Chapter 23
“Rory should be here in a little while,” Jaycee said as they all sat, eating a very quiet Saturday evening meal.
Instantly father and stepmother exchanged glances as Sage’s spoon froze over her soup and refused to move. Rory? Worry hit her with two fists. Oh, Jaycee. No.
“Oh?” Emily asked as if she was just learning the word.
“Yeah, he said he’d pick me up.” Jaycee shrugged. “We’re just going out to the bonfire. No biggie.”
Clearly the parents questioned that, and Sage couldn’t say she blamed them. Her stomach had suddenly lost what little appetite it had. Between Wednesday and this news, she was surprised she had eaten anything at all. Luke was positively going to freak out.
The talk with the pastor had given Luke so much to think about his head was spinning by the time he drove by their house on the way to his. Don’t talk. Don’t talk. Don’t talk. The little house seemed to whisper just that phrase.
He had seen real underneath the facade, but he wondered as he drove what he would know if he had only seen the outside. A perfect family, yes. Really they were. They had been. Until…
His heart hurt to think that way, that Sage’s arrival had marked the end of their perfection, but it was true. If she hadn’t come, then none of this would have happened. He would still be pining over Jaycee who would never love him back, and Sage would be off in California living her wonderful…
Midway through that thought, he stopped. He knew enough to know Sage’s life hadn’t been perfect. No, he didn’t know all of the details, but maybe he could ask.
He put his hand to his mouth because the very thought of asking drove an irrational fear right through him. Don’t ask. She doesn’t want to talk about that. You don’t want to hurt her…
And then, for the first time in maybe forever, he stopped long enough to hear what he was thinking. As if he was having a conversation with himself, he let the thoughts come but instead of thinking them, he listened to them.
Don’t ask her. She doesn’t want to talk…
Don’t ask.
Don’t talk.
Don’t go there.
It was the same thing Pastor Steve had talked about. Shame’s Number One rule. Don’t talk. Can’t talk about that. Don’t say that. Don’t ask that.
Wow. He was right.
And what had he said about courage being needed to break out of that? Luke let out a long breath. He felt to the core of him how much courage this was going to take.
However, they only had until Wednesday. That wasn’t enough time for all of this. Why even start when they would never…. Or was that just more of the shame and fear talking?
He parked in front of his parents’ house and shut the car off, sitting there in the fading light for another few minutes. His mom would probably think he was crazy, but he had to ask someone.
More than anything in the world, Sage wanted to go down to her sister’s room and talk her out of this horrible, awful, no-good idea of going out with Rory Harris. Why couldn’t Jaycee see that Rory was just using her to get back at Luke and probably at her as well? And Jaycee was just mad enough at all of them to let him do it and never see the train wreck coming her way.
Sage shook her head as she sat on her bed. “Why do I even care? I’m leaving Wednesday. What does it even matter?”
But it did, and she couldn’t explain that.
“Luke? You’re home late,” his mother said when he came into the kitchen. “Everything okay?”
How many times had he said yes when the real answer was no? Connection. Courage. Good idea or bad, he was going for it. “Yeah, but I’m not staying.”
His mother sighed like she knew what he wasn’t saying. Except this time, he was.
“I’m going over to Sage’s.”
More disappointment slid onto her face, the face he so loved so much and did not ever want to disappoint. “Luke. Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Have you ever made a mistake, Mom?”
Surprise jumped through the disappointment. “A mistake? Of course.”
“No. A big mistake, a really big one that you couldn’t fix.”
Softness began overtaking the surprise. “A few of them.”
“Did you deserve to be forgiven for that mistake?”
Clearly she didn’t want to answer. “No.”
“But God forgave you anyway, didn’t He?”
She nodded.
“Sometimes the only way to fix something is to forgive and love anyway.”
“Luke…”
“They need to know that about Sage. She needs to know it too.”
“Are you sure that’s possible?”
“No. I’m not.”
Sage made it all the way down the hall to the bathroom, telling herself that she had to say something, something to stop Jaycee. However, when her sister came out of her room, nearly bumping into her, all Sage could get out was, “Oh, excuse me.”
