Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
SADIE
I hate the number two.
I’m pretty sure it hates me back.
Two haunts me.
Two is the number of best friends I used to have. The number of cowboys I stupidly let past my walls of defense, handing over pieces of my heart I’ll never get back. My mistake for believing things could be different this time.
It’s been two weeks since I ended things, and coincidentally, there are two weeks until I leave for good.
I’ve been avoiding everyone. Bailing on dinners. Skipping out on going to Lucky’s. I used to be so good at pretending, but I’m too tired to care anymore.
How can I pretend I’m fine when every thought drags me straight back to him?
I don’t know how to go back to who I was before this summer, how to go back to the life I had—before him—when everything has changed.
Running has been my escape. I actually hate it, but it feels like the only time I’m safe to let my mind wander.
I’m a mile and a half in. My legs are burning, sweat slides down my spine, and my lungs are begging me to stop, but I can’t.
The crunch of gravel beneath tires creeps up behind me and I look over my shoulder.
Wesley’s truck.
The same truck he’s fucked me in countless times, knowing how I felt.
He pulls alongside me on the trail, slowing to match my pace. My chest tightens.
Why can’t he just leave me alone?
Even as I clench my fists and try to focus on my pounding heart, I can’t ignore the way his presence winds around me like a snake, slowly strangling me, binding tight. Fighting is useless. The venom from his touch still lingers in my blood.
“Hop in. I’ll drive you back.”
“No thanks. I’m good,” I say, forcing my legs to keep moving, pretending the heat in my veins isn’t entirely because of him.
“Sadie—”
“I said I’m good.”
“I’m not asking. Get in the truck. You’ve been skipping too many dinners. Dad’s not stupid. He keeps prodding me and Emmett about what happened.”
“Sounds like a you problem,” I mutter, stopping to stretch my calves, willing the fire in my stomach to die down.
“Get. In. The. Truck.”
I ignore him, feeling the weight of his gaze on me. I can almost hear the muscles tightening in his jaw, the way his fingers drum impatiently against the leather steering wheel.
Every instinct tells me to run. To take off through the fields so he can’t follow me. I hate that he still gets under my skin. I hate that I want to listen and get into the truck, soaking in as much of him as I can.
“Get in the fucking truck, Sadie.”
My head snaps toward him and my lip quivers—not from fear, but from the ache of every unsaid word between us.
I’m done running. I’m done dancing around this. Giving up, I climb in, arms crossed, trying to bury the thrum of want beneath the raging anger.
He doesn’t look away. His voice drops, softer now, pleading. “I just…I need to understand. Please. Tell me what I can do—how to fix—”
“It’s over, Wesley,” I say quietly. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
We don’t speak again, and still I can feel him beside me.
The weight of him presses into every nerve.
I hate that I’m so aware of his presence.
I hate that being this close to him reminds me of the way his warm hands felt against me, the brush of his fingers, the way he made me feel pulled apart and stitched together all in the same breath.
But most of all, I hate that even as I try to shut him out, my heart remembers exactly what it wants.
Him.