My face crumpled, heart squeezing up so tight it stopped beating for a pulse. “You don’t honestly believe that,” I whispered. “Sarah, please. Tell me you don’t think any of that is true.”
She didn’t answer, just dropped her gaze to her feet on a shrug. “I had my eyes opened to a lot of things tonight,” she said. “And I didn’t want to believe it, but now… I can’t see it any other way.”
“What does that mean?” I tried, reaching for her. “Talk to me. Please.”
Sarah pulled away, swapping places with me in a sort of dance until it was her back against the door. “Do you not still love her?” she asked. “Can you look me in the eyes right now and tell me that you feel nothing for her now?”
Everything was spiraling out of control, and the more she stared at me like the absolute last person in the world she could ever trust, the more my knees gave way. I felt it coming, the imminent crash to the floor if I didn’t find a way to reach her.
But she reached for the door, instead.
“Sarah,” I croaked, throat burning.
Her hand paused on the door handle, and she glanced back at me with tears in her eyes.
“This has nothing to do with Charlie. I care about you. I care about your dreams. I did this for you because I believe in you, not because I want anything from you, or because you gave yourself to me the way you did. I told you Saturday night and I’ll tell you a million times over — I cherished that night with you. Every moment with you.” Memories of Blake, of Charlie, of every relationship I’d ever fucked up flooded me like an icy cold bucket of water. “You saved me, Sarah. Please. Don’t leave me now.”
She sighed, bottom lip trembling as her head fell forward, eyes squeezing shut. She was trying to block me out. She didn’t want to believe a word I was saying, and I guessed she didn’t really owe it to me.
I hadn’t proved to anyone that my word was worth a damn.
“God, I’m doing it again!” I screamed, beating my chest hard with one fist. “It’s exactly what I told you. I always hurt the people who mean the most to me. See? Even you. And I don’t mean to, I don’t…” I ran my hands back through my hair, desperation stealing my next breath. “It’s like my fucking curse. I burn everything I touch.”
Sarah looked at me again, and for the briefest moment, I thought she saw me. The real me. But as fast as it had come, it was gone, and her face turned to stone once more.
“Well, you’ll never touch me again,” she said, a flash of headlights through the front window casting the house in a sickening glow. Her ride was here, and she had nothing more to say to me.
The door opened.
The door closed.
She was gone.
I was alone.
And with my chest on fire, with tears in my eyes and a fiery scream scorching my throat, my knees gave way to the final blow. I crashed to the floor, hitting rock bottom in the most literal sense.
It was right where I deserved to be.
Reese
Sarah didn’t show up for our lesson Thursday night.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. I shouldn’t have stared at my phone, counting the endless texts and calls I’d sent her way that had gone completely unanswered. I shouldn’t have ever imagined a world where she and I would make it, where we would be together, where I was anything more than the absolute fuck up I’d always been.
But I was. And I did.
“Something a little cheerier, Reese?” the manager of The Kinky Starfish suggested, a tight smile on his face as he greeted a customer walking past us. He lowered his head again once she was gone. “It’s Friday night, for God’s sake. The people want to dance.”
I nodded in response, cracking my neck before I launched into one of my favorites from Bach. Even though the music was joyful, I played the piece as if from a distant world. Everything was hollow. Everything was void.
And Sarah was avoiding me, working in the kitchen instead of out on the floor.
I knew she was there. I could feel her presence, a familiar buzz that warned my body she was near. It used to warn me to stay away, to keep my distance, to remember what I could and could not have.
I should have listened to it, then.
Now, it only served to punish me, to remind me what I’d lost, what was so close yet so out of reach.
It was the worst brand of torture.
The night passed in a sort of gray fog, my fingers flying over the keys, a forced smile on my lips, a voice that seemed to be someone else’s greeting the patrons and talking between pieces. To everyone else in that room, I imagined I seemed the same. But inside, I was burning.
It wasn’t until my first break that I felt a tiny flash of relief, and I told the patrons I was taking a half hour, even though that was twice what I usually took. I needed a moment. I needed space.
I needed Sarah.
And I was on my way to the kitchen to find her when I ran into Charlie, instead.
“Reese,” she said, hand wrapping around my bicep and pulling me to a stop just before I hit the swinging door to the kitchen.
I let her turn me, heart squeezing at her proximity, at the voice that I knew so well, at the warm chocolate eyes that I could close my eyes and see perfectly. But it was different this time. I didn’t want to reach for her, to hold her, to inhale her scent and imagine the days when she was mine.
I just wanted her to leave me alone so I could go find Sarah.
I hadn’t seen her since she showed up at my house unannounced on the anniversary of my family’s death. I’d dodged her calls, her mother’s calls inviting me to dinner, her father’s calls inviting me to have a drink and play a round of golf, her brother’s calls saying he wanted to catch up. I loved them, and I knew in my heart they would always be a sort of family to me.
But I’d needed space. I’d wanted to heal. And Sarah was helping me do just that.
Until I ruined everything.
“Charlie,” I greeted, scratching the back of my neck. “I was just about to head outside to smoke. Could we talk after my set?”
“No. We can’t. This is important.”
Her reaction surprised me, and it wasn’t until then that I saw the bend in her brows, the concern etched on her little face. She pulled her hand from where it held my arm, crossing her own over her chest.
“Graham has been trying to reach out to you. So have I.” She swallowed. “We all have, and you haven’t answered any of our calls.”
“I’ve been busy,” I explained.
Charlie paused, like she was waiting for more — busy doing what, she seemed to ask me with her doe eyes. But I didn’t feel the need to explain further, not when the only thought on my mind was getting inside that kitchen and talking to Sarah.
“Jennifer Stinson called my mother earlier today.”
I didn’t understand the correlation, but the heavier Charlie’s gaze became, the more I was on alert. Why would Jennifer call her mom, and why would Charlie need to talk to me about it?
“Okay…”
“She wanted to talk to my mom because she’s on the board at Winchester, and apparently, Jennifer wanted to voice some concerns about a particular teacher. She didn’t want to go straight to Mr. Henderson, especially because, in her own words, this teacher is a close family friend.”