Paige had her first halfway decent day since she walked out on Garrett on Friday night. It was Tuesday now and she’d gotten through the entire day without picking up her phone to text and make sure he was okay. He was a big boy and he wasn’t her responsibility and she needed to get that through her head. Hell, he still hadn’t admitted he was out at the dam that morning to kill himself, after everything she’d shared with him. When she was angry she’d tell herself that she bared her soul and he’d barely given her anything in return. Then she’d remember what he did for her and she’d feel bad all over again. He saved her life and he took out her nightmares. She’d always be grateful to him for that. But she had to get it through her head that they could never be any more to each other than they were right at that moment. Garrett didn’t want her to know him...really know him, and that would make it impossible for them to ever go any further than the bedroom. She would never be satisfied with that, not when it came to him. Her feelings for him were already too strong. No, she had to stay away from him and she had to keep telling herself that every day that would get a little bit easier.

She took her bag and locked up her office and said goodbye to the girls out front. They’d all asked her about Garrett again on Monday morning, but her refusal to talk about him had finally convinced them to let it go. None of them mentioned him on Tuesday and that helped too. She drove home in a much better frame of mind than she’d been in for days and it lasted...right up until she saw him sitting in her front yard.

She saw him as soon as she turned onto her street, and she hit the brakes. She thought about turning around and hoping that he hadn’t seen her. His back was to her. He was sitting up against a tree and she almost laughed at how much smaller the tree looked than usual, compared to him. She wondered what her neighbors were thinking as they walked or drove by and saw him sitting there. She didn’t really care, but it was an older neighborhood, so she was slightly amused as she wondered what was going through their minds when they saw the giant just sitting there on her lawn. She sighed and rolled her eyes. She might as well get this over with...she just had to stay strong.

She put the car back in drive and finished making her way up the street. As she drove into the driveway, Garrett didn’t even move. He didn’t even look at her as she got out of the car. For a few seconds, she was afraid he was dead, and then she saw him blink. Thank God.

“You’re kinda big for a lawn ornament— all that shade will kill my grass.” She walked past him to the house and heard him chuckle.

“You could stick a green hat on me and tell people I’m a tree.”

“I like that...it could work. Although my neighbor’s dog does like to pee on my trees...” She had her back to him, but she heard him get to his feet. She had the door unlocked and opened and he still hadn’t said anything else. She could feel him still there looking at her, though. She finally turned around and said, “So what’s up, Garrett?”

“Can we talk?”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and I’m wondering if we might be better off to cut our losses now and move on. I mean, we haven’t known each other that long and haven’t had much time to get attached...”

“I’m attached to you, Paige.” The words were simple, but his tone was sincere, and they were the first ones like them that he had said. It was what she wanted from him the other night, and she wanted to kick her own ass for melting as soon as he said them. She sighed, knowing that now she wasn’t going to send him away.

“Come in, but keep your distance,” she told him. He laughed. “I’m not kidding.”

He laughed again. “I know you’re not.”

“So why are you laughing?”

“Because it makes me happy to know you don’t trust yourself too close to me.”

“Suddenly, you’re Mr. Honesty,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “You coming in or what?” Garrett stepped in behind her, and there was no denying the energy that surrounded her when he was around. It crackled in the air that he tried to steal from the room.

“Have a seat. You want something to drink?” She was doing her best to make it casual, but she could hear the quiver in her own voice.

He looked uncomfortable as hell as he said, “I don’t need anything to drink.”

Paige sat down on the couch and said, “Okay. Sit then, talk to me.”

“Can I stand?”

She chuckled. “No. You make me nervous. Sit.”

He sighed, but he sat down a foot or so away from her on the couch. It wasn’t far enough. She could smell a hint of his cologne and again...that presence of his just called to her, it drew her in. She kept herself tightly against the other side of the couch and waited. At last he said, “I’m sorry...about the other day.”

“Okay, what are you sorry for?”

“I should have just talked to you, but I’m not sure...I just don’t think, it’s just fucking hard.”

“I get that. Want to tell me what you’re afraid of?”

“It’s not that I’m afraid...”

Paige folded her arms and smiled. “It doesn’t make you weak to admit you’re afraid.”

“I never talk about myself...my feelings. I guess I’m just...fuck, I guess I am afraid. I’m afraid you won’t want to be with me if you know what’s really going on in here.” He put his hand on his chest. Paige reached over without thinking about it and put hers there as well. He grabbed it in his other hand and instantly her whole body was alert and quivering all over. She pulled her hand away and said:

“Maybe we shouldn’t touch, until after you talk.”

He smiled, but he didn’t press her. He settled back into the couch and said, “I saw Saint.” Paige waited for him to go on, and then, realizing this might be like pulling teeth and being thankful for her dental background, she said:

“How is he?”

Garrett closed his eyes for a second and when he opened them they had tears swimming inside. “He’s...crazy. He thinks he has this all figured out. He even thinks they won’t believe me and drop the charges against him if I go to the police.”

“Did he say why? Did he think you were going to be arrested?” Paige’s chest tightened at the thought. She was going to struggle with forgiving herself for her part in Saint’s being locked up. If it were Garrett...she didn’t know what she would do.

Garrett again sat silently for a long time, at last saying, “I’ve known him for over ten years and I’ve seen him put away more alcohol in one sitting that I could put away all night. Do you know that it never occurred to me that he was an alcoholic? How could I be so stupid? Selfishness, I guess. I’ve spent my life feeling sorry for me and because of that, I missed what was going on right under my nose.”

Paige was confused. “Was he drunk when he made his confession? Because if so, that shouldn’t hold up in court.”

“See, that’s the thing about Saint. If I’ve ever seen him drunk, I didn’t know it. You think that might have been a clue, huh?”

