Chapter 32

Graham

I can’t let her leave, not without being able to talk to her. I’m terrified that if she leaves now, I’ll never see her again. I know it’s not realistic. She still has more than half of her stuff here. But she’s running away from me, and I’m sure that I’m going to lose her if I don’t speak to her before she goes.

I run to her and grab the door before she can close it all the way and get into the car.

“Please, I need to talk to you,” I say. I realize I’m sounding like a desperate fool, but it’s true. I am desperate. “I’ve never felt like this about anyone, and I can’t let you walk out of my life.”

She’s angry when she looks at me, her brilliant eyes spewing fire.

“Really? You can’t let me go? And who the hell are you to tell me what I can and can’t do? Dammit, Graham, if you care about someone, you don’t hurt them the way you hurt me. Or is that not what you mean when you say you never felt like this about someone?”

I blink at her. She’s so quick with her words, and she’s taking it all so wrong.

“I’m not trying to tell you what to do,” I say. “I just want to talk.”

“I don’t get it, Graham,” she says, and her face is scarily devoid of emotion. “You’ve been quiet all this time about what you did to me and you haven’t said anything, and God knows you’ve had more than enough opportunity to speak to me about this. We were stranded together for way too long to tell me you didn’t have a chance to speak to me. So why now? Because you’re losing me?”

She’s asking questions that she’s answering for me. I don’t like it.

“I just want to speak to you,” I say. “I want to explain to you why I did what I did. Give me a chance to say what I need to say before you run away from me forever.”

She shakes her head again and again.

“I can’t do this,” she says. “I have to go.”

I won’t let her close the door any farther.

“Let go of the door, Graham,” she says.

I don’t do as she asks.

“Listen, man, maybe you should do as the lady asks,” her brother-in-law says.

I size him up. I’m not thinking clearly, and for a moment, just a moment, I consider taking him out. I’m bigger than he is, more built. I can fight him and win. He looks like a tech guy.

But I don’t do anything stupid, anything that will make Sarah hate me more. I just don’t budge.

“Didn’t you hear me?” the guy asks again. Rage blinds me for a millisecond. But I calm down, and I don’t do it. Again. Point for me. Or is that two points?

“Please, Sarah. I just want to speak to you. I don’t want to make it worse. I don’t want to hurt you.”

I let go of her door.

“Too late, Graham,” she says and slams the door shut. She’s locked away from me, not looking at me, unable to hear me. I watch the guy she came with walk around the car and get in next to her. He’s her brother-in-law, but I’m jealous of him. He gets to spend time with her when I can’t. He gets to talk to her when she doesn’t want to hear from me at all.

I hate that. I hate that every person in the world has something on me right now, and that’s that Sarah doesn’t hate them.

I watch the car pull away and follow it with my gaze until the tail lights disappear around the bend between the trees. When they’re gone, I don’t go home. I stay at the cabin for the night. Britney is okay. I saw it with my own eyes when I returned home, and I know that I can go to her whenever she needs me with the snow not being a problem anymore.

Staying at the cabin makes me feel closer to Sarah. It’s the last connection I have to her. The cabin smells like her perfume, her scent. She’s all over my sheets when I lie down on the bed, and every corner of the cabin is filled with so many memories, I feel like I can choke.

This is where I want to spend my night. I want to be here where we were all right, where I was starting to believe that she was the one for me. The woman I wanted to try it all with again.

I was the one who screwed it up, and I’m going to have to live with that.

I close my eyes and I think about everything we shared while we were here. She likes all the same movies I do — I might be a weirdo and watch them again. We played board games the way Brit and I used to do when we were kids. Sarah is funny and interesting, and she loves kids. She loves the outdoors, and she can be serious and funny, all at the same time.

I really liked her. I am in love with her. It all happened so fast, but it was real. Sarah was more real to me than any of the women I’ve had in my life, and I had a connection with her that I never had with anyone else. I can kick myself for what I’ve done to her.

I feel like shit for treating her the way that I did, for lying to her, and for keeping secrets from her when she deserves so much more. This is something I’m going to have to deal with for the rest of my life. At some point, the rest of her belongings that are still in the cabin will be gone, and then this little home will be all that is left of her. A part of me wants to sell it off so that I don’t have to look at it. Another part of me wants to hold onto this forever.

But the biggest part of me is just heartbroken. I lost the woman I love.