Without even making eye contact, Jaycee brushed past her and swept out into the kitchen. “Later gaters.”
This wasn’t her problem. So why did it hurt so badly to see Jaycee making such a huge mistake?
At their back door, Luke reached up and knocked. Just being here took every atom of courage he possessed. When no one came, he knocked again, and then Mrs. Lawrence appeared.
Love anyway, his spirit whispered.
“Luke?” she asked, not sounding overly pleased.
“Hi, Mrs. Lawrence. I know this is unexpected, but could I talk with Sage?”
She set her jaw, and it was clear she wanted to tell him no. At that moment the sound of a monster invaded the stillness, and Mrs. Lawrence looked past him out to it. Something very close to despair crossed her face.
“See y’all,” Jaycee said, whisking through the door and past both of them.
Luke had to take a step back to avoid being run over. Then he understood both the look and the situation. The red Dodge pulled into the driveway, and Jaycee never so much as slowed down as she went around it and hopped in. When Luke turned back, Mrs. Lawrence’s face was awash in pain and hopelessness. She looked at him, sighed, and shook her head.
“Come on in.”
“Knock. Knock,” Luke said as he stood at Sage’s open bedroom door.
She looked up but couldn’t be surprised. She had known he was coming even if he hadn’t said it outright. “Hey.” The greeting was soft and knowing.
“Hey.”
Strange how he just stood there, taking her in as she let him.
“You up for a drive?” he finally asked, and she looked down at herself.
“Sure.”
As Luke drove only out to the little inlet between his house and hers, he wondered how even to start the conversation. She seemed so different tonight, kind of like she had given up, but softer than that or just different, he couldn’t tell. At the crest of the little hill, he guided the car just over it and stopped.
Sage looked around in confusion. “Well, that was a long drive.”
Longer than she knew.
“Come on.” He got out of the car and went around to help her out.
She didn’t look any less skeptical when she got out. “You brought me out to a field?”
“Bet nobody’s ever done that before,” he said with a laugh.
“Well, you’re right about that.”
He took her hand and walked to the side of the hood of the car where he turned to her.
She arched her eyebrows. “Is there a reason we’re standing in a field?”
“Kinda.” Facing her, he lifted her and set her on the hood of the car as interest and skepticism crossed her face.
“Okay?”
“Don’t move,” he said and he sprinted to the front where he launched himself up onto the hood in one bound. It didn’t matter. The thing was dented anyway. He went all the way up to the windshield and sat back down. Then he tipped his head. “Come here.”
Still looking uncertain, Sage did as instructed, scooting over the warm car hood to his side. When she was there, he put his arm out and she settled down into it.
At that moment, the world opened up into a panorama before them. The gentle hills rolling out before them left the sky above exposed just as twilight began to take over in earnest.
“Oh, wow.” Sage could hardly believe the simple beauty of the spot.
“I thought you’d like it,” he said, settling back.
However, as peaceful as it should have been, the second she was silent all of the bad stuff came rushing back. “Jaycee…”
“I know.”
Sage nodded, feeling worried enough for the both of them. “And Wednesday….”
“I know,” he said again, shifting once on his other forearm behind his head before growing still.
“I’m worried for her,” Sage said softly.
Luke nodded. “You care about her, don’t you?”
The question threw Sage for a moment. “Should I not?”
“No. You should. Does it surprise you that you do?”
“Kind of, I guess. I mean, I get it, you know. I get why she’s been so mean. I’m not happy about it, but I get it.” She snuggled deeper. “I get why they all hate me, why everything’s been so hard. That’s why I think Wednesday might not be such a bad idea. At least then, everyone can go on with their lives without me messing everything up.”
“Do you want to leave?”
Tears she hadn’t known were there slipped from her heart onto her lashes, but she said nothing.
“You don’t, do you?”
Slowly she shook her head next to his shoulder. “Isn’t that stupid?”
“No,” he breathed. “But I am curious about why you want to stay.”
