32. Sawyer
Sawyer
Two months later
Autumn’s turned Ashford into an idyllic haven for New York City tourists. Maples line Main Street in every shade of orange and red, pumpkins and mums sit outside each doorstep, and the air finally carries that crisp bite I’ve craved for months.
I love summer, always have. Mostly because of the traditions it used to bring—time at Lake Mercer, Wonder World, weeks with Knox and Owen.
But autumn has my entire heart.
It’s been two months since the wedding charade. Two months since the arrests. Somehow, I kept it together through the hectic first week following it all.
Turns out you can survive almost anything if you’ve already survived the worst thing.
Richard’s out on bail, but on house arrest at the lake house while he awaits the trial.
They said he was a flight risk…they were probably right.
His lawyers have been filing motion after motion that my own legal team assures me won’t matter in the end.
The evidence is clear, and more surfaced once Victoria started cooperating.
Ratting on Moretti may have bought him less time and a better cell someday, but not freedom. He’ll pay for his sins.
Moretti’s case is messier, tangled up with federal prosecutors who apparently have their own agenda.
We’re not as privy to any of that information, but Knox seems to think he’s going away for a long time.
It’s too bad we didn’t get to see Moretti’s face when Ella told him the wedding was a ruse to pull Richard out of hiding and get him off Knox’s back.
According to her, she let him have some choice words and said if he ever wanted to see her again, he’d forget about everyone in Ashford. She assured us that we were safe.
My father has a hearing next month and I’m hoping an early release is on the table. I want to make up for lost time…learn to forgive. It won’t be easy, but nothing is.
Forgiveness is a strange thing. It feels like such a hurdle until you realize bit by bit, one day at a time, that you’re letting go of anger and hurt you never thought you would.
I still think about Ella sometimes and hope she’s doing okay.
She moved out of Ashford, down to the city, I think.
If she hadn’t agreed to the wedding ruse, I don’t know if any of this would have played out the way it did.
To trust Gia, a complete stranger, and be a part of a plan she had no part in making took a lot of faith.
And I know some part of her did want to marry Knox for real in the beginning.
For her to let Gia fudge the paperwork, and her to go along with the whole thing to trap Richard…
it was a huge ask. She gave up more than anyone realized to help a man who didn’t love her.
I don’t know if I’ve ever properly forgiven her for Owen, but I’m not sure I need to anymore. Owen forgave people faster than anyone I’ve ever known. Maybe some of that rubbed off on me. Plus, I forgave Knox…who probably deserved it the least.
Ella will be okay. Someone like her will come out of all this stronger. I have to believe that.
“You coming or did you want to go take the test again?” Gia bumps my shoulder as we push through the double doors into the parking lot, both of us squinting against the sun.
“Sorry. Spaced out.”
“I feel you.” She adjusts her bag on her shoulder. “Contract terminology is evil.”
I nod, letting her think that’s where my head was.
I’m still plugging away at the paralegal program and working at the inn.
It’s not glamorous or really what I pictured for myself when I was a little kid, but at least it’s something and I got to choose it on my own.
I keep telling myself that in a year, things will be different, and it gets me through every shift.
For now, though, finally breathing the fall air after hours in a stuffy classroom, I’m not thinking about the inn at all.
Gia taps my shoulder and points. I look in that direction and smile.
Knox is leaning against his Jeep in the parking lot, arms crossed, aviators on, looking like he wandered off the set of some romance movie featuring a broody heartthrob.
He hasn’t seen me yet, so I let myself check him out a little before he does.
“Oh my God,” Gia mutters. “Does he know how obnoxious it is that he’s hot while not even trying?”
“Completely,” I say. “He’s the cockiest person I’ve ever met.”
He spots me then, and the corner of his mouth lifts. He pushes off the Jeep as we get closer.
“Hey, ladies,” he croons, and Gia snorts.
“I’ve got a shift,” she says, backing toward her own car. “Try not to make me sick with how cute you two are.”
