Page 3 of Almost Home
They’d blamed me, as though I’d somehow engineered the pregnancy. Any amount of excitement we’d shared, it’d only been safe to express at my house. They didn’t go so far as to be openly happy about our loss, but their refusal to let me see Sarah only sharpened the clarity that they didn’t want us together. They wanted this clean break and would do nothing to help us stay connected despite the distance.
By now, Warrick knew something was terribly wrong, but we didn’t tell him exactly what, I think in an effort to protect his soft heart. He tried to console me when he saw me cry, but I couldn’t take anyone’s comfort anymore. The only embrace I wanted was Sarah’s.
But I didn’t stop calling, and finally, she agreed to let me come to the house—the yard. I realized she was scared I wouldn’t leave once I got inside, and I wondered if I had ever given her the sense that I wouldn’t leave if she asked, that I wouldn’t listen to her. Had I become a different person, too? Had I ever been someone who made sense, or had I always been this jumbled mess of raw emotion?
“I don’t want to be off the hook, Sarah. I’m yours and I don’t want anyone else. I won’t ever want anyone else.”
She shook her head, that same haunted, frail look clinging to her. “I can’t fight about this, okay?”
The words, a whisper, plunged into my chest and sent me to her.
I pulled her to me, my arms around her shoulders. “Please don’t cry. I’m sorry. I just want to help. I want to make this better.”
I had to, because failing that, I had no way forward.
She pulled away and her face broke, freezing in an agonized cringe as though physical pain shot through her. “Please don’t fight me. I can’t.”
That look in her eye said she was scared—scared of so many things. Internally, I raged against it, but I’d lived through the hell of the last few days and knew this wasn’t normal. This wasn’t the way things should be, clearly, and so my clinging to what we’d planned before simply wouldn’t work.
I’d heard her. Finally, she’d gotten through.Don’t fight me.
What she was asking would’ve seemed impossible if I hadn’t seen the visceral pain wreathing her like a gory halo. I could practically taste her agony, and I knew the flavor well since it matched my own.
So, though it shattered my heart into oblivion, I straightened and eased her away from me. “If this is really what you need, I won’t fight it. But I’ll love you. I will. Stay or go, I’ll love you either way.”
Her lips flattened, and her jaw flexed. “Okay.”
“If this is what you want, I won’t stand in your way.” Even as I said it, every atom in my body screamed for her to change her mind. To tell me to give her some time and then call her. Write her. Visit her. Move to be near her and see what happened.
She huffed out air through clenched teeth, like she’d been stabbed. “Okay.”
My hands slipped away from her shoulders, releasing her, but she grabbed one of mine. “I—”
Her mom stepped in from somewhere I hadn’t noticed, arms curling around Sarah’s shoulders to pull her out of my grasp and steer her back to the house. “That’s enough now, Wilder. That’s enough.”
And then, Sarah James was gone from Silverton, completely gone.
So I left, too. I quit school, passed the GED, and bumped up my enlistment a full six months. When we’d heard about the baby, I’d decided to enlist rather than wait and go through college. It’d give us insurance and a paycheck right away. I’d never been afraid of hard work and didn’t really want to go the college route anyway. Eventually, she could have tuition assistance and, well, none of that mattered anymore.
But I couldn’t stay there once she left, in a place that meant only heartbreak and loss to me without her.
CHAPTERONE
Sarah
Now
The voice sounded distant in my cotton-stuffed ears, and I had to be seeing things.
“Do you know Wilder Saint? I’m never certain who knows who in this town.” Julian Grenier gestured to my friends and me. “Wilder, this is Quinn Darling, Dahlia Price, and Sarah James.”
Did I know him?
At another time, on another day, I might’ve broken out into a hysterical laugh over the question.
Wilder.Wilder Saint.
“Yeah, I think we knew of each other way back when.” Quinn’s voice emerged tight, and she stepped closer to me.
