"Garret, wait," I called, feeling emotion welling up so fast I couldn't think. It was like that moment where he took off on his bike angry with me after I dumped him all over again. I had a few seconds to let my heart unfurl in front of him and he snatched hope back away from me with catlike reflexes. Then he was gone, and the cook's voice cut through the lot from the back door of the diner.
"Sara, I need you in here. We've got a problem with the fryer."
I looked back at Garret but he was rolling onto the road and far enough away he'd never hear me over that bike anyway. It didn't matter that I'd moved two hundred miles away and spent four years trying to forget him, the heart wants what it wants. And my heart wanted him.
"Sara?"
I turned and nodded, moving toward the cook's beckoning.
So Garret knew I was back and he'd made contact first. It wasn't a horrible thing, but it wasn’t a good sign that my heart just did a backflip and my body still got sucked into his gravity.
This could be torture if I wasn't careful.
12
GARRET
I pulled onto the road and opened the throttle and let the speed fill up the space in my head that Sara had cracked open. The fields blurred past on both sides and the wind cut through my jacket and none of it helped. Her face was right there every time I blinked. My God, was she just as beautiful as ever—aged a little, but the maturity in her was sexy as hell, and the pull was too strong.
I was distracted, tugged in fifty different directions at once and not paying attention as a deer came out of the tree line so fast I barely had time to react. It bolted across the road twenty yards ahead of me and I grabbed both brakes and felt the rear tire lock up and slide before I let off and swerved hard to the right.
The bike wobbled and I caught it with my knee against the tank and skidded to a stop sideways on the shoulder with my pulse racing. The deer already darted into the field on the other side, but
I sat there breathing hard knowing what would've happened had I hit it.
That was the second time I'd nearly wrecked because my head was full of Sara Ducette instead of the road in front of me. The first time cost me three months in a hospital and a hip that would never be right again. If this deer had been ten yards closer, it would've cost me a lot more than that.
I squeezed my eyes shut and killed the engine, relaxing back on the bike for a few minutes. When she asked me about the accident I lost it. She had no idea I'd gone to see her father unless Peter told her, and her knowing how bad I was hurt and having never visited me was worse pain than the four surgeries I endured, or the chronic ache I had every time it rained now.
What was I thinking going out to that shed to see if she needed comfort? I knew it would dredge up memories, and I knew I never got over the emotional pain of her ghosting me. But there I went marching out there like a fool walking to his own execution. What an idiot.
And she saw it too. It wasn't bad enough that I carried my own shame. Sara tried to get me to open up because unlike the other people in this town who didn't know me, Sara knew my every thought. She always had been able to read me like a book.
My hands curled into fists and I pounded the gas tank once or twice to burn off some of my anger. Reuniting with Sara shouldn't have been that hard. We were both adults and she wasn't here to bring up old ghosts. She was here because her father was really sick and I didn't want to make that worse. I wanted to offer her my sympathy, which was why I walked out to see where she was. Then I ruined it by not being able to keep my emotions under wraps.
It wasn’t fair of me to blame her, and I hadn't gotten a chance to offer the comfort I had hoped. If either one of us was going tomake it through this visit of hers to Grove Hill, one of us had to be the bigger person.
After several long minutes of frustrated stewing, I decided to turn back to town. By the time I pulled onto the street where Ma's Griddle sat, the sun was going down and the diner was dark. The sign was off, the windows were black, and the parking lot out front was empty. It was too early for them to be closed, so I almost kept riding.
But when I swung around the back of the building, Sara's dirt bike was still parked next to the dumpster, and I could see her sitting on the back step with her elbows on her knees and her head down. She looked sad, and it hit me hard. I wasn't a sentimental sort of man, but I hated seeing her hurt.
She looked up as I rolled up and parked next to her and killed the engine. Her eyes were red and her face was drawn and she didn't look surprised to see me, which meant she was either too tired to react or she'd been expecting me to come back. I didn't know which one was worse.
"Power's out," she said before I could ask. "Mom missed the electric bill and they shut it off. I can't get it turned back on until tomorrow morning when the office opens."
I swung off the bike and walked over. "Mind if I sit?" I didn't figure Peter and Anne were having financial issues, but it made sense that paying a bill would slip her mind if she was worried about his health.
Sara moved over on the step and I lowered myself down next to her. It was every bit as awkward as our strange interaction forty minutes ago though I forced myself not to take off this time. The concrete was cold and the space was narrow enough that ourshoulders were almost touching. I kept my hands on my knees and stared out at the dumpster.
"I'm, uh… I'm sorry for running off like that."
Her shoulder bobbed, but her head dropped. "I get it. We aren't on good terms now."
My gut felt tight, like I was bracing for someone to punch me. I didn't know what to say, but sitting in silence felt painful.
"You, uh… You look sad." God, was I ever bad at this. Most of my conversations revolved around bikes or local runs. I kept to myself and didn't talk to many people at all, and when she and I had conversations in the past, it had always been about the next time we'd hook up.
"Yeah, bud, I am." I hadn't heard her call me bud in four years. Four lonely years of not a single trace of intimacy or connection with anyone, and my heart drank it up like water in a desert.
