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I hated that it felt like someone was missing. It was probably wrong of me to keep thinking about Sawyer. How close he and Evie had gotten. But him and me too. How did she and I both read him wrong?
Did we really?
We must have. All signs pointed to yes.
So why couldn’t I stop questioning whether or not he was really guilty of trying to fuck her over?
29
Sawyer
I was going out of my mind.
After Evie and Gage threw me out, I wanted to camp on her doorstep, maybe hammer on the door, until one of them talked to me.
I told myself I was nixing the idea because it was ludicrous and I needed to move on. The real reason was because I didn’t want to have to hit Gage, and I fully expected his police friend would show up and haul me off. I couldn’t fix anything from a holding cell.
What I really needed was to sleep off this feeling. Sure, Evie refused to hear me out, and of course Gage took her side, but it didn’t make any difference to me.
It did. I very much did. Sleep didn’t make that clawing feeling in my mind and chest go away.
Was this about not giving up?
Yes. Because these two people had abruptly become part of my life, and I couldn’t give them up.
Neither of them answered my texts or calls on Tuesday. Gage wasn’t at his grill, and when I went by the hardware store it was locked up tight. There was a sign in the window, in Evie’s familiar and precise handwriting.
Closed for the week. Apologies for the inconvenience.
What?
I headed around back, and hammered on the roll-up door leading to Evie’s workspace, until my fist was sore. Then I hammered some more, because apparently I was losing my mind.
“I need you to stop.” Rohde’s voice came from behind me.
I turned to see him standing in the alley, in full uniform, a blank look on his face. “I need them to open the door.”
He sighed. “You can leave, or I can bring you in, and find an excuse to send you to a bigger jail in a different city.”
I wouldn’t mind hitting him. The outlet for my frustration would be nice.
Kurt would be upset if I beat up his Uncle Rohde though.
It took the last of my willpower to jam my bruised hands into my pockets. “I’m going.”
That night, sleep didn’t come any more easily than answers, and the next morning, the driving need to make this right hammered in my skull.
I was surprised when my room phone rang. “Yeah,” I answered.
“If anyone asks, you didn’t hear this from me.” It was Elaina. “Gage is at his restaurant, and he’s alone.”
I started to ask how she knew—that he was there or that I cared—but I was on a short schedule. “Thank you.”
A few minutes later, I pushed through a thankfully unlocked door at Gage’s Grub, to find him behind the counter, prepping for the day.
The look he gave me was impassive, which I’d take over angry.
“Hear me out,” I said.