That question was harder to answer, much harder because she didn’t want to be that honest. She shook her head again. “When I think about here and then I think about going home, back to California…” Looking deep into the nothingness that was slowly enveloping them, she put her arms over herself. “I mean, I’m sure I can find something to entertain myself there, but it’s just not going to be the same.”
“As?”
She looked up at him. “Here.”
Luke felt what she was telling him. “Have you talked… to your dad… about staying?”
“My dad?” She sounded positively petrified at the suggestion.
“Yeah. Maybe he’d let you stay if he knew you wanted to.”
For a long moment she said nothing. “I don’t… we don’t… really… talk like that. Like actual conversations. I wouldn’t even know what to say to him.”
“Do you talk about anything? Sports? School? Fashion?”
Sage laughed at that. “Have you seen his ties? Those are not my fault.”
He angled his gaze down to her. “What, are they bad?”
“Hideous! They look like second hand thrift store knock-offs.”
“You ever think about getting him one?”
“A tie?”
“Yeah.”
“Uh. No. First off, Emily would skin me alive if I gave him something like that. Second of all, where am I going to get a tie? I haven’t seen a mall in months. Third of all, no, that is a very bad idea.”
Luke considered that as a different thought hit him. “So what is the weirdest thing about being here—in North Carolina, I mean?”
She didn’t answer right away, but Luke was learning, don’t press, just listen. “How different everything is. It’s like… it’s like looking in a mirror almost. Like everything in California is all glamor and image. Out here it still is, but in a different way. Here the image is about being a certain way. Like you, being a good guy who goes out and does good things. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain.”
And then she fell silent.
“Well, I thought you were doing a pretty good job of it.”
This sigh was long and slow. “I just… it’s like everything is so different. Almost like I’m different.”
She was, and he knew it, but he wasn’t going to tell her that.
“Like going to the beach the other day. I mean, who was that? I was not dressed for a day at the beach at all, and my hair ugh, and I haven’t done my nails in a week.” Putting them out for his inspection, she shook her head. “Back home, I would never have done that in a million-gazillion years.” Then she sighed again. “Even just being here with you, like this. I’d have never done this with a guy back home. We’d have to make plans on Monday for what we were doing Friday. I didn’t just go out for no reason. There had to be a party or somewhere to at least go. We didn’t go and park out in a field and talk.”
“I’m kind of liking talking.”
Her smile was soft with a slight smirk on the edge of it. “Don’t tell anyone but so do I. Although if anyone ever found out, it would totally ruin my reputation.”
“So what was your reputation? Back home? Good girl? Bad girl?”
“Somewhere in between. Mostly I was mid-tier money. More than most, not as much as some.” She shook her head. “But enough to have an attitude about it.” She shivered.
“You cold?”
“A little.”
He gathered her closer to him.
Memories slid over other memories until Sage could hardly tell what was what. “We weren’t always rich. Not when I was little.”
Luke’s easy casualness melted slightly into concern or deep pensiveness, she couldn’t tell which. Still he got even quieter if that was possible.
“I remember our old apartment. It was real dingy, kind of brown. Lots of brown. The carpet, the furniture. Mom was probably renting that place. I don’t think we owned it. No, I’m sure we didn’t.” She squinted into the memories, trying to see them more clearly. “She was gone a lot, to work and school. But on Saturdays…” Light and life suddenly filled her whole spirit in ways she couldn’t put into words. It was like opening a window after the place had been shut up too long. “We would go on adventures. That’s what she called them. To the park or the zoo.
“We’d go to the pottery place and make bowls.” Sage laughed. “Mine were always horrible. I could never get them to end up in one piece. Or we’d get out the paints and spread things out on the coffee table and the carpet. I was terrible at it, but she was amazing.”
Crazy how long it had been since she had thought about that. “She was an amazing artist.” Then the nice memories dimmed. “But art doesn’t pay the bills. She worked super hard and eventually became a lawyer. And then one day, she met Jason. He was a client or a lawyer-banker person, something or other. They met, fell in love, and we moved.”
