Chapter Twenty-Nine

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

ROCK, MEET BOTTOM – When you hit rock bottom, the only way to go is—oh, wait, she has a shovel. We’re going further down.

W ith a beleaguered sigh, Sawyer hoisted the bag of books higher on her shoulder, promising herself yet again that next time , she’d find a better way to transport them. It was the first time she’d left her apartment in a week, having spent the past few days bingeing Diagnostics . She’d forced herself to pause season three, episode two and get off the couch. All the tension between Dr. Santiago and Nurse Lia was making her tense. If they didn’t get together soon, she was going to have a coronary. She hadn’t wanted to root for Mason’s and Kara’s characters, but she was eating up everything the writers hand-fed to her.

She missed Mason so much. She wanted to apologize, but she wasn’t sure how, wasn’t sure the words would come out right. Even if she found the perfect words, she was convinced it wouldn’t be enough. It wouldn’t change things. Mason was still leaving.

So, in the weeks since their fight, she’d filled the Mason-shaped void in her life with Diagnostics . Anything to avoid thinking about her looming deadline or how bad her writer’s block was. She warred with herself. Refill the creative well by pouring Diagnostics down her gullet. Stop bingeing TV dramas and write the damn book .

She was already regretting leaving the sanctity of her pile of blankets and pillows, desperate for the thrill she felt every time Dr. Santiago graced her screen. Even if, despite what Mason said, Dr. Santiago did not, in fact, do his surgeries shirtless, much to her disappointment.

Her heart twisted as she stepped into the elevator. It wasn’t the same one she’d gotten stuck in with Mason. She hadn’t even realized she’d memorized which elevator it was, but apparently she had. Propping the sack of books against the wall, she rolled her muscles.

“Hold the door!”

She glanced up, her arm shooting out automatically. Her pulse quickened, déjà vu distorting her sense of reality. She was only two blocks from Mason’s apartment, could it be—?

The doors shuddered back open, revealing a well-dressed man in his midfifties. He offered her a congenial smile, and she tried not to let her disappointment show on her face.

In her haste to hold the door for him, she’d stretched herself across the elevator like a one-woman game of Twister. The bag of books wobbled precariously, and before she could react, the handle ripped, the contents spilling onto the floor.

She took this as a sign that she was simply not meant to leave the house today.

With a sigh, she bent over, rushing to scoop the books back into the now handleless bag before the elevator doors opened on her floor.

By some miracle, she made it from the elevator to the bar without the whole thing toppling over again.

“Sawyer!” Alex crooned. He easily hefted the bag from the bar top to the back counter. “I was just thinking about you. We got this new whiskey in—” Reaching up, he grabbed a bottle from the top shelf. “Local. You have to try it.” He plopped the bottle in front of her before disappearing to grab a tumbler.

As Sawyer picked up the bottle, her insides went cold. Leaving her apartment had definitely been a mistake. Blind Faith Distillery. She traced the distiller’s signature at the bottom of the label. She would never forget the crooked way Sadie wrote her s’s. She wanted to shatter the bottle against the ground, or to steal it like Sadie had done to Sawyer’s reader-signed copy of Almost Lovers . But that would only hurt Alex, not Sadie, and leave Sawyer feeling worse.

“Have you had it before?” Alex asked, grinning, completely oblivious that he’d presented her with her ex’s pride and joy.

Shaking her head, she flipped the bottle over to read the back.

“I’ve got time for a tasting before the lunch rush,” Alex offered, grin faltering at her uncharacteristic silence.

“No, thank you,” she said distractedly, her attention snagging on an address at the bottom of the label. “I have to go,” she said suddenly. Tugging her phone from her pocket, she typed the address into her Maps app before handing the bottle back to a befuddled Alex. “Thank you!”

“I didn’t do anything,” he called after her, already halfway to the elevator.

Sawyer didn’t normally believe in signs, but she was in a weird place right now. The elevator dinged to announce its arrival—the same one she’d met Mason in. Mason, who wasn’t afraid of his past, to learn and grow and heal.

She knew what she had to do.

The hour and a half drive to Indiana went by in a blink. Sawyer hadn’t crossed this state line in years. This place knew too much. Too many memories better left in the past. She’d thought that was where Sadie belonged, too, but Sawyer was beginning to realize she’d never really left Sadie there. She’d been dragging around that hurt for years, never letting it heal. Just like the hurt she felt over the Almost Lovers adaptation.

As she pulled into the gravel parking lot of the distillery, she began to shiver with nerves. Was this a dumb idea? She probably should have thought this through before driving all the way here. With shaking hands, she opened the door, stepped out into the frigid air, and forced her feet to carry her inside.

The minimalist warehouse exterior gave way to a warm, industrial interior. Scarred wooden beams adorned the ceilings, and rustic Edison bulbs hung from them, illuminating the space in a golden glow.

“For one?” the tattooed hostess asked over the heavy metal blaring from the speakers.

“Um.” Sawyer cleared her throat. “I’m looking for Sadie. Is she in?”

The hostess raised a heavily penciled brow. “May I ask who’s inquiring?”

Sawyer bit the inside of her cheek. “Oh, uh, we go way back. She has something of mine.”

“And she’s expecting you?”

