Chapter 28
twenty-eight
. . .
Colin
I'd taken Toby out for a ride to clear my head.
My reaction to that stupid yellow ribbon was embarrassing.
Nate called me a drama queen, and that was probably a good way to describe it.
I let myself lose focus. It could have been anything on the sidelines, a yellow hat, a cheering spectator or a fucking yellow ribbon.
It didn't matter what'd grabbed my attention.
What mattered was I allowed it to be grabbed.
In school, the teachers all insisted I'd do so much better on medication.
Dad resisted until I told him it was pure torture sitting still in class.
They prescribed me meds, and instantly, I turned into a sloth.
I was sluggish and tired and I lost so much weight Ronan was calling me his stick figure twin.
The meds just weren't for me. I'd considered taking them as an adult, but that bad experience as a kid had turned me off the idea.
I needed my energy and my muscle weight to be competitive.
I'd overcome most of the problem, but there were times, like out on that hillside, when I tried too hard to focus, and that usually led to me losing focus.
I got back to the barn. Nate was sweeping the barn aisle. "She left," he said plainly.
I dropped down from the saddle and turned his direction. "What did you say?"
"Sadie split. She called an Uber. Wouldn't even take a ride from Dad or me. Had all her things with her." He looked at me. "Idiot."
"Fuck off. I already know that."
Toby fidgeted as I yanked the saddle off his back. He turned his big head around to let me know he wasn't happy with the way I took it off. I carried the saddle over to the tack room and propped it on its wooden horse. I pulled out my phone and sent a text to Sadie.
It wasn't your fault. Come back.
I waited, sure she wouldn't write back. I wouldn't have responded after the way I'd acted.
I think we both know that's not true. I'm used to being a catalyst for bad shit. You're better off without me.
Not true. Come back. Let's talk.
This time there was no response. In our time together, we'd never discussed her apartment.
She told me it had been ransacked by Gregor's thugs, so she was afraid to go back there.
Now that the picture catastrophe was over, she would have no problem going back to her place. Stupidly, I never learned the address.
Ace was the last person I wanted to talk to, but I needed to find her.
Hey, can you send me the address of Sadie's apartment?
I added please at the end of the text and then deleted it. It sounded far too fake.
A reply came back.
You have got to be fucking kidding.
I figured it was a stretch. I finished up in the barn and walked inside. Maybe this had been an easy way out for Sadie. She definitely took off fast, no arguing, or debating any of it. Just gone.
Dad was just leaving the kitchen with a can of soda. "You scared her off … idiot," he muttered and shuffled on his slippers to his usual destination, his chair.
I ignored his comment and headed upstairs.
I kicked off my boots and flopped onto the bed.
Sadie's scent floated around me, making my chest heavy.
I blew it. Story of my life lately. I wondered just how much lower shit could go before I hit rock bottom.
Actually, this felt like it, like rock fucking bottom.
I glanced at the pillow next to me. The slight imprint of her head was still on it.
I picked it up and smothered myself in the smell of her shampoo.
I was wild about her. There was no other way to describe it.
She was what I needed to balance out all the other crap in my life.
She was the one. And I'd scared her off in one selfish moment.
Feeling about as low as I'd ever felt, I dozed off. The door creaking open woke me. "Sadie?" I sat up and tossed aside the pillow.
Dad walked in and glanced around. "Pigsty."
"Dad, could you just fuck off, please. I'm not in the mood."
He ignored me. I knew he would. He sat on the edge of the bed. "You think a girl like that is just going to walk into your life more than once?"
"Great. Love advice from the man who has four ex-wives."
"And each one of those women took a little piece of my heart with them.
Everyone just assumes the stone-cold asshole Finnegan Wilde never got hurt, but everyone is wrong.
It did hurt when they left me. Mostly it pissed me off because I knew I'd pushed them out by being a first-rate asshole.
It was always my fault. Just like this is your fault. "
"Yep, already figured that out. Thanks for the pep talk, Dad."
"Shut up and listen. Go after her. Go now. She needs you like a hole in the head, but you need her because she's good for you. Jameson, Zander, hell, even Ronan found the women that make them whole. Sadie's that person for you."
"I texted her, and she stopped responding."
"I swear, you young people and your fucking technology. You don't text when it's something like this. You don't call either. You go to her and tell her you need her in your life." He stood up.
"I don't know where she is."
"Then fucking find her and stop pouting up here like a little kid. Now get the fuck out of here. Oh, and I used your truck last night. It's out of gas. Sputtered out its last fumes as I pulled into the driveway."
"Why the hell didn't you fill it?"
"You seen the price of gas these days? And my Mustang still won't start so you'd better borrow Nate's car." He stopped in the doorway. "She has an interview at eleven at some place called Family Portraits. Seems like a good place to start."
I sat and stewed for a few minutes reminding myself I was an adult, and I didn't need advice from my dad, especially a dad who was a supreme fuck-up. Of course, he did manage to marry four incredible women in a short span of time. Not a great role model but impressive.
My phone rang. I snatched it off the nightstand like an anxious, lovesick teen. It wasn't Sadie.
"Hey, Ro, aren't you supposed to be working?"
"I'm on a break, and I got a text from Nate that said you fucked up with Sadie, so I'm calling to give you my twin cents.