“No promises,” Knox calls after her. She gives him the finger without turning around, laughing.
He pushes his glasses onto his head. “Hungry?”
“Depends what you’re offering.”
“I was thinking Marcello’s. I know it’s been a long week.”
Warmth spreads throughout my chest. It’s the small things like this that make me love him, even when he’s being infuriating.
“You’re just trying to butter me up for later,” I say, raising my brow. He opens the door for me and I slide into the passenger seat.
“Is it working?”
“Ask me after I’ve got a garlic knot in front of me.”
He rounds the hood and gets in, pushing his aviators back on. “So,” he says, backing out of the space, “you said you wanted to talk about tomorrow?”
“I did.” I twist toward him in my seat, watching the storefronts slide by the window. “I still don’t get why your mom invited mine to her birthday dinner.”
“You’ve asked me all week and I still don’t know why either.” His hand finds mine and I run my thumb over his knuckle.
“Your mom and my mom aren’t exactly close. They haven’t been for years. And given everything—” I don’t finish. The affair is still hard for Knox to talk about. I’m sure he knows what I mean anyway.
“Maybe she wants to bury the hatchet now that Richard is out of the picture. They were close at one point. Some of that’s still in there.”
“Maybe,” I say, tapping his hand. “Or maybe your mom’s thought of more inventive things to do with a hatchet…like bury it in my mom.”
He laughs. “Come on, Thorne. People are capable of forgiveness. Look at us.”
“Who says I’ve forgiven you?” He turns, causing me to shriek for him to watch the road.
“Oh, you’ve forgiven me. Otherwise I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have let me do what I did to you last night.”
Heat spreads up my neck as a flash of Knox going down on me in the kitchen takes center stage.
“I’ve rendered you speechless,” he says, sounding so smug.
I roll my eyes, willing the blush to stay away from my cheeks. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late.”
I shove his shoulder, and he catches my hand before I can pull it back, lacing our fingers together over the console like he’s done it a million times before.
It still catches me off guard sometimes, how easy this is.
How after everything, we ended up here, bickering about stupid shit instead of secrets and survival.
“So it’s you, me, my mom, and your mom tomorrow,” I say, steering us back on track. “Can you handle that many women at one table?”
He laughs my question off. “Don’t forget Gia. My mom invited her too. Said she likes her wild energy.”
“Oh, this is going to be a disaster.”
“Oh, definitely.” He pulls into Marcello’s lot and cuts the engine. “Especially if booze is thrown into the mix.”
“Maybe we can moderate that,” I say, thinking about a drunk Victoria in a room with Mom on her birthday and Gia egging them on.
“I’m on it,” he says, before brushing his lips over my knuckles.
Neither of us move to get out. Not yet. Sunlight spills across the dashboard, filling the space with a golden aura.
It’s comfortable, being like this, just the two of us.
I still get that knee jerk reaction sometimes that we have to avoid going out in public together.
It’s hard to wrap my head around having the freedom to love each other openly now.
People will always have their opinions. He’s my boyfriend’s brother and always will be. But he’s so much more.
Let them have their stories and tell them across dinner tables and phone lines. Pass them around the country club and throughout cocktail parties. I’m sure whatever they come up with is far more sordid than reality.
The two survivors with their shared trauma who fell in love. Or maybe they’ll say the homewrecker who slept with her dead boyfriend’s brother. That’s probably a popular one. Or maybe it’s the rich socialite who took up with the town pariah, but his family ended up being the true villains.
The truth is far messier—grief and guilt and years of back and forth, four people who loved and betrayed each other in ways none of us saw coming, and one of them gone before he could ever choose his ending.
I used to think I owed the whole town an explanation. Now I know the only thing I owe anyone is the version of myself I get to have back—the one having lunch with Knox on a Friday afternoon, nothing at stake, a future that’s finally, entirely ours.
Broken tracks and nightmares are always going to be part of our story. They just aren’t the ending anymore. We’re choosing the free fall, together, with nothing and no one to catch us but each other.