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Then Indy snorted, stamping her foot impatiently. It made Josie jump, startled back into reality and out of the plane of existence that only included her and the note that Sawyer had left behind. She blinked hard and fast, sniffing back any tears that threatened to fall and stood up. She had horses to take care of, animals that depended on her. They were her priority now and everything else could wait.
So Josie went through the motions of her usual morning routine, feeling like she was walking through a cloud that stifled both her vision and her hearing. She got the horses their breakfast and groomed the worst of the mess off of Clyde, before hooking up their halters and leading them out to enjoy their field for the day. Even with the sun hitting the back of her neck and making her squint her eyes, it felt cold and dark out like everything was inverted. She didn’t even need to look at the note anymore; every word of it was seared into the back of her eyelids, like a tattoo on her memory.
If he’d justsaid… If Sawyer had just explained that he felt like he didn’t fit, that he didn’t belong, Josie would have told him how wrong he was. It had been as if there was a giant hole in her life this whole time, for years on end, and he had been the only thing able to fill it. Did he really think that he was just a complication for her? Something to be rid of? Because now that she was rid of him, she felt adrift, without an anchor in an unfamiliar sea. Hadn’t he seen how happy he made her? Didn’t he see that she was falling in love with him so hard and so fast that it was terrifying and amazing and a million other things?
She could ask him. Josie could simply pick up the phone and ask. He might not respond, but she could still send him the questions and wait for a response. But the thought of reaching out made her feel sick. It felt something akin to reaching out towards a house that was burning down. You didn’t just run back inside and try to save it or you’d be turned to ash in the process. Sometimes you just had to watch things burn.
It was close to noon when she worked up the courage to enter the house and find Luke. Sawyer had written that his brother would be happy to tell her all the details, so what had happened between them? What had gone so wrong so quickly that Sawyer had left town altogether with only a note to say goodbye? It had taken her that long to go seeking information from Luke because, for the moment, the questions were just slightly more bearable than any concrete answers.
She didn’t bother to knock on the front door and let herself in. She hadn’t knocked on the front door since she was fifteen years old and Mr. Butler had told her that it was her house too if she ever needed it. The building was as familiar to her as the palms of her hands. She knew every crack and every corner. But knowing Sawyer wasn’t here and that, by the sounds of it, he wouldn’t be coming back, the place felt as empty as a haunted house despite the sounds of murmured conversation coming from the kitchen.
She wandered through the hall and into the kitchen, where Luke and Sandy were standing at the sink, facing out the window, talking together with low, somber voices. So they knew, then. They must know. Josie felt like she wanted to run away as well,just run away from all of these feelings. She could see the appeal of just getting in her truck in the middle of the night and driving until it was all left behind.
“What happened?” she asked, her own voice sounding too loud under the circumstances. Both of them turned to face her, both of them looking tired and sad, especially Luke.
“What?” he asked.
“With… What happened with…” Her sentence wavered off, unable to finish it.
Josie couldn’t say anything else because she knew the second she opened her mouth there would be tears. She didn’t want tears. She wanted this not to matter. She wanted it not to hurt, butit did. It hurt so much.
“Josie?” Luke said, looking concerned enough that Sandy stepped forward as well, her eyebrows creased as she took Josie in.
Josie kept her mouth shut, just to keep the tears at bay for a little longer because if she started crying, then it would mean all of this was really happening and she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to get the tears to stop. All of it was unfair. She forced herself to take a deep breath as Luke moved away from the sink and came over to her, his big hands on her shoulders, his mouth pinched into a worried line.
“You know that Sawyer just up and left in the middle of the night, then?” he said, Sandy coming over as well, watching Josie’s face as if she were going to collapse at any second. Which maybe she was. Josie nodded, not looking at either of them in the face, and pulled her folded-up note out of her pocket.
“Yep,” she said, voice more of a squeak than an actual word. Sure enough, a tear leaked out of her eye, then another and another until they were streaming down her face, making the familiar kitchen blurry around her.
“Josie?” Luke asked, rubbing her upper arms, trying to get her to look at him. “What happened?”
Josie took a deep breath, wishing she could juststop crying.
“I think I’ve been very stupid,” she said, her own voice sounding far away as the kitchen moved from blurry to entirely impossible to see, her hands at her cheeks trying to wipe away the tears and failing. Then Sandy’s arms were around her instead of Luke’s, her warm cheek against her cold one and her hands rubbing her back.
“I knew something was going on with you two,” Sandy said quietly into her ear.
“Really?”
“Yeah, we’re not stupid, Josie.”
“What was going on?” Luke asked, and Josie could almostfeelSandy roll her eyes.
“I’mnot stupid,” she said. “But he is.” She threw a nod at Luke before wiping the tears from Josie’s face with her thumbs. Josie could see well enough to witness the moment that it clicked in Luke’s head.
“Oh…” he said, clearly reassessing every interaction they’d all had for the last several weeks.
“See, this is whyI’mthe one that proposed,” said Sandy, slapping him on the chest. “Clueless, honestly.”
“Sorry,” said Luke with a grimace.
“You’re not mad?” Josie asked, voice still small and quiet.
Both of them snapped their attention back to her, Luke smoothing the hair off of her face where it had gotten stuck from the carnage of her crying.
“Why would I be mad?” he asked, confused.
“Because…” Josie shrugged, sniffing so that she could speak just a little more like her normal self and not this mess of a human she currently felt like. “Because you’re my best friend, and you hated Sawyer so much, but he was so nice to me… And it turns out you were right all along, so now I look even more stupid and you have a full pass to say ‘I told you so’ because I deserve it.”