True melancholy invaded her spirit as if the window had suddenly slammed closed. “We didn’t paint after that. The furniture was all white, and it was too easy to make a mess. Jason hates messes.” She pushed a strand of hair over her ear, sinking into the memories. “I remember one time, one of the nannies was telling me I was being such a baby about everything, and she said, ‘Your mama works very hard to give you these nice things. You should be grateful.’” She sniffed back the tears that had somehow begun sliding down her cheeks. “I didn’t care about the stuff. I just wanted my mama.”
Luke gently pulled her into him. “Oh, darlin’.”
They stayed like that, on the car, just talking until night took hold in earnest. Luke picked his wrist up and blinked at his watch. “What time are you supposed to be home?”
“I guess midnight, like it would make any difference. What’re they going to do, ground me until Wednesday?”
Still Luke rolled off his side of the car and came around as she slid off the front.
“I think we don’t take any chances, and maybe they’ll reconsider,” he said, standing right in front of her.
Sage put her arms up and over his shoulders, feeling the happiness floating through her. “I never thought I could feel like this, you know? Like just totally real, and that you would look at me like that.”
He tipped his head to the side. “Like what?”
Sly mischievousness slid to her face. “Like you want to kiss me ‘til my toes curl.”
His eyebrows bounced up. “’Til your toes curl?”
“Yeah, and you’re good at it,” she said as he slid down so her arm came all the way around his shoulder and he picked her up.
“Like this?”
“Yeah,” she breathed, “something like that.”
She would never get used to this feeling—his lips on hers. Caressing. Searching. Melding until her mind shut off completely and life no longer even mattered.
When he broke the kiss and simply looked down at her, all she could do was melt into his arms and his warmth. “How am I ever going to get on that plane?”
“You’re home early,” Emily said when Sage came in the back door after leaving him in the driveway. Floating was so very easy to do with him around. It was so much harder when he left.
“Oh, yeah. We didn’t go out to the bonfire,” Sage said, knowing she should censor what information she gave her stepmother and what she shouldn’t, but it was all so amazing that trying to figure out what might get her into trouble and what wouldn’t simply no longer computed. “We just sat and talked for a while.”
“You’ve been gone two hours.”
Sage nodded. “I know. It was nice.”
Emily looked somewhere between screaming at her and not believing a word she said.
“Well, I’m going to bed.” Sage headed to the little hallway where she turned. “Oh, and Luke asked me to go to his grandparents’ tomorrow? Something about chicken?”
Getting ready for church had never been so arduous a task as it was the next morning. Each thing Sage pulled out of the suitcases looked wrong. Too serious. Not serious enough. Too casual. Not casual enough. Too flashy. Way too flashy. How she wished there was a mall within driving distance. When she was almost out of options, she came upon a soft chiffon satin, blue and green maxi dress she’d gotten on a whim on a shopping trip with Patelyn. Holding it up, she asked herself what the world would think of it, what Luke would think of it, if it would give anyone a reason to gossip if he was standing next to her in it.
Suddenly, that mattered in ways it never had before. Standing there, at the mirror, Sage only wanted to be good enough to stand by him. He deserved better than the best. The question was, could she ever hope to be that for him.
The middle of Luke’s heart lifted off and soared the second his gaze brushed hers when she entered the church, and he couldn’t stop the grin. From the other side of the lobby by his mother, he left the conversation and strode right over to her. Hair down in soft waves over the modest but incredible green, white, and blue flowing dress. He’d never seen anything as beautiful as she was at that moment. Containing his heart and his happiness was going to be a real challenge. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she breathed, her gaze touching his before falling between them. How could she look so unsure of herself? She was spellbinding. Magical. Mind-blowing.
He tilted his head, looking only at her. “You got a minute?”
Both of her parents watched, clearly wanting to say something but getting nothing out.
“Uh.” She looked back at them. “Um, sure.”
Carefully between them he took her hand, and he just couldn’t stop the grin or the soaring of his heart. “Come on. I want you to meet some people.”
