Chapter 9 Trace
TRACE
Three days after having it out with Sabrina, I dragged myself to the weekly Trail Supper I had with the guys.
Sitting around a fire pit with a beer in my hand was better than drinking alone, even if I did still have a head full of anger I couldn't seem to shake.
Trail Supper had always been sacred. Just the guys who'd grown up running wild through these mountains together.
Tonight, I needed it more than I had in years.
"You look like hell," Ridge said, settling onto the stump across from me with his own beer. "When's the last time you slept?"
"I'm fine."
"Bullshit." Holt dropped down next to me, his brow furrowed like he was concerned. "You've been holed up in your cabin for three days. Marla's worried you're going to skip the wedding tomorrow."
I took a long pull of my beer. "Maybe I should."
The words hung in the air, heavy with implications. These guys knew me better than anyone. They'd seen me through my dad's death, through every failed attempt at a relationship, through the humiliation of being branded The Heartbreaker by half the town. But they'd never seen me like this.
"What happened?" Thatcher asked. He was the unofficial leader of our group, the one we all turned to when life got complicated. "And don't say nothing. You look like someone ran over your dog."
“And backed up and ran over it again,” Dane added.
I stared into the fire, watching the flames dance. Part of me wanted to keep it private, to deal with this mess on my own like I always did. But the weight of it was crushing me, and if I didn't talk to someone, I was going to explode.
"Sabrina wrote the Ex-List," I said finally.
The silence that followed was deafening. Even the crickets seemed to need a moment to react.
"Fuck," Harlan muttered.
"She what?" Holt leaned forward, his beer forgotten. "Are you sure?"
"She told me herself. A few nights ago." My voice sounded rougher than sandpaper. "All this time, I thought some anonymous blogger decided to make me the poster child for commitment issues. Turns out it was the woman I've been in love with for years.”
Thatcher nodded slowly, processing. "That's... a lot."
"You think?" I laughed, but there was nothing fucking funny about it. "She looked me in the eye and called me The Heartbreaker. Then she let me spend months thinking some stranger had decided I was toxic. Let me question everything about myself, every relationship I'd ever had."
"But why?" Ridge asked. "What could possibly make her—"
"I don't know." The admission came out like a confession. "I mean, she tried to explain, something about being hurt and frustrated. But I couldn't... I walked away before she finished."
Thatcher got up and paced in front of the fire. “When did Sabrina write that list?"
"I don't know. A couple years ago?"
"Right around the time you started dating that teacher from Billings.” Thatcher stopped in front of me. “What was her name?"
My stomach dropped. "Sarah."
"Yeah, Sarah. And how did that go?"
I didn't want to answer, but the truth worked its way out anyway. "It was casual. I made that clear from the start."
"But Sabrina didn't know that, did she?" Ridge said quietly. "All she saw was you with someone else. Someone who wasn't her."
"That doesn't give her the right to—"
"To what? To be hurt?" Holt's voice was sharper now. "Come on, man. You really think she wrote that list to destroy you?"
I wanted to say yes. It would have been easier to stay pissed. But the truth was more complicated than that.
"I don't know," I said finally. "Maybe not. But she lied to me. For months, she let me think—"
"That some stranger had decided you were a piece of shit who couldn’t commit,” Thatcher finished. "Instead of someone who knew you better than anyone and still thought you were worth a second chance."
The words slammed into me like a wrecking ball.
Because that's what she'd been offering me, wasn't it?
A second chance. Not just in the past week, but for months before that.
Every time she looked at me with those soft hazel eyes, every time she blushed when I caught her staring, every time she found an excuse to touch my hand or stand a little too close.
"Sounds like she's been trying to find a way back to you for years," Ridge said. "And when you finally started letting her in, the guilt was probably eating her alive."
I thought about that night at my cabin, the way she'd trembled in my arms. The way she'd whispered that whatever happened, our time together had been the best thing she'd ever had.
At the time, I'd thought she was talking about the possibility of us not working out.
Now I realized she'd been preparing for me to hate her.
“It took guts to tell you the truth," Ridge said. “The same thing happened with Gillian. Both of them put our names on that list because they were hurting. I don’t know about you, but I’ve done a bunch of shit I regret.”
"She could have told me sooner." I wasn’t quite ready to forgive and forget. I’d expected the guys to have my back, not force me to see things from Sabrina’s point of view.
"Could she?" Thatcher's question was quiet but pointed. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you've been keeping her at arm's length for years. Even when you were kids, you were always the one to pull back whenever things got too real between you."
That stung because it was true. Every time we'd gotten close, every time it felt like we might finally cross that line, I'd found a reason to step away. Too young, too complicated, too risky. I'd convinced myself I was protecting her, but maybe I'd just been protecting myself.
"She was seventeen when you first chickened out," Ridge said.
"Seventeen. And you've been doing it ever since, finding reasons why it wouldn't work, why you weren't good enough, why the timing was wrong.
At what point was she supposed to tell you she was in love with you?
After the fifth time you pulled away? The tenth? "
The fire crackled in the silence that followed. My beer had gone warm in my hands, forgotten as the weight of their words settled over me.
"So what if she wrote your name on a stupid list?" Holt said. "So what if she was hurt and angry and young and made a mistake? Are you really going to throw away the best thing that’s ever happened to you because she's human?"
"The best thing that’s ever happened to me?" I looked up at him. "She humiliated me in front of the entire town. Made fun of all of us."
