Page 80 of Nights at Seaside
Her voice trembled as she reached for his hand. “And I need you. We’ve just found each other, Sawyer. You could have been injured for life today, and what’s worse is that you knew this was a risk. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it’s the same crap they’ve been saying for years, Sky. They say it to everyone.”
“It sure didn’t seem that way, Sawyer.” Her voice escalated. “Even Roach doesn’t want you to fight. I can see it in his eyes.”
“I’m fighting, Sky.”
“Don’t you care about us at all? Don’t you care about your family? What about all that talk about a future? Was thatallbull? You just decided to write with your father so you would have something with him for the future. Thefuture, Sawyer. Remember how much you wanted that?” She pushed away from the bed and paced, her arms crossed over her chest as tears fell from her eyes.
“Of course I want a future with you. But I’m a fighter, Sky. It’s who I am.”
She stopped pacing and leveled him with a cold, teary-eyed stare. “You told me that fighting was what you did, not who you are.”
“I was wrong. I have one thing to give to my parents. And this is it.”
“Then you need to make a choice, Sawyer, because I love you too much to sit back and watch you suffer brain damage because of some jerk who hits you upside the head on your way out of the ring—or worse, to watch you die.”
“How can you ask me to choose between loving you and my father’s well-being? My parents’ entire future?” Anger brewed in his gut, for the brutality of the illness his father faced and the unfairness of the battle he and Sky were having.
“I’m not asking you to choose between me and your father. I’m asking you to love yourself enough towantto live a whole life, with all of your cognitive functions intact.” She sucked in a breath through her tears. “And to have faith that together we’ll find another way to make ends meet for your father’s medical bills.”
“Sky, you gave up your life to help your father get through rehab. You gave up your friends, your job, your apartment, and you moved back here to run his business. How can you not understand this?”
“It’s different! I couldn’t have died helping him.” She was trembling so badly that he wanted to wrap her in his arms and make the pain go away—make the decisions go away. He wanted to reverse time to before he got hit in the head and pretend everything was just fine and that the doctor’s warning didn’t exist.
He’d pretended so well for so long.
“Sky.” His voice was a thin thread as he tried to rein in his anger.
“No. No moreSkys, Sawyer. I love you too much for this. I lost my mother to something she hadnocontrol over. You’re losing your father to a fate that’s out of his hands.Yourfate—ourfate—is in your hands. You once said that you didn’t want to leave our future to chance. Well, Sawyer, that’s what you’re doing. If you don’t love yourself, or us, enough to do what it takes to save yourself, then we have nothing left to talk about.” She spun on her heel and walked out the door.
“Sky!” he called after her as he rose to his feet to go after her, but the room spun around him. He gripped the edge of the bed for stability, trying to make sense of what had just happened. He lifted his eyes to the door, and the room continued to spin. One step sent him off-balance, and he fell to his knees on the cold floor. His head and chest ached like never before. The ache of a broken heart, it turned out, was all consuming and ten times as bad as any punch could ever be.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“SKY, IT’S BEEN two days. You have to do something,” Bella urged. “Call him. Go see him. At least talk to him.”
She and the girls were sitting on Bella’s deck having breakfast, as they’d been doing for weeks—only it no longer felt as wonderful as it had just a few days ago, when Sky knew that any moment Sawyer would come jogging around the bend with Tony, Pete, or Caden. Over the last two days Sawyer had called her a number of times, asking to see her, but when she’d asked if he was still going to fight, he’d said he had to. They were at a standstill. She refused to see him and had even put her phone away, because if she had to see his picture on the screen when he called, or look into his eyes and see his love for her, the love she knew he had in his heart, she’d give in. And giving in meant opening a door to his getting hurt irreparably—and she couldn’t do that to him or to herself.
“I can’t,” Sky said softly. “I’ve thought about it, and it’s not fair of me to come between him and his parents’ future. Sawyer was right about that, but darn it…” She swallowed past the thickening in her throat, which seemed ever-present since she’d stormed out of the hospital. “He said he wanted a future with me, but he’s not willing to protect that future. I just can’t. I don’t know what to do.”
Amy leaned over and hugged her. “Honey, you’re sure about what the doctor said?”
Sky leveled a narrow-eyed stare on Amy. They’d asked her the same question a hundred times. She wasn’t an idiot. She’d heard the doctor loud and clear. “The problem isn’t what I heard the doctor say, Amy. The problem is what Sawyerdidn’tsay.”
“You are truly between a rock and a hard place.” Jenna held up her palm, as if she were weighing something. “Over here is his need to win that fight for his dad.” She held up her other palm. “And over here is your relationship. How can he choose? Could you choose?”
Sky pushed away from the table. “I don’t know, okay? The only thing I know is that I love him. I love him with every ounce of my soul—and when you love someone that much, you don’t do something that might tear you away from them. And he’s doing just that, which means he doesn’t love me the same way I love him.”
“Sky.” Bella’s voice turned serious. “Aren’t you doing the same thing by walking away?”
She wiped tears from her eyes. “Whose side are you on?”
“I’m just saying that there’s no right answer. That’s hisfather. He loves him, and he loves you. How can the guy choose?”
“I. Don’t. Know! I realize it makes me selfish to ask him to protect himself in this instance. I get that. I’m selfish, fine, whatever. I love him, Bella, and my heart tells me that something else can be done to get that money. There has to be another way. He wouldn’t even consider the possibility of other options. Thereareother options. There has to be. Loans, other jobs, whatever.” She stormed off the deck.
“I’m sorry. I’m a mess and not at all rational right now. I don’t mean to yell at you guys, so I’m going to leave and go to work, where I can take out my frustrations on cleaning, or painting, or bury my heart in a tattoo.”
