Chapter 25
Stevie doesn’t come home all day. She left after our conversation this morning, just as I was getting out of the shower, and I’ve busied myself throughout the day, but now that the afternoon is quickly approaching evening, I can’t distract myself anymore.
I’m not sure where I’m headed when I get in my car, but a few minutes later, I’m turning onto the road that leads to Stevie’s property. I don’t know if she’s there, but I’m realizing there’s not really anywhere I want to be in town without her. I’m so damn screwed.
My heart gallops faster in my chest when I see her truck parked at the end of her long driveway. I expect her to be working inside, but instead, she’s sitting in a chair out front, a blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders.
She doesn’t react when she sees me, and when I put the car in park, I notice the expression on her face. She looks devastated, and before I know what I’m doing, I’m hopping out of the car, crossing the distance between us in large strides.
“Are you okay? What happened?”
She blinks at me, confused. “What?”
I stop a few feet from her, pulse still racing. “Why are you crying?”
It’s only now that I’m close enough that I can see the sheen of tears on her face, and I realize she must be freezing with the wind whipping at her cheeks, chapping them.
She wipes at her cheeks and then studies her hand. “I didn’t realize I was.”
I wish there was a chair beside her, somewhere I could sit down just to be close to her, but there’s not, and I realize how lonely that chair must look out here without her in it. Alone in front of a firepit that isn’t lit.
“Can we go inside?”
She nods and pushes out of the chair, her blanket catching in the fallen leaves at her feet. I follow her up the stairs into the Airstream, realizing she finally got the electric turned back on when warmth greets us.
“Why weren’t you sitting inside?” I ask. “It’s freezing out there.”
She shrugs and settles into one of the built-in seats at her kitchen table. “Wasn’t that cold when the sun was out.”
I look around the Airstream. She’s made a lot of progress since I was here last. The roof is repaired, and it looks like she’s in the middle of replacing the floorboards that lifted from the water damage.
The couch and bookshelf still need to be repaired, but otherwise she doesn’t have much to finish before she could move back in.
The thought twists something in my stomach.
I push it away and let my attention settle back on her. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her cheeks wind-burned. She looks wrecked, and it makes my chest ache.
“Are you okay?” I ask again, softer than I did outside.
She tucks her feet up on the bench, wraps her arms around legs, and rests her chin on her knees. “I don’t know, honestly.”
“Do you want to be alone?”
Her gaze holds mine for a long moment, then she shakes her head.
I exhale in relief, and move to the bench opposite hers, lowering myself down into it. “What happened?”
She sighs, and chews on her bottom lip. Finally, she says, “I got into a fight with my mom. And then Wren.”
My eyes stay fixed on hers. They’re more green than brown right now, clearer from the crying. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She swallows, then turns and lowers her legs beneath the table. I watch as she fiddles with a tassel on the edge of her blanket. “My mom told me I need to back off.”
“What?” I don’t mean for the words to come out so incredulously, but to my relief, it makes a small smile tick up in one corner of her mouth.
“Not in so many words,” she says. “But she told me I’ve sacrificed a lot for them, and that she doesn’t want me to keep doing that.
She…” She trails off for a minute and meets my eyes.
“She told me Wren talked to her about it. And I don’t know why, but that just set me off.
So I confronted Wren and she said awful things, and I just had to get out of there. ”
“What did she say?”
She blows out a breath through her nose. “That I don’t have a life. That I’m alone.”
I think of the chair outside, and my chest aches.
“That’s not true, Stevie.”
Her chin dips in a nod. “I know. I know it’s not true, but it hurts to know that’s how the people closest to me think of me. That they think my life here is worthless.”
“They don’t think that.”
I don’t consciously reach for her hand, but one moment, mine is in my lap, and the next it’s wrapped around hers.
Her hands are large, and they’re callused, but they’re also delicate.
The fingers long, slender. Her nails are painted a dark green that she did a few days ago on the couch as we watched a sitcom.
My thumb traces over the ridges of her knuckles. “They don’t think that,” I repeat.
She shakes her head, watching the path of my thumb. Back and forth, back and forth. “Maybe not, but they don’t think this is the life I chose, that it’s the life I want.”
“Is it?”
Her eyes lift to mine. “I don’t know. I think that’s what’s bothering me most. That they could be right. I don’t…” she pauses. “I don’t know what I want. I just know that I’ve always been needed here. What I wanted didn’t really matter.”
“It matters,” I tell her.
My mind slips back to last night, to the way she stepped into me, her eyes dipping to my lips.
To the way she told me this morning that she wanted to kiss me.
I’m not sure how someone so good could want me.
It feels inconceivable. I have dedicated my life to caring for others when they need it, but it’s been a selfish escape for me more than anything else. I left the people who needed me.
But Stevie never has. She stayed even when she didn’t want to. And now they’re throwing it back in her face. Anger burns in my stomach, hot and powerful.
She slips her hand from mine and tugs up the corner of the blanket that has slipped off her shoulder, her eyes focused on a point on the floor. She looks hollow, and it makes something inside me crack in half.
“How can I help?”
Her gaze latches on mine. “You being here is helping.”
The ache inside me soothes just a little. “Yeah?”
She nods. “I wanted to be alone at first, but when I got here…”
I know the feeling. For years, I’ve treasured my alone time.
After a long shift or a night out. Loneliness was never something I dealt with.
But after living with her for the last seven weeks, time alone has become taffy, stretching and bending over and over again.
Waiting for her to come home today was endless.
“I understand.”
Looking into her eyes is like falling face first, and I feel myself bracing for the impact. “Jack, I…” she stops, shaking her head before starting again. “I’m going to miss you when you’re gone.”
Her words pelt me in all of the soft places I’ve taken so much time to protect. I swallow, throat thick. “I’m going to miss you, too.”
Her bottom lip tucks between her teeth again, and I can’t help the way my eyes dip to watch it. “If you’re ever in the area, you know you can always come here, right?”
It would be a bad idea. I know that. My self-control is barely hanging on by a thread. But I also know if another job came up in a fifty mile radius I’d take it, just for a chance to spend weeks at a time near her again.
I nod and taste the words on the tip of my tongue before I speak them aloud. “And if you ever want to get away for a bit, visit somewhere new, call me, okay? You’ll have a place to stay wherever I am.”
“Okay,” she says, and for a heartbeat, I think she may actually be considering it. But then a cloud covers her face, and she looks sad again. Enough that it makes my chest hurt.
“Do you want to get out of here?” I ask.
She looks up at me, blinking away the fog in her eyes. “And go where?”
I shrug. “Out of town. Go to Asheville or Gatlinburg or something.”
One of her dark brows lifts. “You want to go to Gatlinburg in October?” She sounds incredulous.
“I’ve never been. Why not?”
A warm laugh rumbles out of her, and it chases away some of the lingering ache that settled in when I saw the sadness on her face.
“We can go, but just be warned that it’s going to be kitschy and packed.”
“Would you rather go somewhere else?”
The truth is, I’d go anywhere with her right now. I’d do anything to keep her smiling just like this.
She shakes her head, the grin lingering on the edges of her lips. “No, let’s go to Gatlinburg.”