Fall to Pieces (29 page)

Trying and failing.

If he had any sense, he'd move, start working
at his father's shop and pick up odd jobs from Damon until he
figured out what to do with the rest of his sorry life.

But part of him liked the torture of
remembering what it was like spending his days working with her,
his nights with her in the cabin. Having her sit across the table
from him, making him laugh, chasing some of the demons away.

Having her fall into bed with him, her mouth
and hands moving eagerly over him, wanting, needing him as much as
he needed her.

Bam! Bam Bam!
He jolted awake, heart
pounding against his ribs, fully expecting to see the Taliban
forces from his dreams looming over a far ridge.

He blinked, slowly realizing that he was not
in a Central American jungle but on the couch of the cabin's small
sitting room.

And the banging wasn't the sound of enemy
gunfire but of a heavy fist slamming against the heavy wooden
door.

"Dylan!"

He winced, as much at the headache pounding
in his temples as at the sound of his brother's voice.

He reached for the bottle in front of him and
took a hefty swig.

"Open the goddamn door or I'll break the
fucker down."

Dylan grunted, heaved himself off the couch,
and weaved his way over to the door. "What?"

Damon's face was set in harsh lines as he
shoved his way inside. His nose wrinkled as he took in the dirty
dishes stacked in the sink, the empty bottles strewn around the
kitchen and sitting room.

"So this is what you've been doing? Getting
shit faced while you avoid our calls?"

Dylan shrugged, his brain too fogged from
scotch to come up with a snappy comeback. "What do you want?"

"I wanted to make sure you're okay. Nobody
has heard from you since you got back—"

"I'm fine," Dylan snapped. "Now you can
leave."

"Yeah, I can see that." Damon lifted an empty
bottle and slammed it back down on the counter.

He stomped over to a cabinet and grabbed a
glass. Then he went over to the couch, sat down and helped himself
to a pour from Dylan's not quite empty bottle.

"If you don't mind, I'm not really in the
mood for company."

"Too fuckin' bad," Damon said and took a sip
of his scotch. "I'm not leaving until you talk to me."

Shoulders bunching with tension, Dylan joined
his brother on the couch. He grabbed the bottle by the neck and
took a sip of his own. "Nothing to talk about."

"Other than the fact that you're doing
nothing out here but moping and getting shit faced every night.
Ignoring the people who love you and want to help you—"

"My career is over!" Dylan exploded off the
couch, pacing the small space like a caged jungle cat. "Everything
I did, everything I worked for, is fucking gone. I have
nothing."

"Bullshit. You your family, who loves you and
will help you any way we can."

Dylan closed his eyes. He knew they loved
him, but he couldn't depend on them to pull him out of this
hole.

"And what about Sadie?"

"What about her?"

"You to seemed to have a pretty good thing
going.

He shook his head. "Sadie is..."

"Sadie is an amazing woman," Damon
interjected. "And she loves you."

Dylan shook his head, but his brother
barreled on. "Are you really going to throw that away just because
you can't escape from this pity party you've thrown for
yourself?"

Anger surged in his chest, his vision burned
with a red haze. "You have no idea what it's like to lose
everything you've worked for, to have every plan you had for the
future ripped away—"

"Oh really?" Now Damon stood and stalked over
until he was nearly nose to nose with his brother. "Did you forget
that the woman I wanted to marry since I was sixteen broke up with
me when I joined up? You think that didn't fucking gut me?"

"You ended up together eventually," Dylan
mumbled lamely.

"Yeah, but only after a lot of years and
hurting each other almost beyond fixing. I don't recommend it."

Dylan shook his head. "Sadie needs a guy
who's got a plan, who knows what the fuck he wants to do."

"I won't argue with you there. And unless you
crawl your way out of that bottle and pull your head out of your
ass, that guy will never be you."