Get it? Instead of two cents." He laughed.
I didn't. "Shit, I've been watching too many cartoons.
Nate just said that Sadie caused you to crash last season, so you stomped out of the house like a crybaby. "
"Well, fuck Nate and fuck you, too. I don't want to go into any details, but there were no tears. At least not on my side."
"Wildes don't cry and all that crock of shit. I assume since Dad told me this girl was the one, that you are already getting spiffed up to go after her and let her know she's the one."
"Nope. Sitting on my bed doing nothing."
"Crybaby," he said.
"Gonna hang up now."
"Nah, wait. I called to let you know that you should go after her because she's the one. Or is she? Maybe Dad and Nate are reading it all wrong. Is she just a good time friend?"
Leave it to Ronan to put the whole thing in simple black and white terms. The answer was easy. "She's the one, Ro. I love everything about her."
"Well then, my favorite twin—"
"I'm your only twin."
"Yeah, guess so. Go after her, dickface. I've got to get back to work. See ya later."
"Bye." I typed Family Portraits into the search bar on my phone.
It was about seven miles from the ranch.
Her interview was at eleven. I didn't want to throw off her focus by showing up before the interview.
I smiled thinking about the irony of that thought.
I'd get there at eleven and wait for her to finish.
I had just enough time to shower and change. I grabbed my keys. "Remember the truck is dry as a bone," Dad called as I stomped through the house.
"Thanks for that." I tossed my keys on the counter. "Where's Nate? I need to borrow his car."
"He just left," Dad replied.
"What the hell? I guess that leaves me without transportation."
"Seems like we've got three good dirt bikes in the shed," Dad suggested.
I sighed. "Guess I'll take one of those. Or did you burn all the gas out of those, too?"
"Nope. Should be fine. Just don't get a ticket for riding one on the street."
"If I do, I'll send it your way for draining my gas tank.
" I walked out to the shed and pulled out Zander's bike.
It was the newest and the least likely to break down on the road.
I fired it up and climbed on. Something about this whole thing felt futile.
There was a very good chance that Sadie wanted nothing more to do with me.
She was my one, but what if I wasn't hers?
Sadie had been all over the world. I'd traveled but only to snowy mountains for competitions.
She'd experienced so much in her short life, but I'd hardly gotten past the partying stage in mine.
It was midday, so traffic was light through town.
I kept my eyes peeled for the local police.
There was nothing they liked better than to see a Wilde breaking some kind of law.
There was a time in our late teens when Dad was called to the sheriff station every other night.
He finally put an end to our lawless escapades by declaring that the next kid to get arrested was going to stay in jail. He was done bailing us out.
Family Portraits was in a strip mall between a Dollar Store and a nail salon.
It was close to eleven. A woman was pushing twin toddlers out in a stroller.
One was bawling his head off, while the other sucked hard on a bottle of juice.
He tossed the bottle far and wide in the parking lot as the woman pushed them across to the car.
The second toddler, realizing his drink was gone, started crying, too.
The mom looked harried and flushed and done with her twins.
I parked my bike, got off and picked up the bottle.
She looked up from putting the screamer into the car.
At first her expression showed alarm, then she saw the bottle in my hand.
She sighed and flipped a loose hair back off her forehead. "Thanks. Twins," she said flustered.
I nodded. "I'm a twin and yes, we're stinkers."
She smiled. "Thanks again."
I walked over to a bench under the awning at the market on the corner.
It was shady and out of view of the photo studio.
I waited for fifteen minutes but never saw Sadie.
Maybe Dad got the time wrong, or maybe she'd decided not to bother with a crummy family portrait job. In that case, I was back to square one.
I gave it another five minutes, then walked into the photo studio.
The photographer, a young man, was hanging up a new backdrop, a beach in Hawaii, in the far corner of the shop.
He stopped to look me up and down and smiled as I walked inside.
A stern-looking woman was working on a ledger at the front counter.
"How can I help you?" she asked.
"Uh, I was actually looking for someone. Sadie Rivers. I thought she might be here interviewing for a job."
The woman looked over her reading glasses at the photographer in the corner. "Ask Lyle," she said curtly.
Lyle walked toward me. "Sadie came in about twenty-five minutes ago to cancel the interview and tell me goodbye.
" The guy looked me up and down again. "Aha, you're him.
The man she's been texting me about. She was upset this morning but wouldn't say anything except that she was in her usual downward spiral. "
"Was she going back home? Where does she live?" I sounded stupid as hell asking that simple question, and Lyle gave me a deserved arched brow in response. "She said her apartment was ransacked so she didn't want to go back there."
He paused and seemed to be trying to decide how much to tell me.
"Look, I want to find her. I'm—I'm in love with her."
A grin split his face, then his expression turned serious. "She deserves the best. Can you promise her that?"
"I can only promise that I love her and I'll protect her and why the fuck am I telling you all this? Where can I find her?"
"She had her bags with her. This guy she used to work for called her from Bali in Indonesia.
He needed an assistant and sent her the money for a plane ticket.
She's on her way to the airport. She was walking three blocks down to the bus stop to catch the 11:25 to the airport.
" He glanced at his watch. "You probably just missed her. "
"We'll see." I slammed out the door and ran to the bike. Seemed my unconventional mode of transportation might have been a good choice after all.