Page 27 of Under Pink Skies

My chest tightened painfully at Ludgate’s words. The guilt and shame, the weight of the knowledge of what I’d done to the woman I’d loved with every part of my being, threatened to swallow me whole.

“Did you tell her?” I asked.

“No. I’ve wanted to punch you in the jaw more times than I can count over the last few years for putting me in that position and asking me to keep it quiet, but no. I never told her you joined the military. It wasn’t my place.”

I let out a sigh of relief. Enlisting into the armed service in a small town proved to be tricky, because I didn’t want anyone to know where I was headed. When I asked Ludgate to be a character witness, I also asked him not to tell anyone what I was doing. When I left Watford that night, I could only pray he’d keep my whereabouts a secret.

“Why are you here, Connor?” Ludgate asked. There was no judgment in his tone, but I knew he had to be suspicious.

I inhaled deeply.

“My best friend, Kameron, owns a nonprofit called Winding Road Recovery, about an hour and a half north of here. He’s sponsoring the festival to help put his farm and nonprofit work on the map. Lucas and I are his associates; we help him carry out the day-to-day requirements of managing the farm, so he can focus on the nonprofit side. Winding Road changes lives. It changed mine. I promise you, John, I’m here to support the man who dragged me from my rock bottom, and nothing else.”

That didn’t feel like a lie. A stretch of the truth? Sure.

But the image of Abbie’s gaze as Lucas and I drove away from Watford General would be etched in my mind forever.

“You’re going to put the woman you love through this again?” Ludgate asked, his gaze sharpening.

“Loved,” I corrected, straightening my stance. “And it’s not peace if she has no closure about the way things ended.”

Ludgate’s gaze sharpened as he continued to stare at me.

“You already left her once,” Ludgate said. “You already broke her down. One of your coworkers couldn’t handle the front-end operations for this festival?”

“It’s not about what it can do for me,” I said, and that was the truth. “I left Watford a broken boy who couldn’t handle his crap. I joined up, did my time, and now I’m back. I’m a man who can own my past mistakes. I screwed up when I left. But if there’s a chance that I can help repair some of the broken parts of this town, then I want to do it.”

Ludgate continued to stare at me, stroking his neatly trimmed gray beard with his thumb and forefinger.

“Alright,” he said, glancing at the ground beneath his boots before looking back at me. “Promise me you’ll check in on her.”

My brows knitted together. “John, I—“

“Look, Connor, I get it. There’s a lot of time and space between the two of you. You’ve both been through a lot of shit.” Ludgate absentmindedly twisted the wedding band he still wore on his left hand, although he hadn’t been married in over two decades. “But you’re both here. God put you two back in the same town. That’s no coincidence.”

“With all due respect, Officer Ludgate, I’m not religious.”

Ludgate gave me a small smile. “You don’t have to be. Call it a gift, call it fate, call it whatever you want. But don’t be an idiot and squander the opportunity.”

I didn’t know how to respond, so I followed my grandmother’s advice about not saying anything.

“I should warn you, Connor, that Ellis’s actions—especially after you skipped town—caused a lot of rifts. I know you want to do your best to repair things, but there’s a chance the townsfolk won’t receive it well. People associate you with Ellis, and that’s unfair, but doesn’t change the way things are.”

I gave a small shrug.

“They’ve neverreceivedme well. They can add my presence here during the festival to the list.”

Ludgate’s brow rasied, and he shook of his head.

“Even if I hadn’t known you were a Marine, I’d have guessed by this conversation. I’d know that arrogance and self-confidence anywhere.”

I smiled then. “It was good to see you, John.”

“You too, kid.”

Ludgate paused before pointing a finger in my face and said, “Don’t squander what is freely given,” before he turned to enter the sheriff’s office.

I didn’t have time to ponder the full meaning of his statement before Lucas stepped through the door just seconds later, opening a manila folder and sliding a thick stack of documents inside.

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