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When I picked up my utensils, surprisingly Sawyer didn’t take his hand completely away. No, he placed it on my knee. Even through my leggings, I could feel the heat from his palm.
But I couldn’t think about that. No. I had a story to push through.
“It was just like any other day leading up to it. It was a Thursday and all week had been great. I had a super busy Wednesday morning and items were flying off the racks. I went in Thursday morning to restock and get the store ready for opening.” I put a cut off piece of French toast in my mouth. It was heavenly.
Wide eyed, I looked over at him. Waiting to not have food in my mouth, I finally told him, “That’s phenomenal. I’m totally using cinnamon and vanilla from now on.”
Sawyer chuckled, single-handedly cutting a piece of his own with the side of his fork, keeping his other hand on my leg. “Told you so.” So like Sawyer, he didn’t pressure me to go on with the story.
“It’s really not that exciting. My story,” I clarified.
He squeezed my knee, looking at me as he chewed. Finally he said, “Then don’t finish it.” There wasn’t an ounce of irritation in his voice.
But it confused me. He wanted to know the story, he said as much, but now he didn’t?
He squeezed my knee again before letting go, but not to leave me. Instead, he moved his arm to hook over my neck, pulling me close. Afraid I was going to fall off my stool, my hands faltered and grabbed at the countertop. Chuckling, Sawyer brushed his lips to my temple again.
Goodness gracious, he had to stop doing things like that.
“You worry so loudly, Gracie.” He pressed his lips to my temple once more before letting go. “I just want to know because it hurts me to know you went through it. That’s all. I don’t need the details, not really.”
Under it, I could hear his real reason.
He wanted me to be open with him. He wanted to know, because he needed to know we were back to where we once were, able to openly communicate.
And I wanted to give that to him.
I took a bite of turkey bacon and placed the rest of the slice down on the plate, thinking back to that day.
“It wasn’t even that busy. It was just that everything happened at one time. A customer had a question, the phone kept ringing, and the delivery guy needed something signed. It was just too much all at one time.” I shrugged a shoulder. “I excused myself from the three people who needed me and left the front of the store empty so I could hyperventilate and cry in the back office.” I gave Sawyer a forced smile. “See? Nothing terribly exciting.”
Sawyer’s fork was in a piece of toast and he was randomly swirling the piece in a dollop of syrup, watching the movements as he did so. He was contemplating something.
“Sydney told me it was the worst she’d seen.”
Ah. So that’s how he’d known. Not some super Spidey detective senses. Just a sister. To be honest though, I didn’t really care that she told him. I should have been the one to tell him.
“That’s because she came into the store an hour later and I was still huddled in my office.” It was my turn to trace random designs in my syrup. “She cleaned up after my mess, more or less, and closed the store for me before helping me home.”
“Here or your place?” He gave up on his breakfast, putting his fork down on his plate.
“My place.”
“Was…Did she stay with you, or…?” I could actually hear the hurt in his voice. I could feel it. “I mean, you had Jeremy, right?”
I offered him a half smile, even though even I could tell it was a sad one. “Yeah, but he didn’t really understand.”
I couldn’t be sure, but I swore Sawyer called Jeremy a ‘fucker’ under his breath and you know what?
Yeah. Yeah, he was.
He told me to wipe up my tears, take a deep breath, and to calm myself. He had plans for us that night and couldn’t have me blotchy-faced.
At the time, I was thankful for something to do and to get my head off of the events of the morning, but thinking back…
What a fool I had been to stay with him.
Jeremy and I were new enough in our relationship at that point that he shouldn’t have been cold toward me. Heck, if you cared about a person, you didn’t act that way ever, no matter how long you’d been together.
“It’s over now though, so,” I told him, “hindsight’s twenty-twenty.”
“I wish you would have told me.”
I turned in my stool now, facing him and taking him in. Still sporting sleep-rumbled hair and yet he was still the most beautiful man, inside and out, I had ever met. “I wish I had told you, too.”
