22. Sawyer
Sawyer
Sunlight streams through floral curtains, illuminating a framed painting of a wrinkly old man. Yup, I’m not in my own bed, that’s for sure.
The night comes back to me. Gia’s spy theatrics, Miriam’s estate nestled into the trees and her studio guesthouse. My body aches in places I didn’t know could ache, exhaustion finally catching up with me after two days of running on fumes and adrenaline.
There’s warmth beside me. A body snoring lightly, and he smells like home. Knox is sprawled across the other half of the full-size bed, one arm resting over his eyes.
“How?” I croak and clear my throat. The layer of dust covering every surface is making me rasp. “How did you get in here?”
He cracks one eyelid, the corner of his mouth lifting despite the bruising still mottled across his jaw. “Morning.”
“Knox. Seriously. Gia locked every door. I watched her do it.”
“She did, but she gave me the door code after I insisted.” He stretches and winces, then settles against the headboard. “I parked a half mile down the road and walked the rest of the way through the woods. There’s a gap in the fence line near an old greenhouse.”
“And how did you know that?” I shake my head. “You know what? I don’t want to know.”
“I scouted the property. Wasn’t about to leave you somewhere I hadn’t checked myself.”
He’s still bruised and beaten, walking like a video game character on low health, and he’s trekking through the woods at night. Unbelievable.
“You’re insane. That’s not something a person in your condition should be doing.”
“Nothing’s going to keep me away from you, Thorne.”
My chest squeezes and my stomach does a traitorous little flip.
“That’s incredibly stalkerish, you know that, right?” I try to keep my voice light and teasing, but it comes out softer than I mean it to. “Knew I should have gotten that restraining order.”
“Probably.” He reaches over, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “But that wouldn’t have stopped me either.”
I should laugh it off. Make another joke and deflect the way I always do when things get too heavy. But the intensity in his gaze, and all that he’s done, even bruised and exhausted, pull me in. And I’m so tired of running and denying.
So when he leans in, giving me every chance to pull back, I don't.
I kiss him instead.
It’s not desperate or frantic or grief-soaked like so many times before.
It’s slow and careful, mindful of his injuries, and filled with gratitude for the lengths he’ll go.
His hand slides into my hair, tugging gently to angle my face where he wants it.
My hands splay over his bare chest, feeling his lean muscles and warm skin.
He groans into my mouth and I feel it all the way in my core. I’m filled with want. With need. But something’s keeping me from scrambling into his lap. Some invisible barrier, stopping me from giving him everything again.
So I deepen the kiss, keeping my distance, but letting time suspend. There’s nothing chasing us in this moment. No Moretti. No Richard. No wedding. It’s just us.
When we finally break apart, he rests his forehead against mine. We stay like that for a few breaths before reality creeps back in at the edges. The guesthouse, Miriam’s estate, the drive to Otisville waiting for us. Knox must feel it too, as he sits up straighter.
“We should get ready,” I say. “Before Gia finds you and has an aneurysm about her spy operation getting compromised.”
He huffs a laugh against my forehead. “Fair.”
We get ready quickly and quietly. I’m in my head about this whole thing.
After everything I’ve gone through this summer, seeing my father feels like the last nail in the coffin.
I have no idea how I’ll react. How Knox will react.
Just because he found some paperwork, will that erase years of animosity toward the man he believed destroyed his family.
I doubt their encounter will be all butterflies and rainbows, and I’ll be the one to keep the peace.
By the time we’re back in his Jeep winding down the backroads toward the highway, that warm feeling of waking up to Knox in my bed is gone and replaced by something colder and more complicated.
I kissed him.
I actually let myself do that, after weeks of telling myself not again. Not while he was engaged. Even knowing it wasn’t entirely his fault, he still had no problem lying to my face.
It’s all too soon. Too tangled up in Owen’s betrayal and grief and guilt to ever be simple. It’ll never be simple with Knox and I don’t even know if I want him like that—not with all these complications weighing us down.
But I know one thing clearly as I watch the trees blur past the window. Richard needs to pay for whatever he did. And Knox doesn’t deserve to be handed off like property to a man his father made a deal with. Neither does Ella, honestly, no matter the complicated feelings I have about her.
