I’d gone too far, and I knew it before I even went there. I just had no idea how to control myself.
I sighed, shaking my head and plopping down on the cutting log I’d been using.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. I just...” How did I tell her why I was acting this way? How could I say the words that would show her the monster I really was?
We were silent, me sitting with my head in my hands and her standing just three feet away from me, legs shivering, water still dripping down to the ground.
“What are we doing?” she asked after a moment, voice soft.
My heart stopped and I looked up at her. The dejection I found on her face, the hopelessness, it was enough to make me jump to my feet again.
“I’m sorry—” I tried, but she cut me off before the apology had a chance to be born.
“No, seriously. I mean you’re right,” she said with a laugh. “Everyone is right. I am selfish. I only think about myself. Why do you even want to be around me?”
“Don’t do that,” I said, reaching for her. It was her who pulled away this time. “Don’t make this about us.”
“But isn’t it? I mean look at us.” She gestured between our wet bodies with a pained face, as if the two of us together was an abomination she’d been taking part in. “What did we expect? We never talked about it, about what this was. I’m leaving, Anderson. I just went through a divorce. And you’ve never even had a girlfriend. Not one.”
I swallowed with a closed throat, fighting her truths like pills that would kill me if I let them slide down. “That’s Sarah talking, not you.”
“No, it is me.” Tears pooled in her eyes and desperation rolled off her. “We can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this anymore.”
“Wren, please,” I tried again, reaching out. She let me hold her for just a moment, her eyes squeezing tight before she pulled back again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it—any of it. You scared me, and I was angry but not at you.”
She shook her head, tears marring her cheeks now, blending with the river water until I couldn’t tell the two apart. I was only inches from her, yet it might as well have been miles. She was pulling further away by the second, and nothing I could do would stop her.
Silence slipped over us like a cloak, encasing us for what felt like hours, but it hurt even worse when she broke it.
“I have to go.”
Wren turned, and panic knocked against my chest with enough force to drive me forward after her.
“So, what? We get in our first fight and you’re already done? You won’t even give me a chance to explain?”
“Explain what?” she screamed, turning to face me again. “I’m leaving. You’re staying. I’m still going through a divorce. You’re still mourning the death of your cousin. I ruined the only relationship I’ve ever had and you’ve never even had one to begin with. We’re both walking disasters, Anderson. How are we supposed to do this?”
I opened my mouth, ready to tell her not just how but why and where and when, but the words were lodged in my throat. It was true. I was still mourning Dani. But more than that, Wren was mourning.
And hadn’t Tucker reminded me of that last night?
I’d been so angry, ready to knock the smug smile off his face as he told me I was Wren’s rebound, that there was no way I’d get to keep her, but was I only mad because I knew he was right?
I’d known since the moment Wren opened up to me about Keith that she was still healing, and I’d thought I could help her. Now here she was standing in front of me telling me I was only making it worse.
How could I convince her I could heal her when the last man to touch her was responsible for the scars?
“I’m sorry,” I croaked out.
I tried to tell her more with my eyes, to let her see me, but she just blinked, freeing two more tears to race down her cheeks.
“Me too,” she whispered, and then she turned, and I watched the only woman to ever make me feel alive walk away, taking the last of my breath with her.
ASSUAGE
as·suage
Verb
To lessen the intensity of (something that pains or distresses) : ease
My teeth chattered as I stumbled my way back to my cabin, feet bare and aching on the unpaved road, arms wrapped around my shivering frame trying to find any kind of warmth. The sun had disappeared behind clouds now, making the long walk home a shaded one. By the time I made it inside the cabin, it was all I could do to strip off my freezing cold bathing suit and step into the shower. And as soon as the water turned hot, I hissed, the sting of it against my skin jolting me back to reality.
I was numb, and yet I felt everything.
“Damn it,” I cried out loud, voice bouncing off the shower walls and hitting me with even more force the second time.
My eyes squeezed closed, hands rubbing the goosebumps from my arms as my wet hair fell over my face. I needed to go get my car, I needed to eat something, I needed to calm down, I needed to stop thinking. I was so exhausted, mentally and physically, and I swore I was just one minute away from breaking entirely.
I wrapped myself in a towel and padded straight into the bedroom, pulling on an oversized sweater and leggings and crawling into bed without even brushing my hair. I tucked one arm under my pillow and curled in on myself, wanting nothing but to sleep, to fall away from the world for a while—but my thoughts wouldn’t let me rest.
What had I done?
I was so shocked by all of it. The fall into the river, the terror of not knowing if I’d be able to catch my breath, if I’d surface. The relief when Anderson pulled me into him, the safety I felt there, and then the immediate sadness that followed when he ripped into me.
The man I’d just realized made me the happiest I’d been in years called me out on my biggest fear—that I was selfish. And wasn’t that just proof that it was true?
The longer I’d been there with him, watching as anger and fear danced across his features, the more I’d realized he wasn’t mad about the river. That might have been his excuse to let it free, but the truth was he was scared just like I was.
Because I was leaving, and he was staying, and just like the summer had begun, it would end.
In two weeks, I’d head back to Seattle—back to the boutique, where my team expected me to have a brilliant line designed and ready to be worked on, back to my friends, who would expect me to be the happy go-getter I was before my divorce, and back to the city, where the mountains were only faint ghosts in the distance.
My hand jetted out to where I’d left my phone on my bedside table earlier and I unlocked it quickly, ignoring all the missed texts from earlier and clicking through my favorites to dial Adrian.
“Hey, mountain girl,” he answered, to which I only replied with a pause and a sniff, and then I heard him sigh. “Oh babe, what happened?”
“It’s all ending, Adrian. The summer is almost over, I have to find a place to live, I have to figure everything out and I haven’t done anything. I don’t have a line,” I admitted. “I don’t have anything.”
My hands tightened around the phone and I curled in on myself even more, aching in every way. I’d spent almost three months trying to find myself and I’d come up empty handed.