tear-soaked cheek rubbing against his chest.
The swing creaks as I sink down cross-legged, hands folded tight in my lap. Wesley drops beside me, stretching his arm casually across the backrest. The space between us feels unbearable.
I want his arms around me again, want him to crush me against his chest until I can’t feel anything else—but that would be too intimate for what we are. What we’re supposed to be.
“Do you remember what happened before I came here?”
He nods, gaze fixed wholly on me.
“Tori was in the bathroom with Kolson that night. She was supposed to be my friend, and while I was—” My voice cracks. “I don’t care about him anymore, but she knew. She fucking knew and did it anyway.”
My phone buzzes in my lap.
Mia
I’m so sorry. She’s packing right now. Landon said he’d drive her to the airport. I’m going to go with them to make sure she gets on the flight.
My eyes burn and the lump in my throat swells until I can hardly breathe.
“She knows I know now,” I whisper. “And she’s acting like it’s no big deal. Like I don’t get to be upset because I’m sleeping with you.”
Wesley drops his hand on my thigh. He doesn’t push any further, but the weight of it sets fire beneath my skin.
I shouldn’t want more, not after everything, but the ache in me is louder than reason and all I want is his touch—just to lose myself in him and drown in oblivion.
“You have every right to feel how you feel,” he says.
“If Landon was fucking the girl I liked behind my back, we wouldn’t have had a conversation about it.
I would’ve punched him in the face and never spoken to him again.
” His mouth quirks, soft but rueful. “You’re handling it a hell of a lot better than I would’ve. ”
A bitter laugh slips out and tears cling to my lashes, blurring my vision. My eyes are swollen and puffy, my cheeks splotched, my lip trembling. I look anything but okay.
The morning sun cuts across his profile, catching on the stubble at his jaw, the faint crescent-shaped scar above his eyebrow. His usual baseball hat is flipped backward. He looks so at ease, steady. Everything I’m not.
I don’t want to think about going back. Back to the cabin. Back to the emptiness of my old life. Back to who I was before. I just want to stop thinking altogether.
“I’m just so tired of pretending,” I whisper.
The corners of his mouth turn downward and his eyes hold mine, searching. I shift, leaning closer to him, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Make me forget.”
There’s no hesitation. No teasing smirk or clever remarks.
His fingers slide into my hair, tightening until I gasp, and then he pulls me into him. His mouth crashes against mine, and it isn’t soft. It isn’t gentle.
It’s a desperate freefall.
It’s everything I’ve tried to bury clawing up at once, bleeding into the space between us. His lips move over mine like he knows this won’t fix anything—but maybe it can numb the ache for a while.
I climb onto him, straddling his hips because I physically cannot be anywhere but pressed against him.
The need is feral and dizzying, swallowing me whole.
His hand slips under my shirt, slow but claiming, dragging up my waist until he pulls me flush against him.
The swing groans beneath us, rocking with the movement, but the world could collapse around us and I still wouldn’t stop.
Every nerve in me sparks to life, electric and greedy.
My thin sleep shorts ride up as I sink against him, only a whisper of fabric separating me from the hard length straining behind his jeans. His breath shudders out, rough and ragged, and his hands lock around my hips, guiding me like he can’t help himself.
My head tips back as I grind against him, shameless. His mouth is everywhere—my jaw, my throat, the edge of my shoulder—biting just enough to make my breath stutter. I yank his hat off, fingers sliding into his hair, holding him to me like I’m afraid he’ll pull away.
Our clothes disappear in frantic, graceless movements—his shirt ripped over his head, my tank top shoved down, the cool morning air kissing my newly exposed skin. He cups my breasts, thumbs teasing until I’m desperately gasping into his mouth.
He fumbles his jeans open, pushing them low enough to free his cock, thick and flushed. My panties are shoved aside and I can’t help it—I roll my hips once, slowly, needing him to feel exactly how badly I want him before he’s even inside me.
I lower myself onto him slowly, a soft, trembling gasp slipping out as my body molds around him inch by aching inch, until he fills me completely.
“Fuck,” he groans, head falling back, throat bared. His fingers dig into my hips, possessive, almost punishing. “Sadie…”
I move, riding him hopelessly, trying to smother the emotions rising in my chest. The swing rocks under us, the wood creaking with every frantic grind of my hips.
His chest heaves, sweat gleaming along his collarbone, eyes locked on me with a kind of starving reverence that only makes everything hurt more.
“Wesley,” I breathe against his mouth, the word half-moan, half-prayer.
My forehead drops to his shoulder. The world smears at the edges. My pulse hammers so loud it echoes in my bones.
“I love you.”
The words tear free before I can stop them, raw and unguarded.
He stills, his body tense beneath me. Just for a breath. Just long enough for my stomach to plummet.
But then he drags me back onto his mouth, kissing me hard, like he can swallow the confession right from my lips.
Still, I can’t stop moving. Can’t stop needing him, even as my heart fractures in slow, grinding pieces. Even as my mind spins and I burn from the inside out.
Appetency and heartbreak collide so violently it feels like I’m coming apart. I move faster, harder, chasing oblivion, the rush, anything but the hollow echo of those unreturned words.
The swing rocks beneath us, wood groaning under every roll of my body against him.
Then he takes over, gripping my waist and thrusting up into me with a brutal and relentless rhythm, like he’s trying to prove something.
His hand slips between us, thumb circling over my clit until I’m crying out, breaking apart in his arms. He follows, hips jerking, groaning my name against my throat as he spills into me.
And then it’s over.
We stay there. Joined. Breathless. A tangle of sweat and heartbreak and everything I shouldn’t have said. The swing slows, swaying in soft, dying arcs until it goes still beneath us.
Only then do we separate.
The cool morning air brushes over my flushed skin and I flinch. We get dressed in silence, tugging our clothes back into place with trembling hands.
My words hang in the air like smoke—inescapable, bitter, impossible to take back.
Three impossible syllables linger in the space between our bodies.
He didn’t say it back.
He just held me tighter and fucked me harder, and maybe that should’ve told me everything. He kissed me and touched me and held on like he was drowning.
But he didn’t say it back.
The words I love you should change something.
Instead, they land like a stone thrown into deep water—sinking fast, pulling me down with them.
And now the silence presses in from every side, crushing and humiliating, whispering that I misread every moment between us.
It gnaws at me, bitter and familiar, chanting that I should’ve known better than to believe someone could ever love me back.
That someone could love me at all.
August feels different—slower, heavier, like summer is holding its breath. But time keeps moving forward, whether I want it to or not.
The porch swing keeps replaying in my head.
My confession. His silence.
Every time he touches me, I wonder if he can feel the words humming beneath my skin.
He still hasn’t said them back.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped waiting for him to say them.
Maybe that should’ve been a sign that this should end—but instead, I keep choosing him. I keep choosing the temporary high of being wanted over the ache of wanting more.
I can live with the almost of it all—the almost love, the almost future, the almost us.
If he won’t love me out loud, then I’ll take the version he offers in the dark until the very end.
We’ve been sneaking around like teenagers. Showering together. Long nights staying awake whispering about our hopes, dreams, and fears. His mouth covering mine in an attempt to swallow my moans when we hear footsteps creak in the hallway.
We’ve almost been caught twice, and honestly, that only makes everything hotter. Riskier. Like we are both playing a game that neither of us knows the rules too, but we’re in too deep to stop.