Rough Terrain (Vista Falls #1) (3 page)

“I don’t think so.” Sage couldn’t believe he’d have looked at her the way he did if he had a wife and kids waiting on him at home.

“He doesn’t,” Gabby piped up, shooting a guilty look in Sage’s direction.

“How do you know that?” Sage held her breath. She didn’t want to hear that her best friend had betrayed her by maintaining a friendship with her ex behind her back.

“It’s not what you think,” Gabby said, looking panic-stricken. “We just connected on social media a while back. We’ve chatted a bit about our lives and stuff. That’s how I know he’s still single.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sage asked, trying to make sense of her friend’s confession. If their situations had been reversed and she’d reconnected with Colt, she couldn’t imagine not telling Gabby the second it happened.

“I wasn’t sure how you’d react,” Gabby admitted. “And I wanted to get to know him again before I decided whether he deserved another shot with my best friend.”

“What are you talking about?” Sage asked, glancing in Wes’s direction. He was standing at the bar, surrounded by a group of guys he used to play football with, laughing and talking as though he didn’t have a care in the world. “Wes isn’t interested in me anymore. What we had was a long time ago. And I don’t have to remind you the way it ended.”

“Yet he came back,” their friend Jenna reminded her. “That has to count for something.”

“He came back because his father died,” Sage said, reaching for her drink to wash away the guilt she still felt whenever she thought of the way her father had treated Wes’s dad. His parents had always been kind to her, even after she put their grandchild up for adoption. “His family needed him.”

“Maybe fate brought him back here,” Meg suggested with a smile as she toyed with her straw. “Same place your love story began. Wouldn’t it be romantic if you fell for your first love all over again?”

“You need to quit watching those sappy romantic dramas,” Sage said, reaching for her cell phone when it buzzed with a message. “Not everyone gets a happy ending.” The message wasn’t important, but at least it gave her a reprieve.

“But you guys could,” Gabby said as she sneaked a peek at Wes. “It’s obvious he’s still into you.”

Sage wanted to grill her friend about the messages she’d exchanged with her ex, but doing so would have meant admitting she was still interested, and her pride wouldn’t let her do that. “Have you asked Wes about Colt?” she asked Gabby, trying to deflect her friends’ interest in her situation.

“Oh yeah,” Jenna said, squeezing Gabby’s arm. “If Wes is back, that means Colt is too. Have you seen him, talked to him?”

“As a matter of fact, he passed by my flower shop the other day.”

Sage gaped at her friend, unable to believe she’d kept that juicy tidbit to herself. “And? What did he say? How did he look?”

“Ugh.” Gabby downed her drink. “Way better than he has any right to look. He should be bald with a pot belly by now.”

The ladies laughed in sympathetic agreement as Sage wondered if thinning hair would have done anything to diminish her attraction to Wes. Probably not. He was the only man she’d ever met who could make her feel like a giddy teenager just by uttering her name.

“I don’t think he would have come in to see me at all,” Gabby continued. “But I was changing out a window display just as he was leaving the bank next door. I guess he would have felt guilty for walking right by without saying hi.”

“Was it weird seeing him again?” Sage asked, hoping she wasn’t the only one reduced to mush at the sight of a man she should have been over years ago.

“Yeah, it was. But it was kind of nice too. It took me back.”

Back to a time Sage sometimes wished she could forget. “Did he ask what you’ve been up to? Whether you were married or had kids?” Sage should have asked Wes those questions, but she’d been afraid of the answer.

“I told him a bit about the divorce,” Gabby said, propping her chin on her hand. “But I didn’t want to make it seem like I’m not over it. ‘Cause I totally am.”

Gabby had given up on her marriage long before she signed the divorced papers. Her ex was a nice enough guy, but they’d come together for the wrong reason—because they were both lonely and trying to get over other people.

“Well, this has been fun, ladies,” Sage said, reaching into her purse for enough cash to cover her part of the tab. “But I’ve got another early morning, so I’ve got to call it a night.”

“Any offers on the dealership yet?” Jenna asked as Sage slapped two twenties on the table.

