I need to let her go.
I reach down and tug her dress back into place. Smooth it with both palms, careful, like I didn't just mark her up like an animal. Like I'm not standing here with every muscle in my body screaming at me to pull her back and keep her here and not let her walk out that door.
She turns around to face me. Cheeks flushed. Eyes sparking. Chest still rising and falling too fast. Her lip gloss is perfect because I never kissed her mouth, like I’ve been dying to do.
It’s the line I keep not crossing, like that's the thing that would make this real, like everything else doesn't already count.
And she looks furious and incandescent and so beautiful I can't breathe.
“I know why you're blocked,” she says suddenly.
I freeze.
And she knows she’s got me under her spell. She knows shedoesn’t have to raise her voice to have every iota of my attention.
“I know why you can't write a song,” she continues. “Why you think the music is gone.”
I want to look away, but I can’t. Her eyes are clear and blue as the sky.
“You're afraid to be vulnerable. Like any of us mere mortals. But making art means cracking your ribs wide open and letting someone else get a look at your raw, beating heart. It means knowing you’re gonna get hurt and doing it anyway. Once you're ready to do that again, the music will come back.”
I don't say anything. There's nothing to say. She's right. She’s describing what I already knew but was too afraid to put to words.
But Sadie’s not afraid of anything.
As she walks away, her boots click loud across the wood floor. She pauses at the doorway. Eyes determined and brilliant.
“And Walker? Don’t wait up for me.”
Then she strolls out the door to her vehicle and doesn't look back. Not once.
I don't move.
I stand in the middle of my kitchen with my chest feeling like she reached in and tore it apart herself.
I don’t know how long I stand there like that.
But all I can keep thinking is that my dream girl is on a date with another man, and I’m a fucking idiot.
On the counter, my keys are sitting where I left them. I pick them up.
Sutton's is twenty minutes down the road.
I’ll make it in ten.
Chapter 24
Whiskey Kiss
SADIE
All right, this evening isn’t exactly what I imagined it would be.
Cassidy had to bail on me last minute because someone’s midwife’s flight got canceled and now that someone is going into labor, and Cassidy’s just a resident but the closest doctor in a thirty mile radius and apparently that baby is coming now.
So now I’m here with Travis. Who brought a friend, a friend who promptly excused himself to the pool tables, which I have a feeling was not remotely accidental. Now Travis and I are at a table together. Just the two of us, after all.
So far Travis has talked about his truck four times and his ex-girlfriend three times, which is seven times more than he’s asked me any questions about myself.