###

Two Weeks Later

Sadie sat back in her chair and scrubbed at
her eyes. The top corner of her computer monitor told her it was
almost nine p.m., and the stiff muscles in her back reminded her
that, barring a couple of afternoon meetings, she'd been in this
chair for over twelve hours.

Though there was still plenty to be
done—there was always plenty to be done in her new role at
ShopToYou—it was time for her to go home.

She packed up her laptop and notes about the
current project she and her team were working on, noting as she
walked out of her office that the cubes were mostly quiet and all
of the office windows were dark.

She wasn't the last one to leave—ShopToYou
was a Silicon Valley startup after all, and some of the QA
engineers and software developers practically slept here—but as
usual Sadie was among the last to leave.

Home was a blissfully short ten minute drive
up highway 101 to Palo Alto. Her San Francisco friends had given
her a hard time about not moving back to the city proper.

"Don't you want to go out, meet people?"
asked her friend Gina, who worked a few miles south of Sadie's
office but braved the hour plus commute from the city.

Sadie brushed her off, saying she could
always drive up on weekends, and with her intense work schedule, it
wasn't like she had any time to go out anyway.

But in truth, it was more of a chicken and
egg thing. Since she had no interest in going out, she figured she
might as well spend the extra time in the office. And the little
bungalow she rented was close and convenient to work.

Not to mention, after all the time spent out
at the ranch, she found she couldn't bear the idea of living in a
little apartment, sharing walls with her neighbors. In the past,
living in the city had been new and exciting, a stark contrast to
the rambling house where she'd grown up.

Now, she found herself craving the big
spaces, the open sky.

A small house with a private yard in a tidy
suburban neighborhood was an acceptable compromise.

Though she'd only been gone a couple of
weeks, her time on the ranch felt like a hundred years ago, she
mused as she pulled into the carport at the top of her driveway. A
million miles away, despite her frequent phone calls with Molly,
who kept her up to date on all the goings on in town.

The restaurant was doing fine, even with
Brady gone, Molly had reported earlier today, although her work
load had increased now that Ellie had revealed that she was
pregnant and couldn't stand the smells coming from the kitchen.

"We tried swapping having her at the bar and
me in the kitchen, but the first time she tried to make a margarita
and caught whiff of tequila she ended up puking in the sink behind
the bar. Luckily it wasn't busy, but still. She's out for at least
the first trimester."

"Wow, they must be so excited," Sadie had
said.

"Yep, they're thrilled. They've even set a
wedding date—October first."

"Wow, that's soon!"

"It is, and of course this means Josh and I
will have to postpone. Or maybe I should get myself knocked up and
force his hand." Molly laughed, but Sadie could tell it was forced.
"Anyway," Molly continued, "you should be getting a save the date
card any day now."

"I don't know, I'm really busy—"

"Come on Sadie, you can't skip Ellie's
wedding just because you can't deal with Dylan," Molly snapped,
exasperated.

Sadie hadn't bothered to deny it. "I'll see
if I can get the time off."

Dylan. It was the one subject she and Molly
had agreed not to discuss. Sadie would like to think that it was
Molly's mention of him that had him looming in her brain all
afternoon.

But that would be a lie. Even though their
time together already felt like it happened a hundred years ago, in
a different lifetime, she couldn't get him out of her head.

She mostly managed to block him out at work,
but even then, he seeped through the cracks of her consciousness.
Every moment they spent, every touch shared, every word spoken, was
seared into her brain.

Especially the last, the moment she realized
that while she'd been falling in love, Dylan had merely been
killing time.

She shook her head, called herself an idiot
for the thousandth time that month, and gathered her briefcase from
the passenger seat.

She got out, grumbling to herself when she
saw that despite the call to the landlord, the motion sensitive
lights didn't go on as she stepped onto the concrete path that led
to her front steps.

Picking her way in the dark, she didn't see
the shadowy figure under the eaves until she had nearly reached the
first step.

Panic rushed through her and she took an
instinctive step back, then froze as an achingly familiar voice
called out.

