Page 65 of Under Pink Skies

“Is there a particular reason you wanted to come up here today?”

“I wanted her to know that you came back,” I whispered. “After you left, I spent a lot of time up here talking to her about everything. My dad was either at the Roadhouse or staring blankly at the wall. Even after we sold my childhood home and he moved into the loft above the store, he used to spend hours just staring at the wall. I’d asked him what was wrong, or if I could do something to help him. I never got a response.”

Connor rubbed his thumb along my shoulder in a comforting circle.

“Sometimes silence cuts deeper than words ever could. There was a time I would have given anything to have him show some kind of emotion, even if it involved him yelling or telling me to go away. Anything would have hurt less than the quiet.”

A chilly breeze swept past us. I inhaled deeply, steeling my heart.

“And now it’s the opposite. Grief is funny like that. There was a time I practically begged for him to be out of control, because at least I’d know he was still fighting. But I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept through the night in years. I’m always terrified I’ll get a phone call that something terrible has happened. I’m constantly in damage control mode, trying to make sure that the store stays afloat. It’s all up to me. I don’t get to take days off, even when I need to.”

I looked at my mom’s gravestone, exhaling shakily.

“I miss you, Mom,” I said. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help him. And I’m so tired.” My voice cracked again, and my chest ached. The full weight of everything I had been given to handle in the last few years choked me. It wasn’t fair.

The worst part was I was good at handling things under pressure. I’d abandoned my plans of leaving Watford in the weeks after my mom’s death, because I knew where I was needed. I didn’t know the first thing about running a general store, but I used every search engine and video I could find to figure it out. When the debt collectors started calling the store, trying to get in touch with my dad, I was the one who stepped up.

I always stepped up. And I was so fucking tired of always being the dependable one.

“Hey,” Connor said, tilting my chin up so our eyes met. “Thank you for bringing me here. Thank you for trusting me with this.”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing, Abbie. It’s everything.”

I love you, I wanted to scream. As he leaned in to kiss me, I let some of the weight roll off my shoulders. I clutched his face tighter, as if he would vanish if I let go.

I had never stopped loving him. Even when I’d tried to forget him, I couldn’t.

As we prepared to hike back down to the truck, I realized I couldn’t stop this now. I was so tired of fighting everything in my life, and that included the feelings I had for Connor.

I hopped into the passenger seat and cranked Lucy to life while Connor secured his pack in the truck bed.

“Warren Zeiders or Zach Bryan?” I asked when he slid into the driver’s seat.

“You’re not asking me that because you care about my opinion. You’ve already decided what we’re listening to.”

“True,” I said, smiling. I put on the playlist I made with my favorite songs, thinking it would give us a healthy mix. It was less than a twenty-minute drive back to Watford. Connor reached for my hand and pulled it to his lips, pressing a kiss to my knuckles.

“You’ve got to stop,” I said, pulling my hand back and smiling. “I’m going to get a complex.”

“I’ll never stop,” Connor said, and I believed him.

When we pulled onto Main Street, there was a small crowd gathered on the right side of the street.

To the left of the sheriff’s office, a tow truck was parked. The lights were on, drawing attention from the onlookers. A pair of officers were speaking with the truck driver on the sidewalk outside of the station.

“Wow, that looks bad. I wonder what happened.”

It took a minute for Connor’s words to register, and my gaze moved from the people conversing on the sidewalk to the back of the tow truck. There was a dark blue sedan. The front half of the car was obliterated, with the hood bent in half and pushed towards the windshield. The driver’s and passenger’s side mirrors were shattered. It looked like the vehicle had been involved in a nasty head-on collision at high speed.

“Abbie?”

“Does that car look blue to you?”

My voice sounded distant. The world moved in slow motion as my gaze locked onto that car.

It was the long white scrape across the back left tire that took my breath away. I put that scrape there when I was learning how to drive. I clipped a cement barrier when learning how to back out of my parents’ driveway, many years ago.

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