He keeps sayingwe.
He keeps sayinghome.
I’m leaning on him in every possible way. Literally, with my body sagging into his. Emotionally. And of course, it’s still his name on my paychecks. I’m financially dependent on him too.
I’m breaking all my rules.
That scares the shit out of me.
So does the fact that it doesn’t feel wrong to do it.
It feels good to lean on him. It feels like the easiest thing in the world to let Walker Rhodes be my everything.
That scares me almost more than anything.
The only thing that scares me more is the thought of leaving him.
Chapter 38
Hero
WALKER
It's five hours before Sadie's mother is admitted and we get to go back to see her.
Five hours in which I watch the woman I love pace the linoleum floors, sit back down, get back up, check her phone, put it away, check it again. Tired and anxious and so beautiful it makes my chest hurt.
I love her.
I've known it for a while now.
Maybe from the beginning, if I'm being honest with myself.
Maybe from the first week of June, when she stood barefoot in her sundress in the evening light and I felt right there that was everything I was missing, everything I wanted forever.
Maybe from the moment she waded out of that lake like a fiery mermaid, coming to wreck the foolish mortal man who disturbed her peace.
I want to tell her I love her.
I've wanted to tell her a dozen times today alone.
In the truck on the way to her mother's trailer, when she stared out the window and didn't say anything and I could see her steeling herself.
In the waiting room when she fell asleep against my shoulder for forty minutes and woke up soft and sweet, blinking up at me with a smile.
Twenty minutes ago when she was arguing with me about the bridge on the last album track and she got that line between her brows and pointed her pen at me and I thought: there is no version of my life I want that doesn't have this woman in it.
But I keep my mouth shut.
Because I wouldn’t just be asking Sadie Sullivan to be my wife. I’d be asking her to be a mother to a five year old boy. I’d be asking her to add more weight to shoulders that have been carrying too much since she was a kid and her life fell apart all around her.
I’m not gonna put that pressure on her. She’s had too much already.
But I do my best to distract her. We go back and forth on the last song I’ve got for the album. My dad and Jonah drop by with burgers and fries and we share dinner at the hospital cafeteria, all of us together.
Might be the last Rhodes family dinner we ever share.
Jonah has been uncharacteristically subdued since he got here. He's sitting pressed against Sadie's side with his head on her arm, and there's none of his usual running commentary. No dinosaur facts, no knock-knock jokes that make perfect sense only to him. He knows something is changing. Kids always do.
