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Quickly, Sawyer scrambled to a seated position and wrapped part of the sheet around the front of her body. “What do you mean? Are you telling me you forgot what you said to me at Faye’s funeral?”
I sat up and scooted myself back, so that I could lean my back against the headboard. Then, I took a moment to wrack my brain. Nothing was coming to my mind. Shaking my head, I returned, “That day is a big blur. I don’t recall exactly what I said to you, but I really don’t remember anything bad. I do recall you walking up and sitting down beside me. I remember thinking how incredibly difficult it was going to be for you, because where I’d lost Faye, you had lost her, as well as Janelle and Cristina. I knew them, but I wasn’t close with them like you were.”
Sawyer dropped her gaze to the sheet covering her lap. Long moments passed without a response from her. I wanted to reach out, gather her in my arms, and fix whatever was wrong, but something held me back. There was obviously something she needed to share with me, so I waited patiently for her to do it.
Finally, she murmured, “You blamed me.”
“What?”
Lifting her chin, so her eyes could meet mine, she said, “When I sat there beside you in the cemetery, you told me how Faye was gone because she had made a stupid decision that wasn’t her. You said it hadn’t been your cousin who did it and that it never should have been her. This was right after you had expressed how Faye was the one who would always err on the side of caution, so I knew that you felt the same as everyone else did. It was my fault, and I was the one who should have died that day.”
Tears were rolling down her cheeks, and after hearing those words, there was no way I could hold myself back any longer. I reached out to her, tugged her toward me, and held her tight. Brushing her hair away from her cheeks, our faces just inches apart, I insisted, “I never blamed you.Never.My God, you thought that all this time? You thought I wished you would have died?”
Since I was holding her face in my hands, she couldn’t exactly move much, but she managed to give me a slight nod.
Horror moved through me. This beautiful woman, just a young girl at the time, thought that I had wanted her dead. My throat grew painfully tight, and something hollow settled in the pit of my stomach.
“Baby girl,” I rasped before dropping my hands from her face and hugging her tightly against my chest. She sobbed as I continued to kiss the side of her head, right at her temple. “I loved you, Sawyer. I never, ever wanted to see harm come to you. I was devastated. For me, yes. But especially for you.”
“Everybody hated me,” she cried.
My arms grew tighter around her. “Not me. Not for one second. Even after you left, I never hated you. I was upset, and I didn’t understand why you walked away. I held on to a grudge for a long time, and I was definitely bitter, but that was mostly because the girl I had fallen in love with had walked out of my life. I never wished death upon you, and I certainly didn’t blame you for what happened to Faye.”
Sawyer's body tensed, and she tipped her chin up to look at me. “You fell in love with me?”
I didn’t hesitate to respond. “Yes.”
Her eyes searched my face, something I couldn’t read moving through her expression. She looked as though she had at least a dozen questions she wanted to ask, but instead of asking them, she buried her face back in my chest and held on tightly to me.
Time passed without a word from Sawyer. I continued to hold her, hoping I was providing some kind of comfort and reassurance that she obviously needed. Eventually, she pulled back just a touch, so she could look at me. “What did you mean?”
“About what?”
“When you indicated that the girl who died at the quarry that day wasn’t your cousin, because she didn’t do things like that,” Sawyer clarified.
I didn’t know why, but I had hoped that after telling Sawyer how I felt about her all those years ago that she might admit she felt the same. If nothing else, I had hoped my admission would lead to a discussion about how she felt about me now.
It was one thing to kiss her and lead us to what we’d just had with one another, and it was something else to have a conversation that involved emotions and real feelings. I wanted the emotional connection with her just as much as I wanted the physical one.
Maybe it was going to take just a bit longer for her to get there. Maybe she was still just too hurt and confused by all that had happened, especially since the question she’d just asked indicated where things might have gone wrong for us.
I closed my eyes and sighed, because it was all starting to make sense. “I was talking about what could only be described as a rebellious streak, I guess,” I began. “Faye envied you, but it was never in a bad way. I remember talking to her one day, and she told me how she wished she could do what you were doing after graduation. She was so accustomed to following the rules and the expectations my aunt and uncle had. Faye didn’t want to tell them that she’d changed her mind about college, so she started doing things that I think gave her a sense of control and freedom.”
“But I told her, Cristina, and Janelle about my journal and my list after I’d shared it with you, and it was after that when they all started doing some of those things with me,” Sawyer argued.
“That’s doesn’t mean that what happened at the quarry was your fault,” I insisted. “The four of you were best friends, and I knew how devastated you were. I saw how you stood so far away at Faye’s service. I can’t imagine the pain you must have been going through, and there’s nothing I wish more than that you would have known I wanted to be there for you through it.
There was a long stretch of silence before Sawyer murmured, “We’ve lost so many years.”
“Yes, we have,” I confirmed.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
My brows drew together. “I had no idea you thought that I hated you. I thought you left town and didn’t want to be found.”
Sawyer shook her head. “No. That’s not what I mean. I was wondering why you didn’t tell me how you felt about me all those years ago.”
God, that had been the hardest thing I’d ever done. There was nothing I wanted more than to make Sawyer mine. “You were still in high school, and I was technically an adult,” I started. “But more than that, I was away so much. I didn’t want you to not have the experiences you deserved to have, because you had a boyfriend who was never around.”
