His Everlasting Love: 50 Loving States, Virginia (13 page)

But Sawyer obviously didn’t agree with her assessment of the universe’s design. “No… no…” he growled. “Find me when I wake up. Or I’ll find you. It can’t end like this. We’ll be together. I promise you.”

She just shook her head, hot tears springing to her eyes. Because obviously that really, really wasn’t a promise he could keep.

But he insisted. “No, Willa, don’t give up on this.
I’ll find you
.”

The wind grew louder, pulled harder, but still Sawyer resisted. He was fighting so hard. But eventually the universe with its infinite power over life and death and Sawyer’s coma won out. And his hands slipped out of hers.

“This isn’t how we end, Willa Harper!” he yelled to her as the portal sucked him in. “
I’ll find you
!”

And then the portal closed around him and he was gone.

Leaving Willa alone in the room with a promise he couldn’t possibly keep.

For him that wouldn’t be a problem. He’d forget her and live his life exactly as planned by his father. Only with a one year delay for intense physical therapy. He’d even make the news for returning to the SEALs and serving out the rest of his deployment as an amputee.

But as for her…she would never forget him. She already knew then and there that Sawyer Grant would haunt her for the rest of her life.

“SO YOU UNDERSTAND why I can’t do this,” Willa said to her sister six years later. “Why I can’t stay here.”

Thel nodded, let out a long breath after hearing Willa’s epic story. “Yeah I get it. I definitely get it.”

Then she went over to their bedroom window and drew the curtain back for the first time since the day Sawyer returned. At first Willa thought she was looking at Greenlee Place in a new light. But Thel’s eyes had gone glassy as if there were another distance inside her head that she was staring off into.

“Believe me,” her sister said eventually. “I get having to get away.”

She let the curtain drop, covering the view of Greenlee Place in a way that felt final.

“Give me a few days. I’ve got something I can sell that’ll get us enough money to leave here, but it will take a few days to arrange. Meanwhile, we’ll all start packing, okay?”

Willa’s shoulders slumped with relief, and she crossed the distance between them to give her sister a fierce hug. “Thank you. Thank you!”

Her sister hugged back just as fiercely, arms squeezing her tight as a warm blanket on a snowy day. “You came through for me six years ago. Now I’m going to come through for you.”

“Thank you,” Willa said again, accepting her sister’s generosity if not her undue gratitude.

She was happy to have been able to help Thel through her ordeal with cancer, but at this point she couldn’t wait to get out of here. And her heart filled with relief knowing that, thanks to her sister, she’d soon be leaving Sawyer Grant and the rest of Greenlee County far behind.

13

When Sawyer woke up face down in his bed, he was a little boy again.

The smell of alcohol permeated the air, and he could hear voices arguing downstairs. Just like when his father used to rail against his alcoholic mother for getting too sloppy at one of his Navy functions. He could still easily remember his father yelling at his mother before he sent her away to the first rehab center. Saying that he loved Kate, he really did, but he’d just been appointed to a four-star post by the President at the relatively young age of thirty-nine. He already had high hopes for his political future after serving out his four-year term and he couldn’t let her go on like this.

There was no drunken weeping this time, but the yelling still sounded very familiar.

Except Sawyer wasn’t a boy anymore. For one thing, his cock was still pulsing from the dream he’d just had. One featuring Willa Harper, a girl he wouldn’t have looked at twice when he was still living under the same roof as both of his parents. For another, he was the one now living in what used to be his parent’s master bedroom. And the smell of leftover alcohol was coming from the empty bottle of Jack still clutched tightly in one hand.

But there were definitely voices yelling downstairs…

He got up and went through the process of “talking to his leg” and putting on his prosthetic limb, followed by a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Then he went downstairs to find Grace and his father in the great room. Yelling at each other. His dad waving around that old leather bound book Grace had been carrying around lately, trying to read it during her breaks because, “I don’t know, why not? That Miss Marian is a very nice lady, I think, and maybe she knows something I don’t,” she’d answered when Sawyer asked her about it last Thursday.

