Chapter 41

Elle

He rolls away from me, taking the condom with him, and goes to discard it in the bathroom. For a moment I just luxuriate, stretching out in the warm sheets, feeling the reverberations in my body of our intimate connection, the bonelessness, the full, sated sensation.

Sex with Sawyer is amazing.

Everything with Sawyer is amazing.

Starting slowly, quietly, that little bubble of giddiness rises up in me. The one that, if I don’t try to push it down and squash it, might, just might, tell me that I’m falling in love.

And I don’t squash it.

I let myself trust it, and it fills up my whole chest and does a little ecstatic dance in my bones.

Maybe, maybe, I could let myself do this.

I make up my mind to tell Sawyer how I feel. To ask him how he feels, if there’s room in his heart for something new. Something lasting.

Meanwhile, I start, slowly, to pull myself together—I’m going to need to go home; I can’t be here in the morning when the boys wake up—and once I’ve found all my clothes, I begin picking up the books I knocked off Sawyer’s nightstand. Most of them are just paperback novels, but there’s one lying open on the ground, a spiral notebook full of handwriting, and I Swear. To. God. I. Don’t. Mean. To. But I can’t help seeing the first line of the entry spread out on the page in front of me.

Dear Lucy, I love you. I will probably always love you.

My stomach lurches.

I know I shouldn’t, but I start reading.

It’s dated six months ago. Before I met him. So that’s okay.

Except my racing pulse and the sick feeling in my gut tell me that it’s not.

Because I know, now: I am in love with Sawyer. And I want him to be in love with me.

The journal is a letter to her, his dead wife. He tells her everything that happened that day. What he had for breakfast, funny things Jonah said, even a question Jonah asked him. He asks her to help him figure out how to answer. He asks her to help him figure out what to do about moving out of the house they shared. He tells her what makes him happy, what hurts him, how much he misses her.

I can’t bear to lose any more pieces of the life we had together. I am going to be one of those men who never gets over his dead wife.

My heart is pounding, and I feel sick. And I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it: I start paging forward, slowly at first, then quicker and quicker until I reach the last entry, which, like every other one, begins:

Dear Lucy, I love you. I will probably always love you.

It’s dated three days ago. Friday. The night before we went to the wedding.

He still loves her. He will probably always love her.

I hear the toilet flush, water run, and I immediately drop the journal back on the floor with the other books and go to the mirror over the dresser to begin straightening my hair. I am shaking all over. I can’t stop.

“You’re going to blow my mind every time, aren’t you?” he asks, coming out of the bathroom, grinning at me.

And then, pausing, stopping: “What? Elle, what? What’s wrong?”

I should have known I wasn’t going to be able to pretend that nothing had happened. He follows my gaze to the journal on the floor. Picks it up. Clutches it to his chest.

If there had been any doubt in my mind about the meaning of the journal, seeing that possessive gesture erases it.

I turn away.

“Elle.”

“You don’t have to explain. You don’t have to apologize. You were honest with me the whole way. I just thought—”

That all the little signs that he was still in love with her didn’t mean anything because maybe he was falling for me, too.

Sound familiar? Trevor and Helen much?

I bury my face in my hands.

“Elle.”

I look up at him.

“It’s just a thing I do,” he says, gesturing with his chin at the journal. “I write to her—a therapist said it was a good idea, and it is. It helps. I tell her stuff—I guess you saw that.”

“I’m sorry I read it. It was just there, and I—”

“No, I get it. It’s not like you snuck into my bedroom and started going through my stuff.”

“I’m just being a baby. When you love someone the way you loved Lucy, you don’t just—two years isn’t very long, is it?”

He’s shaking his head. “No.”

“I’m sorry, Sawyer. I’m so, so sorry you lost her.” My face is wet, and I can’t figure out why. “If I could bring her back for you, I swear to God, I would. I mean that. If I could make it so you and Jonah could have her back, I would.”

The moisture on my face is tears. I’m crying.

He takes a step toward me, like he wants to comfort me, then stops.

I gulp air, trying to slow the flow of tears, unsuccessfully. “It’s okay,” I say to him. To myself. “I’m okay. It’s just—I think it might be too soon. For both of us. You still love Lucy, and that’s okay. That’s good. And right. And healthy and normal. I’m the one who’s fucked up. Trevor did a number on me, and—the thing is, Sawyer, I just don’t think I can do it again.”

“Do what again?” he asks, looking bewildered.

“Be with someone who wishes he were with someone else.”

He’s frozen. And because I know him as well as I do, I can tell: He’s thinking about it. Because he’s Sawyer, because he listens, because things like this matter to him, he’s really thinking about it. Asking himself if it’s true.

The room is so quiet I can hear the hum of the heat pump outside and the sound of Sawyer’s breathing, rising and falling.

He takes a deep breath. Exhales it in a long sigh.

That’s when I realize I’m holding my own breath. Waiting for him to deny it, to say, I don’t wish I were with Lucy. I only want to be with you.

Of course he can’t say that. One of the loveliest things about Sawyer is how truthful he is. How incapable of deception, of himself or anyone else.

“I do care about you, Elle. So much.” He says it earnestly. Fervently, even. His eyes tell me he means it.

Something inside crumbles, the scaffolding I’ve used to hold myself up these last few weeks, despite my doubts. And I just barely keep it from showing on my face. It hurts enough that I want to wrap my arms around myself to hold the pain in.

I nod. “I know.”

I also know what I’m about to give up. The best sex of my life, one of the best friendships I’ve ever had, the illusion that maybe someday whatever’s between us would grow into something more, that Sawyer and Jonah and Madden and I could be a family. It’s a lot to walk away from, but I am determined to build on a sturdy foundation the next time around, and that foundation starts with me being honest with myself.

It’s my turn to take the deep breath and sigh it out. “It’s been so good, Sawyer. So good. I’m grateful. I really am. And I’ll miss you.”

He closes his eyes, and an expression I can’t read crosses his face. Then he opens them again. “I’ll miss you, too,” he says, and I can hear how much he means it.

“I’m going to, um, head home. Text me if Madden needs me?”

He nods. “Sure.”

I make it all the way back to my own bedroom before I cry again.