Page 93 of Ablaze

It didn’t mean I was coming to terms with it any more than I had over the past few months.

I blinked back the haze forming at the realization. “I miss you.” I’d texted him the same thing, on the same day we both flew out here, before the news about Grams. “We . . . we need to talk, Dean.”

He turned his head toward me. “Then talk.”

“I . . .” My mouth opened and closed, words suddenly stalling inside my head. “I want us back. I want things to be the same as they were before . . . before . . .”

My chin wobbled. It was a night I’d never ever forget for as long as I lived, but a night I hadn’t realized would cost us so much. A night that left me empty-handed with nothing but memories to replay in my head for the year to come.

Dean laughed softly, but the sound seemed to echo off the walls. “That’s what you don’t understand. Things can never be the same as before.”

And with that, he turned to give me his back while I stared at it until my eyes closed again.

Dean’s voice brings me back to the present. “She was the ultimate believer when it came to us.” He stops strumming to take another sip of his beer. “Fuck, I’m going to miss her.”

Darian leans back on his Adirondack chair and takes Rani’s hand in his. She gazes at him softly, like he literally lights up the sky. Between her and Darian’s incredible love, and Bella snuggled in Garrett’s lap, the air feels even chillier where I’m sitting.

I’m so incredibly happy for them and wish them nothing but a lifetime of togetherness, but . . .

I look up at the spangled sky–twinkling like diamond dust scattered over the heavens–questioning my fate. My future. Is a happily-ever-after even written somewhere in the stars for me?

“I still remember when I spent part of a summer here when I was eight or nine. Every single night, your grandparents would watch WWE religiously,” Darian says, staring into the bonfire.

Garrett chuckles softly, likely recalling their shared memory.

“She was a kooky little thing.” Dean’s choked rasp, his watery eyes visible only from my seat next to him, has my hand reaching out for his.

I grasp it in mine to tell him what I can’t with words. What I want to say but feel too selfish to at this second. That I love him. That I always will.

He stares at it–my hand inside his–as if examining some sort of experiment. As if trying to figure out if he’s happy with the results or not, before pulling it from my grasp.

And while my hand is left cold in his wake, that’s not what kills me inside. It’s the wake of him. The distance between us.

Dean starts strumming again and only three or four notes in, I realize it’s our song. Drive. The one that had meaning for me for other reasons until he came along and changed it entirely. He became the reason behind the song. The only face I’d see whenever I heard it.

My heart throbs as I eye his profile. Is he trying to lodge the stake so deep, we can never remove it? Why play this song now? What gives him the right to dangle my feelings in front of me like a dead man on a noose? Does he get some sort of sick satisfaction from it?

Rani’s yawn intermingles with the cracking of the embers from the fire, and a few seconds later, both her and Darian retreat back into Grams’ lake house. It’s where we’ve all been staying the past couple of days.

The chilly breeze from the lake hits my bare legs, and I pull the sleeve of my sweatshirt over my palms, wrapping my arms around my chest before rising to my feet. “I think I’m going to take a little stroll around the beach.”

I can’t sit here for another minute. Not when he doesn’t want me here, though he says he does. Not when his actions don’t align with his words.

It’s fine. I’ve done what I came here to do. Now I’m just drained, depleted like I’ve never felt before.

And it’s not just him. It’s everything. My life in LA, my job . . . my boss.

After the last time Jason asked me to a “celebratory” dinner–on my three-month job anniversary–and I refused, I can’t say it’s been the dream job I always thought it would be. Not quite a nightmare, either, but not one I spring out of bed for in the morning to get to.

I told him I didn’t want him to get the wrong impression, and that I had “someone back home.” So, I might have embellished a little, and while Dean wasn’t my someone back home officially, he was the only one I thought about in that way.

Needless to say, Jason was put off and his promises to support me in managing a team of the size I was dwindled. It’s not to say I’m doing a terrible job without his support–because I’m not, and it shows in our financial numbers–but it also doesn’t make for the best work environment when your boss generally avoids you. It was disappointing that my rejection of his ulterior motives for a personal relationship and his attitude about that made going to work so painful.

I chuckle as my sneakers lightly dig into the pebbled sand, leaving the strum of Dean’s guitar behind me.

Promises.

They’re made only for one purpose, aren’t they?

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