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Thirty-Eight
“Oh dear, no one expected you’d come in tonight.”
Sarah ground her teeth together and blinked in silence at Maureen. The no one in her statement suggested everyone had been talking about the fight between Dean and Blaine, with her thrown in the middle. She shouldn’t have expected any different, but four days had passed, and she’d hoped some of the frenzy might have died down.
The misery of being at home alone, bored, with too much time to think, had gotten to her. So, she’d come to work seeking an escape. But an hour into her shift, everyone still kept staring at her. The incessant whispers laid the sympathy and speculation on her far too thick, each person stuck somewhere between pity and fear.
A wash cloth still lay clasped between her fingers, and she slapped it down onto the bar top, leaning a hip against the counter’s edge. At least Maureen here dared to speak to her. “Did you all think I’d hide forever?”
Then again, she’d given a criminal a reason to stay in town. How fucking embarrassing. Everyone’s fear wasn’t unfounded.
“No, of course not, dear.” Maureen patted her hand over the bar, perhaps because Sarah didn’t get close enough to let the woman touch her. “Work can be one way to heal a broken heart.”
Sarah took her gaze away and stared down at her hand over the cloth. Words of sympathy were hard enough; words about her broken heart were unbearable.
I wish Dean never happened.
An all-too-familiar swelling took up space in her throat, and she swallowed at the permanent lump there—the discomfort, as always, refusing to budge. In the wake of her break up with Blaine, she’d been adamant about never wanting to fall in love again. The problem with Dean, there’d been no choice. Love had just happened. It had dragged her, kicking and screaming, into happiness and misery unlike anything she’d experienced before.
Frank sat beside Maureen, Aggie on the other side, the next to speak. “I for one don’t blame you.”
Sarah scoffed. Blame her for what? Falling for Dean? Or just for entangling the whole town in his trouble? As much as the old woman attempted to comfort, her statement only confirmed that some people did blame Sarah for something.
“That’s right. We were all wrong.” Frank spoke, though Sarah kept her gaze lowered and couldn’t see him. “We all assumed Dean was a good guy, and ouch—”
She flicked her gaze up to Aggie glaring at Frank and Frank rubbing his arm, the action suggesting Aggie had pinched him into shutting up.
Aggie’s words, and her intervention now, left Sarah wondering. Did Aggie know about Sarah’s doubts? That, as much as everyone here, including her, wanted to paint Dean as an out-and-out evil person, a gentler internal voice kept reminding her that she knew his story. That he’d tried, in a roundabout way, to tell her who he was.
Like a naive fool, she’d ignored all signs. And still like a naive fool, she wanted to believe she knew the man. That some of what they’d shared had to be real.
Her stomach roiled and a good portion of her energy left her body. That she still felt anything for him even though he’d hurt people close to her. He was a monster and now he was turning her into one too.
And even as that harsh sentiment worked its way through her brain, another part of her still clung to the sheriff’s kernel of hope. That Dean might bargain his way to freedom, that he still had the potential to turn into the man he’d claimed to be.
What a mess.
How could she pin her hopes on potential?
How could she ever want him near her or anyone she cared about again?
She rubbed her cloth against the already clean counter, her movements jerky, uninterested in speaking about what had happened. Even if no one here did blame her, she blamed herself. For all her caution, she’d let yet another disastrous relationship become far more than it ever should have.
She growled under her breath and pushed the cloth away, unwilling to answer why she’d done any of what she’d done. Shared a bed with him. Shared intimate details of her life. Shared a giant piece of her heart that she would never get back. It was far easier to tell herself over and over again that Dean was a bad person with no redeeming traits.
She turned from the group, not offering so much as a final glance or goodbye, unable to voice any words as she headed for the kitchen and bolted for the back door. Outside, an aptly empty field stretched into the darkness ahead, the night lonely and hollow.
She pressed her back to the brick wall and slid down to the step. She pressed a hand over her eyes and tried to escape from the fact that she, Sarah Overton, had devolved into a cowering and emotional mess.
Where once she took pride in her inability to shed tears, now, she simply couldn’t stop. Sleep evaded her. A perpetually crushed feeling surrounded her heart. All this over a man—a man she’d met just weeks earlier. A man who’d left her, alone, humiliated, her world forever changed and not for the better.
And despite all the evidence, what she hated most was that she still cared. Still wanted to know he was okay.
She rummaged through her tight jeans pocket for a tissue only to come out empty-handed, so she swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. It didn’t matter what her heart wanted. The fact was Dean had lied to her. He was in prison. There was no reclaiming what she’d lost.
Best to get that in my stubborn head. Stop sniveling. Get up and get on with life.
If only getting on was that simple.
