"Yeah, Sarah. And how did that go?"
I didn't want to answer, but the truth worked its way out anyway. "It was casual. I made that clear from the start."
"But Sabrina didn't know that, did she?" Ridge said quietly. "All she saw was you with someone else. Someone who wasn't her."
"That doesn't give her the right to?—"
"To what? To be hurt?" Holt's voice was sharper now. "Come on, man. You really think she wrote that list to destroy you?"
I wanted to say yes. It would have been easier to stay pissed. But the truth was more complicated than that.
"I don't know," I said finally. "Maybe not. But she lied to me. For months, she let me think?—"
"That some stranger had decided you were a piece of shit who couldn’t commit,” Thatcher finished. "Instead of someone who knew you better than anyone and still thought you were worth a second chance."
The words slammed into me like a wrecking ball. Because that's what she'd been offering me, wasn't it? A second chance. Not just in the past week, but for months before that. Every time she looked at me with those soft hazel eyes, every time she blushed when I caught her staring, every time she found an excuse to touch my hand or stand a little too close.
"Sounds like she's been trying to find a way back to you for years," Ridge said. "And when you finally started letting her in, the guilt was probably eating her alive."
I thought about that night at my cabin, the way she'd trembled in my arms. The way she'd whispered that whatever happened, our time together had been the best thing she'd ever had. At the time, I'd thought she was talking about the possibility of us not working out. Now I realized she'd been preparing for me to hate her.
“It took guts to tell you the truth," Ridge said. “The same thing happened with Gillian. Both of them put our names on that list because they were hurting. I don’t know about you, but I’ve done a bunch of shit I regret.”
"She could have told me sooner." I wasn’t quite ready to forgive and forget. I’d expected the guys to have my back, not force me to see things from Sabrina’s point of view.
"Could she?" Thatcher's question was quiet but pointed. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you've been keeping her at arm's length for years. Even when you were kids, you were always the one to pull back whenever things got too real between you."
That stung because it was true. Every time we'd gotten close, every time it felt like we might finally cross that line, I'd found a reason to step away. Too young, too complicated, too risky. I'd convinced myself I was protecting her, but maybe I'd just been protecting myself.
"She was seventeen when you first chickened out," Ridge said. "Seventeen. And you've been doing it ever since, finding reasons why it wouldn't work, why you weren't good enough, why the timing was wrong. At what point was she supposed to tell you she was in love with you? After the fifth time you pulled away? The tenth?"
The fire crackled in the silence that followed. My beer had gone warm in my hands, forgotten as the weight of their words settled over me.
"So what if she wrote your name on a stupid list?" Holt said. "So what if she was hurt and angry and young and made a mistake? Are you really going to throw away the best thing that’s ever happened to you because she's human?"
"The best thing that’s ever happened to me?" I looked up at him. "She humiliated me in front of the entire town. Made fun of all of us."
"I wasn’t thrilled about having my name on that list, but it’s the only reason I ended up with Calla. It made me take a good, hard look at myself and figure out there were things I needed to work on,” Holt said.
“I think we all feel the same way.” Thatcher looked around the circle. Every one of the guys nodded. “So did Sabrina really humiliate you or did she hand you an excuse to keep doing what you've always done, like running away when things get too real? "
The question hung in the air like a challenge. And maybe that's what it was, because these guys had been watching me self-sabotage for years. They'd seen me find reasons to end things with every woman who'd ever gotten close. They'd watched me convince myself I was protecting people when really, I was just protecting myself from the possibility of failure.
"You want to know what I think?" Thatcher leaned forward, his voice serious. "I think that list was the best thing that ever happened to you… the best thing that happened to all of us. In your case, it made you dig deep, and I bet what you found wasn't a heartbreaker. It was a guy who was so scared of disappointing people that he never let anyone get close enough to love him."
"Except Sabrina," Ridge added. "She's been close enough to love you your whole life. And she chose to anyway, even after you broke her heart a dozen times."
I opened my mouth to argue, but the words wouldn't come. Because they were right, and I knew it. Sabrina had been the one constant in my life, the one person who'd seen all my flaws and failures and still looked at me like I was worth something. And when I'd finally let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, we could have something real, I'd found out she was the one who'd written my name on that list.
She hadn't written it to hurt me. She'd written it because I'd hurt her, over and over again, by being too afraid to take the risk of loving her back.
"She found the courage to tell you the truth, even knowing it might destroy everything. And what did you do?" Ridge asked.
"I left."
"You ran," Thatcher said. "Again. Just like you always do when things get too real."
The words landed like a baseball bat to my head, but I couldn't argue with them. Because that's exactly what I'd done. The moment Sabrina had opened her mouth to tell me the truth, the moment she'd shown me her most vulnerable self, I'd bolted.
