Her free hand is moving slow circles through the water at her side. “Momma had to get a job, but she had no work history, so all she could get was a crappy one. We moved from a nicelittle house to a rundown double-wide, and that’s where we stayed.”
I think about ten year old Sadie living through that. Another splinter in my heart.
“I swore to myself I'd never let that be my life,” she tells me. “That I would work hard and have a real career and stand on my own two feet. I swore I'd never rely on anyone else to take care of me. That job in New York is my ticket to that life. The kind I've been dreaming of.”
I don't say anything because she's not looking for anything except to be heard. So I listen. I hold still in the water beside her and I listen.
She lifts her chin. It’s a gesture I've come to know. Sadie steeling herself.Sadie unafraid of anything.
“Yes,” she says. “Contracts can be broken. But that job is a vow. A vow to myself.” Her eyes hold mine, steady and clear. “And I never break my vows.”
That makes two of us.
I lean back against the pool wall and look up at the sky. A whole galaxy of suns, and none as bright and fierce as the woman beside me.
I'm not going to be the thing that stands between Sadie Sullivan and her dreams. Even if watching her achieve them means watching her go.
She's leaving at summer's end and she just told me why she has to. There's no version of this where I get to ask her not to. Not unless I want to be a selfish prick, and I’m trying like hell not to be that guy anymore.
I push off the wall and swim a slow lap to the shallow end and back, putting some water between us, giving us both a moment to breathe.
When I come back, she's drifted to the pool edge. Her armsare up on the ledge as she leans against it, hair wet against her back.
“You know what I've been wondering?” I say, treading water. Guiding us back to safer territory.
“What?”
“If I’d look good with a mullet.”
She bursts out laughing. Just like that, the weight of that deep talk lifts off the both of us. She laughs until she has to press the back of her hand to her mouth, shoulders shaking.
“You could probably pull it off,” she gasps, “but I’m begging you not to. As the person who has to look at you every single day, please don’t do that to my eyes.”
“Why not?” I pretend to be insulted. “You like it well enough on that foreman that wants to take you out.”
She nudges my shoulder with her foot. “No mullet, Walker. Promise me.”
I reach up and catch her ankle.
Our eyes lock as my thumb moves in a slow stroke along her delicate ankle bone there.
She doesn't pull away.
So I do it again. And again. A slow, light caress, back and forth, my thumb tracing the same path each time, unhurried, like we've got all night.
“I promise, darlin,’” I murmur.
The silence after that feels thick the way good things do. Richer. More depth to it.
She's leaning on the ledge. I’m holding her ankle to my shoulder, close enough that I could turn my head and press my mouth to the inside of her leg.
I don't. But I think about it.
“Walker.”
“Mm.”
“How long has it been?” A pause. “Since you've been with someone.”
