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Thirty-Four
“Wrong crowd?” Sarah pushed herself up and sat away from Dean, clutching the bedsheet to her chest, as if this man hadn’t seen her naked a bunch of times before. But his story. The one about working for “the wrong crowd”. She already had feelings for him, but hell, how had she been so ignorant? “You mean crime?”
“Not exactly.” He reached for her hand, which she let him hold, but kept her fingers limp. “I never killed anyone or stole anything.”
She spat out a laugh and scuttled back even farther, ripping her hand out of his. “Oh, well, that makes everything so much better.”
“Sarah, listen.” He sat now too, leaning in her direction, pleading that she stay put, though still giving her space. “The crowd I worked for kept me around to look scary and intimidate. Occasionally I’d use my military skills to track someone down. The job paid well, and no one cared about my past. I didn’t hurt anyone in any critical way, do you understand?”
“What about your family?” She jutted her chin at him, not sure where to look, her heart aching because she didn’t want to believe him to be a bad person. “Couldn’t they have helped you?”
“What family, Sarah?” His voice was husky and hurt, a dull cast overtaking his eyes. “I was twelve when my mother ditched me, and eighteen when I aged out of foster care. Just like many kids in that situation, I enlisted the second I could. Serving my country was my ticket to freedom, to being self-sufficient. Except, I blew my chance at having any real sort of life.”
She stared at him for a long while, still clutching the sheet to her chest, his line about blowing his chance bouncing around in her head. There’d always been a sense of familiarity with this man. She’d asked him for the truth. He’d given it to her, hadn’t he?
She knew about growing up too soon. About paying the price for other people’s actions. About needing to survive. And for that he’d been judged and tossed aside time and time again. Yet, he’d never done a thing to hurt her or anyone she knew. At what point did a person get to have a second chance? She could hear him out or at least not slam yet another door in his face.
She held the stand-off a moment longer, the tight tug of her heart telling her to take him in her arms and promise those harsher days were long behind him, but she still had reservations, so she offered acknowledgment instead. “You had no choice.”
He gave a small shrug, holding impossibly still, as though he feared any sudden movement might send her away completely. Maybe he wasn’t all that wrong. “Choice or not. My past is what it is, and I’m trying to leave it behind.”
The musk of his skin still clung to her, drawing her in, even though his story filled her with doubt over what he’d spent his last years doing.
She flicked her gaze back to his, those cobalt eyes holding her, arresting her breath, as if he sensed her emotional step backward and pleaded with her to see the little boy in him. The one who’d already been abandoned and didn’t want her to do the same. What that must have been like for him.
Sure, her parents had skipped out in their own ways too. She could relate, except he’d been so much younger and without the support she had here in Harlow. And what about the years prior to his abandonment? How had it all come about? The rest of his adulthood didn’t seem any warmer either.
She found her words again, seeking to put at least some of the pieces together. “Are you still with the ‘wrong crowd’?”
“No.” His fingers curled into the bedsheet, as though he wished to reach for her but stopped himself. “That’s why I stayed in Harlow. I needed to start over, Sarah, and you—”
She shook her head, demanding he stop, the heat behind her eyes building again. Her heart pummeled in her chest, taking with it her desire to fight.
The hint that she might have been the reason for his “restart”. He’d mentioned something to that effect before, but she hadn’t thought much of it, figured he was just talking about the complexities of moving states. Now that information, along with all the rest, was more than she could process.
How many times had she wanted to hit STOP on her life and change course?
More than she could count.
But unlike her, Dean here had actually done it.
“Just tell me it’s all over.” She focused on him, focused on what it cost him to admit to all that he had been, whilst almost certain she was the first person he’d ever talked this over with. “Promise me.”
His gaze searched her face, and for the longest while he said nothing, though the creases between his brow suggested her mistrust hurt him. Still, he reached for her now, his hand cupping her cheek, his thumb stroking her chin and then skimming her lower lip. “I will never go back to that. I will never let any of it hurt you. Do you understand?”
The steadfast hold of his stare, his gentle touch, his resolute tone revealed no doubt, no dishonesty.
She drew a sharp inhalation since she’d barely breathed through this whole interaction, her exhale dulling the strain in her shoulders and across her chest. She’d dropped her entire life to sulk in Harlow, to piece together the irreparable tatters of a dream that looked like her family, but had never been real to begin with.
Not a day passed where she didn’t question that decision, and lately, she downright regretted it. So, she nodded and took more breaths, wanting that clean break too.
“I can’t do it again, Dean.” She reached up to her face and pressed her hand over his, closing her eyes to savor this new calm. “I can’t give up my dreams, everything I know and love, for someone else’s sake.”
“I would never ask you—”
“Harlow is everything I know and love, do you understand?”
He nodded and shuffled back, pulling her along with him until they both sat with their backs against his dark wood headboard. “What dreams, Sarah? Tell me what dreams you gave up.”