Meet some people? Sage hadn’t counted on this. What was he doing? Didn’t he know about other people and what they thought of her? Didn’t he know they could tell him he was being an idiot for being with her? Didn’t he feel all the others looking at them as the crossed the lobby? Clutching his arm, lest she get lost on the trip from one side of the lobby to the other, she followed him, nearly hiding behind him. On the other side of the lobby, he stepped up to a small knot of women, and Sage thought she might seriously pass out because the blood had gone to her head and stopped there.
“Hi, everyone. I’d like you to meet Sage.” Luke carefully extracted her from behind him and brought her to his side, holding her there in case she decided to run.
When Sage looked up in trepidation, she was relieved to see that one of the women was his mother. However, she couldn’t tell if she should be thankful or not because nothing was making much sense.
“Oh, Sage?” his mother said, glancing beyond her to the other side of the lobby where her parents were. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“It’s nice to see you too, Mrs. Baker.” It was fully possible that she was going to pull his hand and arm apart from the rest of him because even with him right there, she was in full panic mode.
“And this is my mother,” Mrs. Baker said. “Mrs. Cameron.”
Forcing her hand to detach from his, Sage offered her hand to the very small older lady. “It’s nice to meet you, Ma’am.”
“Well.” The first words that went through the lady’s eyes were not what she ended with. “It’s lovely to meet you too, my dear.”
“And this,” Luke said, “is my sister, Priscilla. She’s here from Virginia.”
Sage extended her hand to the rather tall young lady with the nice handbag and professional dress. Maybe she should have worn something more formal. She felt hopelessly underdressed. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too, Sage.” And inexplicably the young woman’s face broke into a broad smile. “Will you be joining us this afternoon?”
Air jammed into the top of Sage’s lungs. They had talked about it, but she wasn’t at all sure it had been cleared with the others—his mother, her parents. At that moment, she felt the warmth of his hand settle on her back, and what was left of her sanity scattered from her body and soul.
“We talked about it,” Luke said, and his gaze came down to hers drawing hers up into his.
And everything upon everything disappeared from her consciousness. Oh, no! What were they talking about? What planet was she on? She suddenly had no clue, and part of her really didn’t care. She could look into his eyes forever and never so much as miss the rest of the world.
“Did you ask your parents?” Luke asked, looking right at her.
Her eyes widened because she could hardly tell what language he was speaking. “My… Oh!” She jerked hard to get the trance to let go, but it never really did. “Uh, um. Yes. I mean, I asked but…”
Help! Her gaze said when it came back up to his, and his smile lifted only one side of his mouth as his eyes meshed with hers.
After a moment, his gaze went to the others, and Sage felt like she’d fallen into another dimension with no hope of getting back to reality.
“We’ll talk with them after the service,” he said. “Maybe Mom can talk to them.” He looked at his mother as did everyone else in the group.
“Oh, of… of course,” his mother said.
Then he looked at his watch. “I’d better get Sage back with her folks.”
Great. Yeah, no danger at all in doing that. Still, she managed to nod at the others. “It was wonderful to meet you all.”
He turned her, which was good because she wasn’t really anchored to space and time any longer. Halfway across to her family, he leaned down. “Don’t worry, Mom will talk your stepmom into it. She’s good at that.”
Into what? Sage wanted to ask, knowing she should know, but having an amazing amount of trouble figuring out what was happening. Had she really just met his grandmother and his sister? Crazy how much that felt like a dream.
“Priscilla wanted to meet Sage,” Luke said when they made it back to her family. He felt the ice of Jaycee’s stare, but he was done with living to please her. She was a big girl, and she would get over it. “She’s down for the weekend.”
“Oh, how nice,” Mrs. Lawrence said, glancing at Sage. It was unbelievable how much displeasure the woman could convey with a single look. “Well, we’d better get inside or we’ll be late.”
“Sure thing.” Luke lifted his head and nodded. Then as they all started for the door, he snagged Sage’s movement for one second as he ducked down to her. “I’ll see ya after.”
Tears came to her eyes as she gazed up at him in that moment. Pouring from him was total acceptance, total love, and total joy at just being with her. She had never felt anything like it. “K.”