Page 33 of Under Pink Skies

My heart hammered in my chest. The truth of where I’d been in the last few years was the first of many truths I would share with Abbie over the next few days. I inhaled deeply, lifting my eyes to the back of her head.

“I learned how to play the guitar,” I blurted.

She blinked at me, her mouth falling open slightly. Whether in shock at the entire conversation or the fact that I had the audacity to make a small joke, I couldn’t tell.

“Jesus Christ,” was all she said. She knew there was more, but for whatever reason, she sensed my hesitance to share and backed off. It was an allowance I didn’t deserve, especially from her.

I smoothed my hair back and returned my hands to my pockets. Abbie and I both remained silent as the Washington sun climbed the horizon.

I reminded myself that it was better this way. Abbie had asked to keep things strictly professional, and while I didn’t think either of us had crossed that line yet, revealing too much of our recent histories would forge a kind of intimacy I didn’t think either of us could handle.

I could still see the wheels turning in her head, though.

I paused at the Roadhouse bar, unable to stop myself. I was surprised that my fingerprints weren’t permanently etched into the glass, considering how much time I used to spend there, pressing my nose and palms against the window, scanning the crowd for my uncle.

I looked beyond the Roadhouse logo decal and into the beer hall. A laugh escaped me when I saw the pool table that was still front and center in the parlor.

I was reminded of all those late nights hustling pool for my uncle, who always took things too far. The pool table where it all happened was still there. Someone replaced the carpet beneath the table. They stripped away the evidence of all of those fights I had been caught in the middle of. I took my hands out of my pockets and flexed them, balling them into a tight fist before releasing them.

I’d had the steadiest hand at boot camp. My grip on my rifle never faltered. I wasn’t some scared kid anymore, tired and exhausted, and begging my uncle to let me do something other kids my age were doing, like playing sports or learning to care for livestock. Even when I was falling asleep with the pool stick in my hand, clearly exhausted after a long day at school, Ellis would slap me on the back of the head before returning to his corner booth, telling me to get myself together and win.

“Connor?” Abbie said, her warm voice pulling me from the cold recesses of my mind. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” she whispered, raising a hand to my face and running her fingers down the side of my cheek. The touch of her fingers against my skin shocked me. I felt that delicate touch everywhere. My focus narrowed on the brief touch of her fingers, and my eyes widened at the same moment as hers did.

“I’m so sorry,” she said quickly, jerking her hand back as if she’d been burned.

“It’s okay,” I said, my voice rough. I closed my eyes for a moment. “It’s fine.”

She nodded, her cheeks flaming with embarrassment. Abbie turned away from me, shoving that darn strap over her shoulder again, setting a brutal pace down the sidewalk, and it took every decent bone in my body not to grab her by the arm and kiss her until we were both breathless and panting.

That touch had been instinctual. She’d touched me not because she’d really thought about it, but because she’d done it so many times before. How many times had I stared off into space with Abbie on the couch next to me, or in the cab of Lucy, and a simple touch of her fingers had brought me back?

I rubbed a hand down my face. Ihadto get it together. I wasn’t willing to jeopardize the delicate peace Abbie and I had brokered.

God help me, I needed her. That touch of her fingers, however brief it was, had awakened something in me.

I shook my head, clearing that line of thought as quickly as it had entered my mind. I didn’t understand how it was so easy for me to forget.

Because you’re selfish.

That voice in my head—myuncle’svoice—was something I could never outrun. I’d been to a desert thousands of miles away, I’d become a leader and a fighter, and none of it mattered. I’d become a man who fought desperately to be good, to be a man and leader worth respecting and following, and it didn’t matter.

Being back in Watford, and looking into that bar, had transformed me back into that scared ten-year-old kid, whose parents loved drugs more than me, and whose uncle was a cruel, mean old bastard who could never make something of himself, and instead took from everyone else.

I jerked my head up to where Abbie was still rushing down the street, her head turned down towards the pavement.

I wasn’t that scared, weak kid anymore. I’d worked myself to bone to make sure of that. Those horrible, cruel parts of my past were just that: they were in the past.

As the sun crested over the eastern buildings of town, Abbie’s brown hair let up with a golden hue that took my breath away. She looked back towards me, and I could have sworn she smiled softly in the early morning sun.

My future was still being written.

Our future—whatever that looked like—was being written at this moment.

Despite it all, I had hope.

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