I press my forehead against the window, grounding myself on the feel of the cool glass.
“You okay?” Knox glances over, reading me the way he always does.
“Nervous about seeing him.” It’s the easiest true thing I can say.
“You’re sure you want to come? I can go on my own if it’s too much.”
I straighten in my seat, watching the highway signs come into view. “I’m sure. Let’s get this over with.”
The visiting room is exactly like I imagined. Clinical and cold, smelling like industrial cleaner and stale coffee. Fluorescent lights flicker above the tables and the chairs are bolted to the floor.
Knox and I get through the check-in process in near silence—IDs verified, metal detector unflagged, a guard’s instructions about what we can and can’t do once we’re seated. None of that fully prepares me for the moment the door on the far side opens.
My father walks in wearing a khaki jumpsuit, thinner and more hollow than I remember, his hair more gray than brown. All the air leaves my lungs in a whoosh and every rehearsed thing I planned to say goes with it.
He stops mid-step when he sees me and his mouth drops open. “Sawyer?”
Tears spring to my eyes before I can stop them, and I hate it.
I hate how my stupid body betrays every careful wall I built over the last two years.
It’s a flood of relief and grief and anger all tangled together so tightly I can’t separate one from the other, but none of it matters the second he crosses the room and pulls me into his arms.
He still smells like himself. A faint trace of the cologne he used to wear, buried under soap and years of distance, and it undoes something in me I didn’t know was still holding on.
“I’m sorry,” he says into my hair, his voice cracking. “I’m so sorry, baby girl.”
I stay quiet, letting myself be held, remembering what it feels like to be his daughter, to be safe in his arms. For months, I’ve felt like nothing more than a problem to be solved or a threat to be managed. But not here, not now.
A guard steps closer, clearing his throat, and Dad pulls away. His eyes are damp too. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen him cry since before. He never shed a tear the entire sentencing, not even when Mom told him she was done right there in the courtroom.
His gaze slides past me and lands on Knox.
Whatever softness was in his face a second ago sharpens in an instant. He straightens, jaw tightening, taking in Knox’s presence beside me like he’s readying for a fight.
“Knox,” he says, his voice flat.
“Mr. Thorne,” Knox says, inclining his head.
My father’s eyes move between the two of us, trying to get a read on the situation. Can he tell that there’s something going on with Knox and me? Will he be judgmental about it, like everyone else?
He’s had nothing but time in here to think and read people. I’m sure he notices something different between us.
“You know.” He speaks quietly, looking directly at Knox, before cutting his gaze toward me. “You know something.”
Knox just tips his chin.
“Dad—”
He holds out his hand. “Let’s sit and talk. Tell me everything.”
We take our seats across from him in the cold vinyl chairs. Knox sits close enough that our knees touch and I’m grateful for the small connection.
“We found something in my father’s files,” Knox says.
He sounds stable and sure, a hell of a lot more than I would sound right now.
His hand finds my knee and he continues.
“An old report on the Velocity site, with soil stability warnings and other geological data. There was a note on it, handwritten, saying someone named Rick recommended postponing the build.”
Dad rubs a hand down his face.
“Signed by you,” Knox finishes.
We’re all quiet as the words sink in. I swear my father’s face pales. He looks down at his hands, and then finally meets my gaze.
“I wrote that note years ago. Right when ground broke on the Wonder World expansion. It was a dream job, paid our salaries for a year. But there were complications with the land,” he continues, voice low.
“Rick was our structural engineer. Best in the business, worked with us for over a decade. He came to me with soil samples that worried him. Some instability under the section where they wanted to put the coaster. I passed it along to your father.” His eyes find Knox’s.
“I recommended we postpone. Get a second opinion. Redo the footing plans before anything went up.”
“And?” I press, even though I know I’m not going to like the answer.
“And Richard told me it was handled, that he’d brought in a different team, and they’d addressed it. That the delay wasn’t necessary anymore. I believed him.” A humorless laugh escapes him. “Over ten years running that company together, Sawyer. I trusted the man like a brother.”
“But it wasn’t handled,” Knox says, keeping his anger tamped even when I know he wants to explode.
