She didn’t.
I stumble to the kitchen and get a drink. Then I shower and force myself to eat. I get a text on my other phone. It’s from Jax, and I forgot that I was still fucking pissed at him for the shit that went down Friday night. It seems like nothing now.
Jax: I know you said you were done, but I heard of a job in Jackson. 75k if you get it done in 24 hours
I look at the screen, reading his words over and over again. Not because I’m not getting the message, but because I need to occupy my brain. I shouldn’t take a job. I’m not even supposed to be working in the bar yet.
But I don’t care anymore.
The only thing I care about is Sierra. I drop the phone and march out the door. Giving up isn’t something I’ve ever done. I fight and I fight until I get what I want. Sierra isn’t mine for the taking, but I’m not going to walk away.
I love her, and I know she loves me. I’m going to fix this.
I park in front of The Book Bag and go inside. The familiar dinging of the bell rings out when I step inside. The smell of books takes me back to the first time I walked inside and saw Sierra sitting behind the counter.
“Hi,” someone calls from inside the store. It’s not Sierra. “Can I help—” She cuts off when she sees me, and I’m not sure if it’s because she’s afraid of me like the rest of the town or if Sierra told her we broke up.
“She’s on her lunch break,” she says. “She just left but shouldn’t be gone too long.”
“Oh, okay.” So she’s afraid of me. Sierra hasn’t told her coworker yet. “I guess I’ll go.”
“I’ll tell her you stopped by.”
“No, I wanted it to be a surprise,” I lie and turn to go. Then I notice the red and white sign in the window. “The store’s for sale?”
“Technically, just the building. I suppose if the new owner wanted to keep running it as the store, they could.”
Sierra has to be devastated. She loves this place and what it has to offer the people of Summer Hill. I don’t want this taken away from her, and I wish I could convince her to ask her parents for the cash to buy it and make it hers. She’d never do that, and I respect the hell out of her for not falling back and relying on her rich parents.
“What’s the asking price?”
“A hundred grand, but between you and me, Mrs. Williams said she’s hoping for seventy-five thousand. It’s just enough to retire and have money left open to give to her son.”
Seventy-five grand.
If that’s not fate, I don’t know what is.
Chapter 33
Sierra
I look down at my lunch, moving my salad around the bowl with my fork. My stomach grumbles in hunger, but the thought of putting food in my mouth, chewing, and swallowing seems like too much effort. I flip a page on my Kindle and force myself to take another bite.
My lunch break is almost over, and I’ve barely eaten a thing. I make myself eat at least half the salad and toss the rest. My shift at The Book Bag is halfway over, and I successfully made it through the first part without breaking down or showing that I’m sad.
Or showing any emotion at all, really. That part of me is off, and in order to survive, it has to stay that way. It’s Tuesday afternoon, and I sat in the alley behind the store to eat my lunch. It’s hot and sunny today, just how I like it.
“How was lunch?” Janet asks when I get back into the store. She’s only here for a few hours today, helping me log everything in the store and to cover my break.
“Fine,” I say softly and immediately get back to work. Janet hands off her notes and takes off. I keep my mind busy by making a detailed list of every item in the store. Mrs. Williams might need it whenever the time comes to move.
Minutes before I close the shop, Janet comes back in. She left her phone in the break room and came back for it.
“Did your boyfriend ever come back?” she asks, looking down at her phone screen as she walks.
“Come back?” I echo.
“To the store. He came when you were on your lunch break.”
Chase was here. For me. “Uh, yeah. I saw him,” I lie.
“Good. All right, then, night, Sierra!”
“Good night.”
I lock the door behind her, mind going a million miles an hour. It’s clear Chase cares, and I want so incredibly bad to go to him. Is this something we can get past? Can I forgive him for betraying my trust? I’ll have to learn to trust him again. It might take time, but it’s worth it…right?
I mull it over the entire time I put back books, and I have to count the cash in the register twice because my mind is on Chase. Once the money is stashed away, I pull my phone from my purse and lean on the wall, sinking down onto my butt. My fingers tremble and my heart aches.
I have over a dozen missed calls and texts from Chase. I open the voicemails and listen to the first one.
“Sierra,” he starts and the sound of his voice does something to me. Calms me. Soothes me. Turns me on, even now. “There’s no excuse for what I did, and I can never say sorry enough. I kept listening to the messages because I wanted to know you were happy. It doesn’t make sense and makes even less after I met you. It wasn’t right to listen to words that were meant for another. The things you said…they were so beautiful. I fell in love with the Mystery Woman from her words alone. And then I met you, and I fell even harder. I don’t know how to make it right. What you said was personal…not meant for me. I want to make it up to you, and the best way I can think to do that is to leave you messages too.”
The voicemail ends and I play the next one.
“I liked to brag about how I wasn’t afraid of anything, but there is one thing that always freaked me out. I never wanted to die before I was buried.” He pauses and I try to figure out what he means. “I’ve seen too many people live but not be alive. I thought I was living because I took risks and was surrounded by a certain level of daily danger. But I was wrong. I never felt alive until I met you. And right now…right now I feel like I’m dead inside but my body refuses to die.”
I replay the message, soaking in every one of his words. I play the following one, which was left only half an hour later.
“When I was sixteen I purposely ate lobster so I could get out of a math exam I wasn’t ready for. I ended up in the hospital for a week and missed my junior prom. I would have been pissed, but my mom stayed with me most of that week I was in the hospital. It was the most time we’d spent together since she legally wasn’t allowed to leave me unattended. And when I looked at the test and saw those two pink lines, I knew you’d be a good mom, giving our baby everything I didn’t have but wanted from my mother. Any child you have will be lucky.”
I find myself smiling at his words, and my heart longs to beat against his. There are more messages. I play the next.
“If you asked me a year ago if I believed in love, I would have laughed. The last thing I thought I’d find when I came back here, was a reason to stay. Maybe that’s the reason for all of this, and I keep thinking about the reason I came here, and how our paths crossed. I came here because my dad died. Loss brought us together, and it’s crazy how something so beautiful—even if it was short lived—came out of the darkness. Maybe we were always meant to be.”