“I’m sorry, Garrett. But, I’m not sure what this has to do with him confessing to killing Ewell...” Paige had been trying to avoid the news, but in Vegas it was everywhere. A “respected” member of Vegas society was dead and a “lowlife” biker had been arrested for killing him. The elite crowd in Sin City wanted his head. It made her sick. None of them would even entertain the idea that Ewell was a pig...a monster, a rabid dog that needed to be put down so he wouldn’t hurt anyone else.

“Apparently, Saint does get drunk...every day, since he was ten years old,” he said. Paige felt her stomach roll. Ten years old? Jesus, if that’s true, it’s awful. But still...what does that have to do with this? Maybe he just needed to talk about it. She wasn’t going to interrupt. “He drank himself to death,” he said.

What the hell? Saint was dead? No way. She’d just heard them talking about the case on the radio on her way home. They didn’t say anything about that. “He drank himself to death?” she repeated, confused again.

“He’s not dead yet, but he’s dying,” Garrett said, almost in a whisper. “He says he’s only got a few months. By doing this, taking responsibility for Ewell, he thinks he’s showing me how much our friendship means. Ewell has a pretty strong backing in the community. Saint thinks that if someone didn’t confess, they wouldn’t have rested until I was caught, eventually. He’s insane. He’s giving up the last three months of his life on a ‘just in case.’”

“Oh my God. Garrett.” She put her hand back on him and she could feel him shaking. “I’m so sorry.”

He covered her hand with his again and this time she left it there. “That day at the dam, I was planning on killing myself.” He blurted out the words quickly, like he had to force himself to say them. “I knew it was the coward’s way out, but I was so tired. I get so tired of battling demons, Paige.”

She moved her hand from his chest to his face and cupped the side of it. He laid his head into her hand and they sat there like that for a minute before she said, “Believe me, I understand. It’s exhausting and sometimes you just don’t know what to do anymore.”

He nodded and closed his eyes. “I tried to explain that to Saint, in the letter I wrote to him. He was one of the people on my list of most important people that I tried to explain it to. He didn’t go easy on me. He was angry that I waited until I thought I was going to die to tell him how I felt.” Paige didn’t respond even when he paused, and he finally opened his eyes and said, “That’s why I’m talking to you now, Paige. I don’t want you to go through life never knowing the kind of impact you had on me...even if nothing ever comes of...us.”

She had tears in her eyes now. He was doing something that was practically impossible for him...doing it for her, and she was touched by that. But she knew he needed to talk about his friend just then, so she said, “Thank you, for that...for this. Tell me more about Saint, and the letter.”

“I hadn’t ever mailed them. I guess it was my way of chickening out. I left them in my saddlebags and just left it to chance whether someone would find them after I died, or not. But Saint found them, and after he read the one addressed to him, he didn’t stop there. He read them all, and then he mailed them out.”

“Oh...”

Garrett took a deep breath and sat up straighter. “Yeah. Jessie’s mother laid into me over it. Saint unleashed on me and I’m sure I still have a few ass chewings to go. I just never realized, until Saint told me how it made him feel, just how selfish I was being. He’s never been much of a talker himself, but I think he was saving it all up for today. I guess dying men have different priorities than the rest of us.”

Paige shivered when he said, “dying men.” She pictured Saint. He was so young and so handsome, and she’d really enjoyed talking to him. She’d gotten a good feeling about him, like he was a good person at heart. “So, he decided then, after he read your letter, that he was going to confess to killing Ewell?”

“Yeah. He thinks he’s doing it for me. Fuck, Paige, imagine how uncomfortable he’s going to be in there, sick...” His voice cracked again and he stopped. Paige opened her arms and Garrett moved into them, laying his head on her chest. Paige wished she had some magic words to make it better, but she couldn’t even imagine what he was feeling. “I still don’t know what I should do,” he said. “How can I just leave him there?”

Before Paige spoke, she had to analyze her own feelings. Was what she wanted to say out of her own need for Garrett to be free and there with her, or did she just really agree with Saint? Ewell’s murder had the city up in arms. With Saint in prison for it, the ruckus would die down and Garrett would be able to go on living. Saint was going to die either way and while that sounded callous, she also wanted to believe that maybe it was what he felt he needed to do in order to save his own soul. “I’m not sure,” she began cautiously, “that anything you do at this point would get him released in time for him to die. So, I guess you have to ask yourself if you’d be doing this for him, or to ease your own guilty conscience.”

He was so quiet for so long that she was afraid she’d said the wrong thing. When he spoke at last he said, “It would be about me, as usual. I’ve always had a hard time thinking about other people first...”

“No,” she said, “you’re wrong.”

He sat up and looked at her face. “No, baby. I’m a self-absorbed SOB.”

“I don’t believe that. Saint told me about how he met you. You saved him, and you saved me. A man that didn’t care about anyone but himself wouldn’t reach out to strangers like that.”

“I didn’t save Saint, I just couldn’t walk away from him. There was something about him that reminded me so much of someone else...someone I lost when I was a kid...someone that died thinking I didn’t care about him at all. So it was about my own guilty feelings. I transferred them onto Saint and hoped he was my second chance. I’m not sure if that makes sense or not.”

“I get it. But don’t you think we’re all attracted to certain people for our own selfish reasons? It doesn’t change the fact that you made a lonely little boy feel like someone cared and that you were his friend for over a decade. You touched him so deeply, Garrett, that he’s willing to trade the last three months of his life for you.”

“I don’t want him to do that,” he said, in a raspy voice.

Paige cradled his head again and said, “I know you don’t, and Saint knows you don’t. But it’s all he has to give you and as hard as it is to think about him dying in there, it’s also such a beautiful gesture.”