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She blinked and looked at him. It took a moment for his words to register in her mind. And then she realized that she’d forgotten something. “I forgot dessert. I’ll be right back.”
“You don’t have to bother.”
She ignored him and rushed into her kitchen. She didn’t keep a lot of sweets on hand because if she did, she’d eat them, and she didn’t need the extra calories.
She opened the fridge to see if there was something to offer him. There wasn’t. She shut the door and then started opening and closing the cabinets. Above the stove she found an unopened package of chocolate sandwich cookies. She wondered how long they’d been up there. She checked the expiration date and found that they were still good.
She rushed back to the deck. She sat down and held the cookies out to him. “These are all I have. Hope you like them.”
He smiled and took a couple. “Thanks.”
“You’re just lucky that I put them in the cabinet and forgot about them because I love them.” She took a cookie and munched on it.
Sara just hoped Kent would accept her heartfelt apology, and they could form a closer relationship. She wanted to be able to talk to him about so much more than the refresh project and the beautiful summer weather. But once she peeled back the wounds from the past, would they be able to heal?
Before she changed her mind, she said, “I need to apologize to you.”
The smile slipped from Kent’s face. “You have nothing to apologize for. Your cooking was excellent.”
“I’m not talking about dinner.”
He sighed. “I didn’t think you were, but I was just hoping—”
“That I wasn’t going to apologize to you?”
He shrugged. “It’s not necessary. All of that is in the past.” He looked at her with an arched brow. “Did you talk to Cari?”
She nodded. “She told me everything. I just wished you had been the one who had told me.”
“I told you—”
“I know. It wasn’t your secret.” She turned her deck chair to face him. “And you thought it was a good idea to let me go on hating you instead of telling me that you were a hero.”
His face filled with color. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him embarrassed before. It was such a cute look on him.
He glanced down. “I just did what anyone else would do.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You went above and beyond for her. And instead of me being eternally indebted to you, I was a jerk. I’m so sorry. I never should have said those things to you or accused you of being a jerk. Please forgive me.”
“It’s like I said before, there’s nothing to forgive.”
“Yes, there is.”
His gaze rose and met hers. “No, because you were just being a protective sister. There was no way for you to know what had happened with your sister that summer. It’s the way she wanted it. It was the only way I could convince her to go get professional help.”
Sara leaned forward and pressed her hand to his forearm, feeling his corded muscles beneath her fingertips. “Thank you for being there for Cari. I wish she’d felt she could turn to me, but I’m glad she had you.”
“She was protecting you.” He reached out, catching her hand within his own. “You have to know that she was more concerned about you than herself. She was worried after the death of your father that you couldn’t take anymore.”
The unexpected death of her father had sent her into a tailspin. For a time, she wasn’t even sure she was going to bother finishing college. Her family had meant everything to her. When she was young, they’d spent a lot of quality time together, playing board games on Sunday evenings, going fishing in her father’s old boat, and a million other little things that wove them together.
When her mother had died, the threads of her family started to unravel. Their time together faded away and her father had gotten lost in his grief. When at last her father started to find his way back to them, he had a fatal heart attack.
At that point, Sara had felt herself getting swept up in a tsunami of grief. The current was so strong she’d felt herself getting pulled away from the person she’d once been. In order to feel something besides the constant pain, she’d acted out. She’d done things that were dangerous because she figured it didn’t matter if she lived or died. She’d lost her anchor.
The only thing that had pulled her back from the edge was her sister. Cari had stepped up and yelled in Sara’s face when she needed a wake-up call. Sara didn’t know what she’d have done without sister.
It made Sara sad that she’d been so caught up in her own stuff that she couldn’t be there for her sister. When Cari finally returned to Bluestar, Sara wouldn’t make the same mistake. She would make room for Cari in her life. She would be there for her. And maybe now that they were both grown up, they could become the best friends she’d always thought they’d been.