Dad’s hands curl into fists on the table. “He never fixed it. He just made the paperwork disappear and let me believe all was well.”
Holy shit. This is all real. Not just some wild theory Knox came up with. And that means…
“I didn’t think anything of it until the accident,” Dad says, barely able to get the words out.
Knox’s hand tightens on my knee, and I press my own hand over his, gripping like it’s the only solid thing left in the room.
“I remembered that report the second I heard what happened,” Dad says, voice barely a whisper. “I remembered Rick’s face when he told me what needed to be done, the seriousness of it all. And I heard the news and…God help me, Sawyer, I thought to myself, maybe this is on me too.”
“Dad. It’s not on you.”
“That old report was buried in my head along with a hundred other project files I hadn’t thought about in years.
I had no reason to think about the coaster.
Rick’s warning, my note…As far as I knew, it had all been handled the way Richard told me it was.
” He looks up, eyes damp again. “It wasn’t until the accident, losing Owen…
almost losing you two, that it came back to me.
That I even remembered the report existed. ”
“So you didn’t know? Not when you went to prison? Not until the accident?”
“No.” He reaches for my free hand. “I swear to God, Sawyer, I didn’t know. And when I saw the news with everyone else, what was I supposed to do? Think about it…who would believe me, the felon who started a town-wide scandal, when I’m up against Ashford’s golden family?”
I glance at Knox and his expression’s unreadable. “You could have told me.”
He looks back at his hands. “I wanted to. It killed me not to. But honey, what good would it do? You were grieving and injured. You think I wanted to call you up and blurt out, ‘Hey! So this was all Richard Aldrich’s doing.’”
“No,” Knox finally chimes in. “You’d have put Sawyer and yourself in danger.”
“Exactly.” Dad's grip on my hand tightens and he lowers his voice. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, Knox, and I don’t trust you.
I’ve seen what your family does to people who threaten their name.
Hell, I’m living it. I wasn’t about to hand Sawyer a piece of information then that could get her killed, and I’m regretting telling you now. ”
“You can trust Knox, Dad.”
They size each other up, neither backing down.
“Can I?” Dad's eyes stay fixed on Knox, hard and searching. “Give me one good reason why I should trust an Aldrich with anything, let alone something this dangerous.”
“Because I've spent the last two days getting my ribs caved in trying to protect her, and I still showed up here anyway.” Knox doesn’t blink, doesn’t back down an inch.
“Because last night I chose not to go sit at my mother’s hospital bed so I could be here instead, digging for the truth.
I don’t need you to trust me because of my last name.
I need you to trust me because of what I’ve actually done since this started. ”
Dad’s expression shifts—his eyes open wider, his brows smooth. “You’re not like your father.”
“Fuck no,” Knox says. “I’d rather be dead.”
“I always knew you’d be different. Even when you were a little kid.”
Silence stretches long enough that I start to wonder if I should say something. Anything to break the tension between them. Then Dad exhales and some of the fight leaves his shoulders. Now he just looks exhausted.
“I need to ask you about the embezzlement,” Knox says. “The truth. What actually happened. Because I don't think it’s as simple as what came out at trial.”
“I’ll tell you what I know,” Dad says, looking defeated. “But I want you both to understand something first. None of it makes what I did right or better. I made my own choices. Choices I have to live with. But Richard…his hands are filthier than anyone in that town.”
He begins, and with every word he looks more like his old self.
It’s like he’s rehearsed this hundreds of times in his cell.
It wouldn’t surprise me if he had. I listen, my hand still covering Knox’s, and by the time the guards announce the end of our visit, my stomach’s hit the floor and my thoughts are all over the place.
I’m hollowed out, wrung dry but also somehow bursting with this new knowledge.
Dad reaches for my free hand one more time before we go, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I should’ve told you years ago. I’m sorry I let you find out like this.”
I don’t have words for him yet so I nod and let Knox pull me up from the chair and lead me out of the room.
We don’t speak again until we’re back in the Jeep, miles from the prison.
“What do we do? I don’t know where to go from here.”
I turn to him, watching the changes in his expression as he ponders the question. Jaw tight, fingers gripping the wheel, brows drawn in.
“We end it,” he finally says. “All of it.”