Chapter 31 Brie #2
“Nothing excuses the way I treated you, so it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me!”
There’s a moment of silence in which he watches me with pained eyes.
“Tell me,” I hiss. “I want to know. I deserve to know why my entire childhood was reduced to a steaming pile of shit because of you.”
His eyes meet mine, glassy and devoid of any spark. “I was scared.”
Scared? What did Sawyer Strong have to be scared of?
He shakes his head again and then, evenly, he says, “I was scared of people finding out how I really felt about you. I was sure it was obvious to anyone who looked that I only wanted to be around you.” He lets out another hollow laugh.
“I can’t believe you didn’t know. It only got worse as we got older.
By high school, I was desperate for you.
And I knew I couldn’t have you. You never even guessed that night I drove you home?
Or when we danced at prom?” His voice cracks on the last word.
My jaw drops, and I’m positive shock is written all over my face.
I’d felt something in those moments, too.
On the drive. At prom. Those months in between when my crush blossomed into something untenable.
It was something I only ever admitted to myself late at night, when the whispers in my head were loudest. I thought I might have even been a little crazy to have feelings for him, after everything he’d done.
I even acted a little crazy—keeping his jacket after the drive in the rain and pulling it out some nights just to prove it really happened, sleeping with it.
Even though the deepest parts of me wished he returned my feelings, I never believed he ever could. Because you don’t treat someone the way Sawyer treated me if you like them.
Suddenly, I understand. Sawyer was ashamed to have feelings for me. Sawyer was the Prince of Blue Ridge, and I was vermin by comparison. And that’s why he was a jerk.
Anger sparks to life again as I realize exactly what he’s saying. “So you didn’t want the town to know you were interested in the girl from the wrong side of the tracks.” It isn’t a question.
Pain flashes in his eyes.
I don’t care. Why should I care about his pain right now?
“It wasn’t that simple,” he says.
“Then spell it out for me. Why were you so scared—so ashamed—of your feelings that you had to be cruel to me instead?”
He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes before meeting my gaze.
“Take your pick. The town. My friends. My dad.” He lets out a long sigh.
“My dad’s such an asshole. He was trying to raise me to be like him.
Even as a little fucking kid, he made it clear it was heresy for me to play with anyone whose name wasn’t Whitaker or Darvish, or any of the other families he deemed good because of their income bracket or what they could do for him.
It was a lot of pressure.” He looks far away now.
“Sometimes I wonder if the difference between Will and me is how much more time he got with our mom, if that’s why he didn’t cave into it like I did. ”
Sawyer’s mom died when he was young, like mine. And I only knew of Sawyer’s dad as the mayor, but he was disliked in my neighborhood. Labeled an untrustworthy classist snake.
“There was no questioning my dad,” Sawyer goes on.
“No standing up to him. His word was canon.” He rubs the back of his neck.
“I knew from the first time I saw you that I liked you. I wanted to be your friend immediately. When my dad discovered my interest in ‘a Casey’” —he uses air quotes— “he made it clear it was unacceptable.” His voice turns into a dark growl.
“I should’ve told him to go to hell from the start. ”
I let out a disbelieving sound. “You should’ve told him to go to hell when you were in kindergarten?”
“Even then I knew it was wrong. When I finally did tell him off, it was too late.”
“What does that mean?” As far as I can tell, Sawyer is still very much the Prince of Blue Ridge he always was.
He scrubs his hands down his face. “After prom, everything I did to you fully sank in. I was disgusted with myself. A mess for a while. All I wanted was to escape. I enlisted in the Navy just to do something that was completely my own choice. I’ve never seen my dad so angry.
” He shakes his head and meets my eyes. “He had plans for me, you know? And enlisting wasn’t it.
He threatened to cut me off if I didn’t undo it. ”
I’m stunned. Sawyer became a SEAL. I know that. Even so, I can’t help asking, “What’d you do?”
“I handed over the keys to my truck. Left that night with one bag.”
I draw in a deep breath. It feels like the first in a while. In my wildest dreams, I never considered Sawyer might have carried the weight of what happened between us. I’d always assumed he was unaffected. Proud, maybe, but remorseful? Never.
My voice comes out small when I ask, “You defied your dad and left . . . because of me?” Something inside me begins to thaw. Something I didn’t even know was there. My hands start to shake, and I clench them tight.
His eyes hold mine. “Because of what I did to you. I wanted to be different. Someone who’d never hurt someone else just to save myself, especially not the woman I care about.
Even though I never had you, I needed to learn to be the kind of man who could stand up for you no matter what.
Not tear you down.” He swallows hard. “Like at prom.”
That memory is the most raw. It stings, and I can’t hold back my choked sound as it surfaces. The giddy anticipation as I slid my hand into Sawyer’s, the ignorant bliss of dancing with him. Then, the way he pushed me away, the eyes on me at the gym. His words.
I thought I’d give her a taste of the good life. It’s all downhill from here for trash like her.
It was the moment I knew I’d never truly belong in Blue Ridge.