"Sadie, it's me."

"I didn't mean to scare you," he said as she
closed the distance between them.

"It's okay," she said, fumbling in the dark
to unlock the door. "You—ah—surprised me."

She pushed the door open and flipped a switch
on the wall, flooding the entryway with light.

His stomach churned with nerves. He'd spent
twenty hours driving plus the two he'd spent cooling his heels on
her front porch, thinking of exactly what he would say when he saw
her.

Now he could do nothing but stare at her, his
tongue glued to the roof of his mouth as he drank in every detail
of the woman he'd ached for every second of the last two weeks. Her
hair was pulled back at her nape, a few curls escaping to brush the
smooth, pale skin of her cheeks.

Her dark, heavily lashed eyes had faint
circles of fatigue as she regarded him with surprised
confusion.

A wave of overwhelming need surged through
him as he watched, barely hearing as her full, pink lips moved.
"What are—"

He couldn't stop himself from closing the
distance between them, couldn't stop himself from curving his hand
around the slim column of her neck and pressing his mouth to
hers.

She stiffened, making his heart skip a beat
as he prepared himself to feel her fist against his jaw or a knee
into his groin. He braced himself, knowing it was no better than he
deserved.

Then her lips parted on a little sigh as her
hands stole up to his shoulders. He groaned and tangled his tongue
with hers, heat sizzling through him as he drank in the spicy sweet
taste of her.

He backed her up against the closed front
door and pressed himself against her, wishing their clothes would
magically melt away so he could feel her, skin to skin, like he'd
been aching to for what felt like eons.

A last burst of sanity reminded him that
after the way he'd treated her, Sadie deserved better than a fast,
wild fuck in her foyer.

She deserved an explanation. She deserved to
decide if he deserved a second chance.

He lifted his head, took a deep breath, and
stepped back to make a few inches of space between them. "Sorry,"
he breathed. "But I've been thinking about that for the last
thousand miles or so."

"Oh," Sadie replied, eyes glazed, cheeks and
lips flushed.

"Now that's out of the way, I think we have
some things to talk about."

She shook her head a little, as though
clearing it of the cobwebs. "Of course." She pushed away from the
door and walked through a doorway into a small sitting room,
flipping on lights as she went. Dylan followed her through it into
the small kitchen and watched as she poured two generous glasses of
red wine.

"I don't have anything else," she said as she
handed him one, "and I feel like I might need a drink for this
conversation."

She leaned her hip against the countertop,
took a sip of her wine, giving him an expectant look over the rim
of her glass.

The snakes were back twisting around in his
stomach and he felt a cold sweat bloom down his back. He took a
hefty swallow from his own glass as he struggled to piece together
the words he'd spent hours coming up with on the road.

It had seemed so easy as the miles passed.
Be honest. Tell her how you feel. Apologize for being an
ass.

"Dylan, what are you doing here?" she
prodded.

The last part was easiest, so he decided to
start with that. "I wanted to apologize, explain what I said."

She cocked her eyebrows. "You could have sent
an email or called and saved yourself the gas money."

He felt his face heat, realized that despite
her enthusiastic response to his kiss, she was keeping her guard
up.

Well you'll just have to break your way past
it, won't you?

"When I said guys like me don't end up with
girls like you"—he winced as pain flashed across her face, only to
be hidden a moment later—"I didn't mean what you thought I
meant."

His stare wavered under hers and he dropped
it to his glass, staring at the dark crimson liquid as though it
would suddenly reveal the perfect words to make her understand how
sorry he was, how much he loved her.

Words that would make her forgive him.

"When I got the news, I felt like a loser.
You're smart, and successful, and I couldn't see what you would
want with a loser like me. I didn't want to be the guy following
you to California, riding your coattails because I couldn't think
of anything better to do."

She stayed silent, her lips pressed in a
tight line.

"But after you left... I missed the shit out
of you."