Page 35 of Nights at Seaside
“About me? But we didn’t even speak to each other.”
He stretched out on his side, looking completely at ease and not at all annoyed by her stopping them before they made love. She relaxed beside him, resting her cheek on her arm.
“I didn’t need to hear your voice to feel your energy.”
She lifted up on her elbow, matching his position, and smiled. “If my friends heard you say that they’d think we were cut from the same cloth.”
“I’m not so sure we aren’t.”
She fell silent at that, hearing something deep and longing in his voice.
“I’d love to hear what you wrote,” she said, curious to know what he’d thought of her at first sight.
“Soon,” he promised.
He stretched out on his back and tucked her in close beside him as they gazed out the ceiling at the dark, starry sky.
“Do you believe in wishing upon stars?”
“I used to,” she admitted. Her mind turned to her mother, and the familiar ache that accompanied thoughts of her moved in.
“Me too.” He brushed her hair from her cheek. “Why don’t you anymore?”
She sighed and told him the truth. “Because when my mom died, I knew that all the wishes in the world couldn’t bring her back.”
He tightened his arms around her, and they lay in silence for a long while, gazing up at the stars, each lost in their own thoughts.
“If you could say one thing to your mom now,” he said with a thoughtful tone. “Anything at all. What would it be?”
She rifled through the first few thoughts that sailed through her mind. “There are so many things I want to tell her.I miss you. I love you. I wish you were still here.” She swallowed against the lump forming in her throat. “But if I could tell her only one thing, I would tell her I was sorry.”
Tears welled in her eyes with the confession that struggled to finally be set free. He turned on his side and pressed his lips to her forehead without pushing for an explanation, and that made her want to open up to him even more.
“When she died, I sort of fell apart.” She gazed into his empathetic eyes and was drawn into them. “Actually, I fell apart. There was nosort ofabout it.”
“That’s understandable. You’d lost your mother.”
“That’s what I told myself as I stopped living my life and allowed myself to lie in bed and wallow in the ache of missing her. It’s understandable to be sad, to grieve. It’s even understandable to go through weeks of crying, making deals with the devil to bring her back. At least, in my opinion it is. Don’t we all want to bargain our pain away? But to allow myself to get so mired down in the darkness of losing her that I couldn’t function? She didn’t raise me like that.” A tear slipped from her eye, and he tenderly brushed it away. “She raised me to be strong and decisive. To face issues head-on.”
“Issues, notlosses, Sky. There’s a difference.”
She nodded. “Yes, I know that. But…I found out last night from Grayson that when I fell apart, he took it really hard. I never knew.”
“It’s obvious how much your family loves you.” He kissed a tear away. “You’re lucky, Sky. Love is the foundation of strength in a family. It’s obvious that Grayson’s love for you only got stronger.”
“Yes, but at what cost? How much worry did I cause him when I was hiding in my bed?” She couldn’t stop the truth from flowing. “Pete got so worried about me, he put his life on hold and moved in with me for a while, until we both knew I wasn’t going to go down the rabbit hole again.”
“He sounds like a good brother, a good man.”
“He is. All of my brothers are, but it was selfish of me, wasn’t it? To allow myself to become so out of it? Obviously that’s why they’re all so protective of me now, but it caused them to lie to me, and I hate knowing that.”
Confusion riddled his brow. “How?”
She’d never told anyone outside of her closest circle of friends about her father’s drinking. And now, somehow, Sawyer had stepped inside that circle and she wanted to share it with him, too.
“My father began drinking after my mother died. For two years he was a functioning alcoholic. He was able to run his hardware store, but at night he drowned his sorrows in alcohol, and I never knew. I was living in New York at the time, and my brothers kept it from me. When I came home to visit, they made sure that I was away from him every evening. Meanwhile, Pete was taking care of him, getting him into bed at night, making sure he didn’t choke on his own puke.” She turned away, embarrassed.
“Hey.” He turned her face gently toward his again. “That’s not your fault. That has nothing to do with you falling apart.”