“You might not believe this, Brie, but that was the worst night of my life. I went to the dance alone, determined to ignore you. But the second I saw you, I knew I couldn’t. You were so beautiful. I couldn’t stop myself from going to you and asking you to dance.”
The perfect memory of him standing in front of me that night, hand outstretched, causes my stomach to drop. I’d been so shocked, couldn’t believe it was real, but dancing with Sawyer felt so good.
“It was everything,” he says. “Getting to hold you was . . . everything. I finally got exactly what I wanted after years of fighting it.”
“Sawyer, I’m still not getting it. If it was so fantastic like you say, why did it turn out the way it did?” Because that night I lived out the best moments of my young life, and the worst.
He looks up at the ceiling and shakes his head faintly. “God, it sounds so juvenile. We were dancing, and I got hard.”
“You . . . got hard.” Did I hear that right?
“I was embarrassed and I didn’t want you to feel it, so I pushed you away.
Then, I heard my friends behind me laughing, and I was terrified they saw right through me.
Knew exactly how much I wanted you. All I could do was picture my father’s face, red and angry, the words he always spat at me when he was mad.
” His expression hardens. “So I saved face. Said those disgusting words that’ve haunted me for years. ”
“You humiliated me . . . because you got a boner?” I know I’m simplifying here, I know there’s more at play, but . . . come on.
He swallows. “I’d give anything to take it back. I’m so ashamed of my behavior.”
Since coming back to Blue Ridge, I’ve been cautious around Sawyer, certain he’s playing some kind of game that’ll result in a gotcha moment where I’ll end up mortified.
But this is no game. His face is drawn, haggard almost. Like this has been weighing on him for a lifetime.
I believe him.
“Brie, I was lost back then. It wasn’t just my dad, but the whole town expected me to worship the ground my dad walked on, then follow in his footsteps. They expected certain things of me, tried to fit me into their preconceived box of who I should be.”
My breath hitches because I know exactly what that’s like. The town expecting me to be—no, telling me I was—something I wasn’t. The fact Sawyer felt the same pressure never occurred to me because . . . he was the prince.
Looking back, every awful interaction back then only ever happened when his friends were there, watching. Most of the time, it wasn’t even him doing the thing, but looking on, stony-faced, as Rich acted like a jerk. His loud mouth, his evil smirk, they were a mask he wore for them.
“Look, Brie, I don’t expect you to forgive me. I know better than that. But I’m glad you know. Words are worthless, but if it helps, I’m so sorry.” He winces. “Fuck, that’s so weak. But I am. So fucking sorry, Brie.”
I swallow thickly. I used to know Sawyer had the perfect life growing up. I knew he was always in charge, always the lauded one, always sure of himself.
Just like everyone else, I put him in a box he didn’t belong in.
But I can see it now. He’s laid it open for me, the pain clear on his face.
Back then, Sawyer was larger than life. He never seemed like a kid even when he was one. But it’s clear from his sadness now he regrets each and every one of his actions. Maybe that pain has been there all along, but it’s only now that I can see past the man in front of me to the child he was.
My heart breaks for that little kid.
Sawyer was a child. The child to a hard, loathsome man, who fed him his personal brand of bigotry. Subjecting him to years of indoctrination.
And he’s right, it wasn’t just his dad. Back then, the town itself was a mirror of the mayor. I felt it in their stares, their whispers behind my back. And Sawyer would’ve been under the most pressure to join them, to ridicule me.
In one blinding moment, I see it: Sawyer and I are the same. Both of our dads were shitty role models, if for different reasons. Both of us had reputations in the town to live up to. And both of us suffered because of it.
I don’t know why it never occurred to me before. I teach kids every day. I see them do stupid, thoughtless, sometimes cruel things to one another. And I never hold it against them, instead giving them grace to learn and grow.
It took the students in my class at Everett Academy mere days to begin calling me names when my back was turned.
They never questioned whether any of what they heard about me was true because they trusted their parents implicitly.
But I still don’t blame them, even if I wasn’t strong enough to stay and help them be better.
I was never able to give Sawyer the same grace—of course I wasn’t, I was a kid too. But he was never encouraged to learn or grow from his actions either. He was encouraged to keep at it.
Yet Sawyer was still able to claw his way out of his inculcation. He didn’t just run away from Blue Ridge like I did. He questioned all that was drilled into him, and he came back to help build a better town, the next generation. That makes him stronger than I ever was.
I step toward him. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, head in his hands, looking miserable.
There’s still so much more to talk about—we’ve barely scratched the surface.
But in this moment, all I want is for him to know I get it now.
His actions since I’ve been back, the hot and the cold, the saving and the retreating. It all fits now.
I bury my fingers in his hair. “Okay.”
He looks up, brows furrowed in confusion. “Okay?”
Abruptly, there’s a thunderous crack. Our eyes widen as the floor shakes. Sawyer lunges, grabs me, and runs.
Another loud bang pierces the air as my back hits the far wall.
Breaking glass.
Crunching wood.
Sawyer covers my body with his, and I huddle into him as the sounds settle. Then, everything stills.