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She scoffs. “The only way to make sure I never knew what life was really like for you?”
I shake my head and thread my fingers through hers, a move I would’ve made a million times when we were younger that shouldn’t feel as strange as it does now. “Not at all. It was the only way for you to have the life you had always dreamt of having.”
“Look how well that’s going,” she mutters.
“If I would’ve told you everything, what would you have done? Would you have gone to college exactly as planned or stayed here with me to help me through everything?” There’s a stormthat passes through her gaze and she lets her shoulders fall in defeat. I squeeze her hand, bringing her attention back on me, and I say, “I wish that I had made a better choice, and I am sorry that I did things the way I did, but my brother needed me more than ever.”
She groans. “I want to stay angry with you so badly, but you make it difficult when you say shit like that.”
My phone rings in my pocket and I pull it out, sighing in frustration. “Listen, my lunch break is over, but maybe we can talk more about this another time? I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
Savanna nods and stands up with me, smiling at a couple walking their dog. “I have to think about things still, figure out where my head is at, but I’m glad I know what happened before I left.”
She starts walking away, but I reach out and gently wrap my fingers around her elbow. “Sav?”
“Yeah?”
I take a deep breath and smile at her. “You were always it for me. I hope you know that even if I didn’t show it in the best way.”
She doesn’t say anything and she doesn’t have to, not when her glistening eyes tell me that my words hit her harder than she thought they would. Before I can spill anything else, like how much I am still madly in love with her, she hurries back throughthe field and into the parking lot. I wait until she’s out of the lot before heading toward my police car, pulling my phone out when it starts ringing again. “I’m on my way back now.”
The rest of my work day is uneventful.
First we got a call from one of the elderly women in town who constantly needs someone to save her cat from a tree – so cliche. There was another incident that involved some teenage boys, who thought it would be cool to try purchasing beer with fake IDs – that was more serious than others, but we let them off with a warning and took them back to their respective homes.
Nothing too crazy ever happens in this town, more like minor things involving kids that authorities get to handle because the parents are too lazy to correct the kids themselves. Usually they want us to instill fear in them, threaten to lock them up for a week, in hopes that their children will start acting right. It’s never really surprising when they continue doing the same damn things.
I’m exhausted by the time I pull up to my house, but it falls to the back of mind when I see Savanna leaning against one of the wooden beams holding my house up. She pushes away from the spot she’s in, starting toward me with determination, and I slip out of my truck with my eyebrows scrunched in confusion.
She holds her hand up and looks at me. “Mind inviting me inside for a minute? This shouldn’t take long.”
I wave a hand in front of her. “Lead the way, you’re always welcome here.” It’s crazy how quickly I’d give her a key to my place just so I could walk through the front door and see her lounging on the couch every night after work. “How long have you been waiting for me?”
She shrugs. “Not too long, maybe thirty minutes?” Her eyes cast along every surface of the house, then she looks over her shoulder at me. “Have anything decent to drink?”
“Let me get out of this uniform, then I’ll pour us some wine.”
I’m not sure what Savanna could possibly need from me right now, but I’m not going to complain if it means she’s sitting in my home. The home that I had always meant to share with her. Her arrival into town only makes me crave that future even more.
There was never a thought in my mind that I would get the chance to be with her again, and I’m finally being given a second chance even if it’s just as a friend. I’m not going to pass it up. I may have made the biggest mistake of my life as a teenager, but those years are long gone. I know what I want and it’s the woman currently waiting downstairs for me.
She’s sitting on the edge of the couch when I come back downstairs, her eyes glued to the coffee table in front of her. “What is this?” she says as she points at the table. There’s an emotion I can’t detect in her voice, making me want to shrink away and disappear in a corner somewhere.
“Uh, why don’t we talk about why you came here tonight?”
Savanna shakes her head and frowns at me, then turns her attention back to the table. “I want to talk about this.”
I’m mostly surprised that she remembers everything we ever talked about in regard to our future. A coffee table wasn’t the most important part of our conversations, but I can’t deny that I chose this specific one because it was the exact one Savanna had wanted. She even went as far as adding it to her Pinterest board.
The last thing I want to do right now is scare her away and something tells me that bringing up what the coffee table means to me will do exactly that. I walk over to the couch slowly and sit beside her. “That’s not important right now, we can talk about that another time.”
She blinks a few times, then nods.
Almost everything in this house was purchased with her in mind. She was always in my thoughts with everything I did. I’m not sure that will be enough to get a second chance with her though.
Chapter Eleven
Savanna