“I wish.” A buyer would mean their family would have enough money to pay for her father’s care, support her parents’ lifestyle, and pay for her brother’s last year of medical school. All of her prayers would be answered in one fell swoop.

“You’ll find someone,” Gabby assured her with a weak smile that said she wasn’t at all convinced. “As soon as the economy turns around, you’ll see.”

“How have Colt and Wes managed to grow their business while everyone else seems to be struggling?” Meg asked.

“I guess they have the magic touch,” Jenna said, prompting Sage and Gabby to share a look that said they could attest to that.

Wes was grateful Gabby was the last in her group to leave. It meant he could have his first face-to-face conversation with her in years. After they shared a brief hug, Gabby invited him to sit down.

“So how did your talk with Sage go?” she asked before sipping her water.

“She didn’t say?” Wes asked, unable to believe they hadn’t pumped her for information as soon as she returned to the table.

“I want to hear it from you,” Gabby said, regarding him carefully as she sat back, crossing her arms.

His best friend’s ex was as beautiful as he remembered, with long blond hair, bright green eyes, and a ready smile that made everyone feel at ease. But Wes had been one of the few guys in high school who hadn’t made a play for her. Probably because he’d been too busy falling in love and planning a future with Sage.

“I got the feeling she didn’t want to talk about the past,” he admitted, running his thumb over his life line. He did that sometimes to remind himself that even though he’d made a lot of mistakes, he had time left to make things right.

“Can you blame her?” Gabby asked gently. “It’s taken her a long time to get over what happened. Honestly, I’m not sure that she ever has.”

“Neither have I.” Wes eased back in the wooden chair as he ran a hand over his mouth. “There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think about my son.”

“I know Sage feels the same way.” She looked torn before asking, “Have you read her book?”

“No. She told me about it tonight.”

“You need to read it.” She covered his hand with hers. “But I have to warn you I cried all the way through it.”

Wes suspected he might as well. His emotions were always close to the surface when he thought about the adoption that never should have happened. He didn’t know if he and Sage would have survived the stress of getting married and having a baby so young, but they shouldn’t have been robbed of the chance to try. “Did she write it under her own name?”

“Yeah, you can buy a copy at Wright’s bookstore. They always have plenty on hand.”

“In a town this size, it took a hell of a lot of courage to write something so personal and attach her own name to it.” Wes didn’t know if he would have had the guts to do that. “Did she take any flak from people?”

“Not really,” Gabby said, shaking her head slowly. “A lot of people were surprised since she left town before she’d even started to show and didn’t return for more than a year. By then she’d lost all the baby weight and…”

“What?” Wes asked, leaning forward. “Why’d you stop?”

“I just feel like this is Sage’s story to tell. Not mine.”

“But what if she won’t tell me?” His biggest concern was that she would continue shutting him down, especially where their son was concerned. That was why he had to ask… “Has she heard from him?” It killed Wes that he didn’t even know his own son’s name.

“Wes, I’m sorry,” Gabby said, her expression pained. “There are just some things that are off-limits. And that’s one of them.”

Wes couldn’t blame her. He’d have taken certain secrets to the grave for Colt. “So how do you suggest I get her to open up to me?” No one knew Sage better than Gabby, and if anyone could help him devise a plan to get back on his ex’s good side, it was her.

“You could try being her friend,” Gabby suggested. “It worked before.”

Wes was reminded of a time when the four of them had been inseparable. Colt and Gabby had started dating first while he and Sage tagged along to round things out. But it wasn’t long before their attraction and friendship turned into the kind of love Wes hadn’t expected to find until much later in life.

“There’s been a hell of a lot of water under the bridge since Sage called me a friend.” Wes wondered if it was even possible for them to rebuild the trust they’d lost. “I’m not even sure that it’s possible anymore.”

“Wes, let me ask you a question,” Gabby said, leaning closer. “Why did you come back to town? Really?”

“To make peace with the past, I guess.”

He looked around the bar with the same vinyl bench seats and old wooden chairs he remembered. The walls were lined with framed photos Bernice had taken at local events along with sports paraphernalia from Rusty’s favorite teams. The jukebox in the corner was a relic, but it still played the tunes the old-timers loved. This was home. That was why he’d come back.

