She was a joke. What kind of counselor would she be to others if she couldn’t fix herself?
“Please don’t go,” she whispered past the lump clogging her throat.
Gently, Zach pulled his arm away from her and walked out the door. He didn’t slam it behind him or stomp away. He just walked out.
The pathway between them closed, and she wasleft cold and alone—furious with herself for hitting him where it hurt most.
The sun’s early morning rays streamed through the windows as tears welled in her eyes and spilled over. What time was it? She wiped her face and walked back to the bedroom to retrieve her phone.
The numbers lit up on the screen, and she tossed it onto the bed. She was behind schedule. What happened to her alarm? She must have turned it off in her fitful nightmare.
Wait. There was something else. She picked up the phone again. She had a missed call from Zach. He’d called her half an hour ago, well before he pulled her out of her nightmare.
But why? What would make him show up before dawn when they hadn’t talked in days?
She turned and fell onto the bed, staring at the ceiling as she waited for the tears to run dry. Maybe if she got it all out now, she could make it through the day without falling into crying fits whenever she had to speak to someone.
When her eyes were dry, she called her coworker to let her know she’d be coming in later than usual. They had a trainee at the library, and she needed to be there.
That meant she had to get up from her pity party and get ready, though, there might not be any hope of saving her red and puffy face and eyes. They were a casualty of war at this point.
She used the freedom of the shower to get the restof the tears out. She’d been holding them in for so long, and apparently there was a backup in the lines. All the stress of work, worry over Anthony, and trying to make things right with Zach knotted together to create a perfect storm of emotions that left her ragged and exhausted.
She’d just poured a cup of coffee from the carafe like a zombie when the idea struck her. Hadley.
A minute later, she located her phone and pressed the button to call her friend. If anyone would know what to do, it was Hadley.
“Good morning!” Hadley sang.
Lauren sniffed. “Morning.”
“Uh-oh. That sounds like a bad morning. What’s wrong?”
“Everything. Well, not everything, but it feels like everything,” Lauren said.
A door closed on Hadley’s end of the line. “Okay. I’m ready. Start at the beginning.”
“The real beginning was years ago, so let’s start with this week.” Lauren went through the date with Wes and Zach’s terrible reaction, along with the fact that Wes hadn’t called her, and she hadn’t tried to call him either.
“I had a nightmare this morning, and Zach heard me screaming and woke me up. Then I said something terrible to him, and he left.”
“Like, he left for good, or he walked out on the conversation?”
“I don’t know. I was so wound up from my nightmarethat I took it out on him.” She trudged back to the bathroom and put the call on speaker so she could try to cover up the evidence of the terrible morning with makeup. “What was it like when you were starting to trust Gage?”
“Scary. Terrifying. Everybody warned me about him, but…I don’t know. There were a few times when I saw something different in him from what everybody else saw.”
“Like what?” She needed evidence. Something concrete to hold on to.
“He wasn’t mean. He was just guarded. I could respect that considering all that he was going through with his family. It took a lot of days with no pushing, but it also took some pushing at the right times. I don’t know. I just knew there was hope for him, and I didn’t want to give up.”
Hope. That was what Lauren wanted for Zach. It was what she wanted for herself and her search for Anthony, but now she knew Zach wasn’t the answer to that problem. He’d refused to help her, and she had to respect that decision.
Zach wasn’t the only reason for her sleepless nights. In fact, she’d started out as a kid in last night’s dream. She’d watched with chained wrists as Anthony took the beating for her, but by the time the dream ended, she was defending herself against Zach as an adult.
“I don’t want to give up on him, but I think I messed everything up. Tell me all this is worth it.What if I can’t help him? Why does it feel so personal?”
“Because you’ve made it personal. You have a huge heart, and I love that about you. I can tell you for sure that even if Zach doesn’t turn his life around, what you’re doing for him is good. He’ll always know that at least one person cared about him.”