"I wasn’t thrilled about having my name on that list, but it’s the only reason I ended up with Calla. It made me take a good, hard look at myself and figure out there were things I needed to work on,” Holt said.
“I think we all feel the same way.” Thatcher looked around the circle. Every one of the guys nodded. “So did Sabrina really humiliate you or did she hand you an excuse to keep doing what you've always done, like running away when things get too real? "
The question hung in the air like a challenge.
And maybe that's what it was, because these guys had been watching me self-sabotage for years.
They'd seen me find reasons to end things with every woman who'd ever gotten close.
They'd watched me convince myself I was protecting people when really, I was just protecting myself from the possibility of failure.
"You want to know what I think?" Thatcher leaned forward, his voice serious.
"I think that list was the best thing that ever happened to you…
the best thing that happened to all of us.
In your case, it made you dig deep, and I bet what you found wasn't a heartbreaker.
It was a guy who was so scared of disappointing people that he never let anyone get close enough to love him. "
"Except Sabrina," Ridge added. "She's been close enough to love you your whole life. And she chose to anyway, even after you broke her heart a dozen times."
I opened my mouth to argue, but the words wouldn't come.
Because they were right, and I knew it. Sabrina had been the one constant in my life, the one person who'd seen all my flaws and failures and still looked at me like I was worth something.
And when I'd finally let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, we could have something real, I'd found out she was the one who'd written my name on that list.
She hadn't written it to hurt me. She'd written it because I'd hurt her, over and over again, by being too afraid to take the risk of loving her back.
"She found the courage to tell you the truth, even knowing it might destroy everything. And what did you do?" Ridge asked.
"I left."
"You ran," Thatcher said. "Again. Just like you always do when things get too real."
The words landed like a baseball bat to my head, but I couldn't argue with them. Because that's exactly what I'd done. The moment Sabrina had opened her mouth to tell me the truth, the moment she'd shown me her most vulnerable self, I'd bolted.
"She's probably sitting in that coffee shop right now," Ridge said, "convinced she's lost you forever. Convinced that telling the truth was the worst mistake she ever made. And tomorrow, she'll have to smile and serve coffee at that wedding and pretend her heart isn't breaking."
I thought about Sabrina, probably staring at the ceiling and replaying our conversation. Probably wondering if I'd ever forgive her, if I'd ever speak to her again. The image made my chest ache.
"What am I supposed to do?" I asked. "Just pretend it never happened?"
"No," Thatcher said. "You're supposed to forgive her. Because that's what you do when you love someone and they make a mistake. You forgive them, and you figure out how to move forward together."
"And if you can't do that," Holt added, "then maybe the Ex-List was right about you after all."
Fuck me. When did Trail Supper turn into a group therapy session?
The words hit me like he’d just delivered an upper cut to my chin.
Not because they were mean, but because they were true.
If I couldn't find a way to forgive the woman I loved for making a mistake when she was hurt and young and stupid, then maybe I really was the kind of man who couldn't commit. Maybe I really was The Heartbreaker.
"She's not the same person who wrote that list," Ridge said after a few beats of quiet.
"And neither are you. Look at what she's built with that coffee shop.
Look at how she handled all the wedding chaos this week, even with that podcaster breathing down her neck.
She's grown up, Trace. The question is, have you? "
I stared into the fire, watching the flames dance and flicker.
In the distance, I could hear the sound of music drifting from town.
It was probably the rehearsal dinner for tomorrow's wedding.
In less than twenty-four hours, Sabrina would be pasting on a smile and playing hostess to a celebrity bride and her guests.
And I'd be... what? Sitting at home and nursing my wounded pride?
What hurt most wasn’t the label of The Heartbreaker. It was knowing she’d carried that fear alone. That she hadn’t trusted me with the truth… not then, and not until everything imploded around us.
"She loves you," Thatcher said. "Has loved you for half her life. And yeah, she messed up. But she's trying to make it right. The question is, are you going to let her?"
I stared down at my beer, letting their words settle in my chest. The truth of it hit me all at once—Sabrina had been brave enough to write that list, brave enough to tell me the truth about how she felt, even knowing it might destroy everything between us.
And what had I done? Run. Hidden. Let my pride keep me from seeing what was right in front of me.
She'd loved me for half her life. Half her life. While I'd been too stubborn and scared to see it, she'd been there, waiting, hoping. And when she finally found the courage to put her heart on the line, I'd thrown it back in her face.
"You're right," I finally said, looking around the circle at my friends. "She was trying to tell me something I was too much of a coward to hear."
Thatcher nodded, his gruff expression going soft for a second. "So what are you going to do about it?"
I stood. "I'm going to go home and figure out how to tell the woman I love that I'm sorry I was such an idiot."
"About time," Ridge said with a grin.
Holt clapped me on the shoulder. "Don't overthink it, man. Just tell her the truth.”
I nodded, suddenly eager to get home, to start figuring out what I was going to say to her. "Thanks, guys. For not letting me stay stupid forever."
“Somebody’s got to do it since your brother’s off living the dream,” Dane joked.
The drive home felt different somehow, like the weight I'd been carrying around for weeks was finally starting to lift. By the time I pulled into my driveway, I knew what I had to do. Tomorrow morning, first thing, I was going to drive to the Inn and find Sabrina.
It was time to choose love over fear. It was time to stop being The Heartbreaker and start being the man she deserved.