“To make peace with the past or with Sage?”

Sage was a huge part of his past. He couldn’t think of his time in Vista Falls without thinking of her. “I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to make peace with her decision to give our son away.”

“You mean
your
decision to give your son away. Don’t try to put it all on her, Wes.” Gabby released a shaky breath. “I was with her when she gave birth. She didn’t want her parents there, but she was scared to go through it alone.”

Tears burned his eyes as he imagined what she must have gone through, how she must have felt handing that tiny baby over to a nurse, knowing she’d never see him again.

“I held her all night,” Gabby said, fighting back tears. “She was inconsolable after he was born. I was so scared she might try to hurt herself. That’s how shaken up she was.”

Sage had always been one of the most upbeat people Wes knew. He couldn’t imagine her slipping into the kind of darkness Gabby described.

“How did she get through it?” he asked, forcing the words past the lump in his throat.

“It sounds cliché,” Gabby said with a bitter smile, “but she got through it one day at a time. Hell, it was one hour at a time for a long while. During that initial period, before the adoption was finalized, she was so tempted to call the whole thing off.”

“Why didn’t she?” Wes asked, wishing with everything in him that she had. “She must have known that I would have supported her.”

“You would have tried. But you wouldn’t have been living the life you are now.” When Wes frowned, Gabby said, “That’s what she was most afraid of, I think. Not only of ruining that precious baby’s life but ruining yours too. She thought you’d end up hating her because you wouldn’t have been able to pursue your dreams.” Gabby clapped a hand over her mouth before jumping up. “I’ve already said way too much.” She bent to kiss Wes’s cheek. “It was good seeing you again. It’s nice to have you home.”

“It’s nice to be home,” Wes whispered as he watched her walk away.

***

Colt walked into Wes’s office two days later, just as he was finishing the last pages of Sage’s book. He’d stayed up all night reading it and hadn’t been able to set it aside long enough to focus on work that morning.

“What’s that?” Colt asked, gesturing to the book as he sat in the chair across from Wes.

Unable to speak, Wes handed it to him, trying to make sense of everything he’d read. He still couldn’t believe that Sage had had the courage to be so open and honest about the most painful thing she’d ever endured. She held nothing back. Reading it was like reading her personal journal, and it both clarified a lot of things and confused the hell out of him.

“Is this for real?” Colt asked, looking at Wes after he read the book jacket. “She actually wrote a book about the adoption?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you read the whole thing?” Colt asked, turning it over in his hands.

“Cover to cover.” And he’d probably read it again. And again.

“Wow. Must have been intense.”

“Not nearly as intense as it was for her to write it, I’m sure.” Wes could never have found the courage to put his heartbreak down on paper to be judged and critiqued by strangers.

“This must have answered a lot of questions for you,” Colt said, setting the book on the edge of Wes’s desk.

“It answered some, but it raised a lot more. She loved the baby. Our son. She loved me too.”

“She said that?” Colt asked, raising the book.

“Yeah. She didn’t name me in the book. She just said she was in love with the baby’s father and dreamed of building a life with him—me—when she found out she was pregnant.”

“That’s no surprise though. We all know how Sage felt about you. And that baby. She was just about the sweetest girl I knew. It must have killed her to give up her own flesh and blood.”

“I need to talk to her about this. But how do I broach the subject without making her uncomfortable?” Wes could only imagine how raw and exposed she would feel when she learned he’d read the book.

“You said you might be in the market for a new truck,” Colt said, setting the book on the edge of the desk before leaning back and stretching his long, denim-clad legs out in front of him. “Go in and see her. If you’re lucky, you can talk her into taking a test drive with you. Might give you a chance to get her alone and talk.”

Since he didn’t have any better ideas, Wes stood, reaching into his desk drawer for his cell phone and keys. “Did you need me for something?”

Colt chuckled. “I know you’re not gonna be able to think about work until you talk to Sage. Just go. I’ll still be here when you get back.”