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Tears blurred my vision. I silently sobbed in the driver’s seat, then took a huge breath and managed to calm myself down.
Then I sobbed again.
Sawyer was peacefully snoozing in the seat nearby, without a clue in the world that I was breaking down. Even he had only ever seen me cry when I lost Thomas. And I definitely didn’t cry much these days. It snuck up on me quickly and fiercely, and tears started streaming down my face, in a way I couldn’t possibly control.
I realized that this was what I’d been holding in all night. Sealed up like a dam until it had to burst.
I reached for the roll of paper towels I kept in a nook behind me, doing my best to dry my face off.
Maybe I’d been holding all of this in for longer than tonight. Maybe it had been more like a few weeks, or a few years, as far as I could remember.
If I’d learned anything from my past grief, it was that the people you loved were precious. More precious than gold. And while I knew that Sawyer’s accident hadn’t been too bad, and he was going to be just fine, I still couldn’t handle the sight of him in that hospital bed.
He was everything to me.
And even though I knew how dangerous that could be—how fleeting things could be, when it got right down to it—I knew that I couldn’t waste another minute not telling him how I felt about him.
He knew I loved him. He knew it as sure as he knew the sun would rise. But even if it was just the painkillers talking through him tonight, and even if he didn’t feel the same way when they wore off, I had to tell him the full truth.
All of it. Even if I got rejected.
I owed that to him, and goddamn it, I knew our friendship would make it through, even if I fucked everything up for a little bit.
I looked over at Sawyer sleeping next to me, wishing I could hug him as tightly as possible right now. He only looked better to me after all these years. I’d never grown tired of him. He’d never annoyed me. And I swore he looked more attractive with every passing year, aging like the fanciest bottle of wine.
I hadn’t even known I was capable of a love as deep and long-lasting as the one I had for him. And nothing could stop me from being proud of what we’d built.
A few more tears made their way down my cheeks before I knew I was ready to drive. And as I made my way down the dark roads back to my place, the hollow feeling in my chest slowly bloomed into a renewed warmth. By the time I pulled my truck into my front driveway, I felt nothing but pure love, nothing but pure gratitude that he was here with me.
I got out and headed over to the passenger side, opening up the door.
“Hey, Goose,” I said, pushing his shoulder to wake him. Sawyer was hard to wake up even on a typical day, and I knew it would take a lot more tonight.
It took another couple of minutes before he was half-awake. He blinked up at me, that same smile coming over his face again.
“I love you,” he said.
Right in the fucking heart.
“I love you, too,” I said. “Now let’s get your ass inside.”
16
SAWYER
Despite multiple bruises, stitches, and aches in every limb of my body, I woke up feeling like I was in my own personal version of heaven.
I was in Harlan’s bed. At some point, he must have situated a little barricade of pillows around me—from head to toe on either side of my body, pillows were propped against me, holding me in place. Sunlight was streaming through the blinds on his windows, and I could see a perfect spring day outside, green trees and pink blossoms and even a pair of birds flying by.
When I tried to turn in bed, the dull aches became ten times worse. I groaned, surprised by the pain in my own body.
“Go easy,” Harlan’s voice came from the hall, and he appeared a moment later with a shallow wooden box in his hands. Misty followed him in soon after, wagging her tail and clearly expecting a bite of something.
Harlan walked over and set the box down on the side table, then turned to me. “Easy, easy.”
He propped another pillow behind me, helping me sit up a bit in bed. “I’m okay,” I said. “Nothing worse than being sore after a long day on the farm.”
“Is that right?”
“Okay. Maybe a bit worse than that.”
“Here,” Harlan said. He turned to the table, and I saw that the wooden box he’d brought in was a makeshift tray. Inside it was a pitcher of fresh lemonade, a cup of coffee, toast glistening with butter, and a plate with eggs, bacon, sausage, and hashbrowns on it.