But his fathered looked furious, towering over the little maid as he yelled, “You mean to tell me you had no idea this book, this
signed
first volume of Winston Churchill’s
World in Crisis
, was stolen from my collection years ago during a party? Shortly before you came to work here, in fact?”

Grace bent her arms upwards, her hands going wide as she said, “No, I didn’t steal your book, Admiral Grant. I will tell you this again: Miss Marian
gave
this book to me. I have no idea where she got it from, and I have only been reading it a little bit, keeping it in my purse. In fact, I have no idea how it came to be out here, since I just cleaned this room. And by the way, I don’t think you should go around accusing people of lying. Especially one who loves your boy like he is her own family, even when you do not.”

His father’s face went red with anger, and it looked like a vein was about to burst in his forehead as he yelled, “You’d have me believe she stole a volume worth ten-thousand dollars and then instead of selling it, she decided to sit on it for nearly twenty years and then simply
give
it to my housekeeper?”

Grace’s eyes fluttered with shock. “Is that how much this book costs?
Dios mios
!” Then as if remembering herself, she drew up herself up, placing her hands on her wide hips as she informed his father, “I am
not
your housekeeper anymore, Admiral Grant, and I never will be again. I do not know how Miss Marian got this book, but she said she bought it specifically for me when she gave it to me.”

Now his father squinted at her. “Why would she do that?”

Grace’s prideful stance deflated a little. “Because she said a spirit told her to,” she mumbled. “But that is beside the point, because I really do not think she can afford a ten thousand dollar book. Maybe this is not your volume, as you called it.”

“It is most certainly is my volume,” Sawyer’s father roared. “See this autograph? It’s addressed specifically to my grandfather, John.”

“There are many Johns in this country...” Grace shot back. “Even more Johns here than Juans in Puerto Rico…”

The memory of Willa talking to her sister on the phone invaded Sawyer’s mind then.

What did she need with a $10,000 dollar book? Oh my God, that was all of our savings…

Could this have been the reason she—

He cut that thought off with a brutal shake of his head. No, no…he wasn’t going to let himself think about Willa anymore. She was with somebody else. Probably some black guy with both legs intact.

For all he knew, the only reason she’d slept with him last week was because she felt sorry for him. A pity fuck disguised as passion.

But the way she’d responded to him, her body melting into his like she’d just been waiting for him to take her—that didn’t feel like pity…

And the memory of that telephone call continued to nag at him, making the headache he’d woken up with blare louder than a Navy ship horn inside his head.

Booze
, he thought to himself. That’s what he needed.
More booze.

He headed the rest of the way down the stairs. Past the arguing adults who weren’t his mom and dad. Except technically his dad was actually still his dad. And Grace had been more of a mother to him than his drunken one ever had.

They both abruptly went silent as soon as he walked past them, like a ghost had just entered the room.

But whatever, Sawyer thought, the crystal decanter that Grace kept filled with what his father used to called “talk fuel” was the only alcohol left in the house. So he kept on walking until he got to the Bohemian crystal whisky service sitting on the sideboard on the other side of the great room.

However, when he turned around from filling his crystal tumbler nearly to the top, his father and Grace were standing there, all of their attention now completely focused on him.

“Tell me you’re not drinking at eight in the morning,” his father said, voice laced clear through with disapproval.

“Would’ve probably been ten or eleven if you two hadn’t woke me up,” Sawyer answered, taking a huge sip of the hair his dog of a hangover needed.

“Is this why you canceled our lunch on Saturday? Why you haven’t been answering any of my calls or emails? Because you were too busy getting drunk?”

Sawyer leaned back against the sideboard. “Yeah, sure, Dad. Let’s just say that’s it, if that’s the excuse you want to use for coming over here.”

His father’s eyes narrowed. Then just like the old days, he looked to Grace for an explanation of his son’s behavior. Like she was one of his political staff, responsible for briefing him before he went into a room with a belligerent Democrat.

Throwing Sawyer a worried look, Grace actually fell back into her old role. “I do not know why he is behaving this way. He was passed out in his room when I got here. And I think the Harper girl will maybe not be coming over today...”

The sudden downcast of her eyes told Sawyer Grace must have come upon Willa’s leftover panties in the kitchen.

“No,” he assured Grace, the old meanness coming back in full force. “That Harper girl probably won’t be coming back anytime soon.”

His father gave Grace a short nod. Then turned back to Sawyer. “First of all, I will not stand for this kind of attitude from you, young man. Second of all—”

“Why are you here, Dad?” Sawyer asked looking between him and Grace.

“I told you.”

“No, you didn’t, actually. So please explain it to me now. Why have you once again shown up at my house? Unannounced.”

His father frowned, seemingly taken aback by Sawyer’s question. “I would have given you some notice if you had answered my email.”

Sawyer whipped his phone out of his back pocket and went straight to the special Dad folder in his mail program. “Let’s see…we’ve got more ad copy to approve…something about new headshots…a possible meeting with Representative Dorner…something about rescheduling that Saturday lunch. But nothing about coming over here.”

He raised his eyes back to his father. “And why do I get the feeling if I check all these voicemails you left me, there wouldn’t be any advance notice there either?”

His father remained the admiral through and through, undaunted by Sawyer’s questions. “I don’t need an excuse to come here, Son. I was worried about you, so I—”

“See that’s just it. You don’t really worry about me, Dad. I was in a coma in that German hospital, and you were too busy campaigning to come visit.”

At least his dad didn’t try to deny that, but he did parry back with, “I was trying to control the story for your political sake, and my flying over there would have tipped off the press. But I called when you woke up. As
soon
as you woke up.”

“Yeah, I was too groggy to remember that talk, but it made for one hell of a campaign ad. Too bad you didn’t have cameras on my side, too. Could have used it for my campaign. Not very forward thinking of you, Dad.”

“If you’re insinuating—”

“Not insinuating anything, Dad,” Sawyer cut him off. “I’m saying if you wanted to see Grace, you should have been a man about it and called her up, instead of coming over here
on a Tuesday
and using me as an excuse.”

Grace gasped. “Oh Sawyer, that is not true. You’re father would never—” She broke off, obviously flummoxed by his accusation. “Why in the world would you think a great man like your father would want a little fat thing like me? I’m sorry but you’ve got this all wrong. Tell him, Admiral Grant.”

She folded her arms across her plump chest, keeping her worried eyes on him as she waited for his father to back her up.

And then waited some more.

“Admiral Grant, this is no time for your stubborn nature,” she chastised. “Tell him.”

“You look fine,” his father groused through a set jaw. “Like a woman. There’s nothing wrong with the way you look.”

Grace blinked at him, so comically confused, Sawyer actually found himself laughing. “Wow, Dad. ‘You look fine’—nice line. You obviously know a lot more about getting voters to like you than closing the deal with women. Maybe you should use all that time you’ve been burning on my campaign to figure out how to grow a pair and just ask Grace out already.”

“Sawyer, no he doesn’t want to…you’re misunderstanding your father’s intentions. He’s only here because he’s worried about you.”

However, his father’s mutinous silence told Sawyer everything he’d been suspecting was true.

And instead of answering Grace, Sawyer said to his father, “You know not everybody gets to be with the woman they love…”

Silence. Thick as a smoke bomb going off in the room. And Sawyer found himself standing there, fighting off tears for a woman who he barely knew. Who he couldn’t have. Who didn’t feel for him the way he felt for her.

Grace was the first one to speak into the silence. “Sawyer,” she began. “I really do not think…”

But Sawyer couldn’t listen to her make excuses for his father anymore. He set the whiskey down on the sideboard and pinned his father with a hard look. “Stop being a coward, Dad. Either shit or get off the pot with Grace. Either way, I want you out of my house by the time I get back.”

He pushed past the two of them then. Leaving not just the room, but the house.

HE HAD NO IDEA how he ended up at her house.

He was tooling around town on his bike. For what must have been hours. Because the next thing he knew, the sun was setting and he was in front of her humble brick home.