“Not exactly,” Sawyer confessed with a self-deprecating smile.

The hostess gave her an assessing once-over. “Your name?”

“Sawyer Greene,” a voice to her left said.

Sawyer stiffened as if struck by lightning. Turning slowly, she inhaled sharply as her gaze landed on Sadie.

If this were one of Sawyer’s books, she’d write something dramatic like She looked exactly as she remembered . But that wasn’t true. Sadie was impossibly better looking. Sadie wiped her hands off on a bar towel, wringing it between her tattooed hands like she probably wanted to do Sawyer’s neck right now. Her pale blue eyes were bright against her tanned skin—how was she so tan in February? Her brown hair was shaved along one side, and Sawyer remembered exactly why she’d allowed this beautiful creature to break her heart in the first place.

“Hi,” she managed.

Tossing the towel onto the bar top, Sadie unhooked a carabiner of keys from her belt loop. “I’m headed out,” she said to the hostess. To Sawyer, she jerked her head toward the door. Grabbing her coat from the hook, Sadie shrugged on a camel-colored Carhartt.

“What are you doing here, Sawyer?”

Sawyer swallowed the lump in her throat. “Asking myself the same thing, actually.” She’d come here to put her foot down, to demand Sadie give her book back, but somewhere along the drive, her anger had given way to something softer, something deeper and infinitely more sad. “I want my book back,” she forced herself to say.

Sadie’s brows pinched together. “What book?”

Aaaand the anger was back. “You know what book,” Sawyer hissed.

“I don’t, actually,” Sadie said dismissively.

“Seriously?” Sawyer growled. “Just give it back. It might not mean anything to you, but to me—” She cut herself off as she felt her volume rising.

Sadie sighed, placing a hand at her elbow and guiding her outside, where the music fell away to a less mind-numbing volume. “I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“ Almost Lovers ! You took my advance copy, the one my readers signed on my first tour.” She hadn’t expected to cry, and she hastily wiped away the traitorous tears that managed to escape.

Sadie stared at her helplessly. “Sawyer, I don’t have it. I own, like, five whole books. I’d notice.”

“Please, Sadie. I know your brother took it. I just want it back,” she pleaded. Leaving the house today had been a bad idea. She was not in any state to be out in public, much less High Fidelity –ing her way across state lines to track down her ex.

Sadie’s lips parted slightly. With a steadying breath, she tucked her hair behind her ear, nodding slowly. “Ah. I, uh, may have it.” Spinning her keys around her finger, she jerked her head toward a nearby truck. “You can follow me, but we have to make this quick. I—” Sadie sighed. “Why today?”

Sawyer raised her brows. “What do you mean?”

Sadie stared at her in disbelief. “You have no idea what day it is, do you?”

Sawyer pressed her lips together. She did not. She only knew it was Sunday because that was the day Alex worked, when she did her book drops.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Sawyer,” Sadie said with as much warmth as was in the air. Which was to say, zero. With that, she turned, gravel crunching under her boots as she headed toward her truck without a backward glance.

Sawyer slipped back into her car, following Sadie through the tiny town. Now that she was paying attention, she noticed the shop windows were all decked out in pink and red for the holiday.

When Sadie pulled into a town house driveway, Sawyer parked along the street before hurrying up the walkway. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. She was really running the emotional gamut today, the thrill of excitement numbing her anger. She was doing this. Getting her book back.

“We have to be quick,” Sadie said again as she unlocked the front door.

“Trust me, Sadie, I’m not expecting you to roll out the red carpet for me.”

Sadie scoffed, swinging the door wide for her to enter. “It’s not that. I just didn’t factor a third wheel into my plans for tonight.”

As she said it, Sawyer took in the touches around the space that were distinctly Not Sadie. The pink slippers by the door, the fluffy cardigan on the coatrack, the rainbow bowl Sadie dropped her keys into. Of course. Sadie had a new girlfriend, and they had plans for Valentine’s Day. Sawyer cringed. The first and only Valentine’s Days Sawyer ever celebrated had been with Sadie.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted. “I know this is out of the blue. I was handed a bottle of your whiskey today, and I don’t know what came over me. I just… I wanted my book back and I was done making excuses to avoid you, I guess.”

Sadie nodded slowly, her gaze flickering from head to toe. “If I have it, it’s back here.” Kicking off her boots, she disappeared down the hall, and Sawyer followed, feeling like an intruder in Sadie’s new life. As uncomfortable as it was, it was a relief, almost, to see that Sadie was fine. That she wasn’t as much of a mess as Sawyer was. That there was life after love. Someone should tell Cher.

From the hall closet, Sadie pulled out a few boxes labeled “Hanukkah stuff,” before producing an unmarked brown box covered in dust. They both stared down at it and not at each other, this physical representation of the baggage between them.

“I never opened it,” Sadie confessed. “It was petty, sending him to grab my things instead of doing it myself. I didn’t even need any of the stuff I sent him to get. Anyway—” She gestured to the box, rubbing the back of her neck uncomfortably. “Go for it.”

Sadie disappeared down the hallway, much like Sawyer wanted to disappear altogether. Sinking onto the carpet, she tugged the flaps open, a cloud of dust making her sneeze. Gingerly, she removed a faded university T-shirt that had originally been hers, the mystery of where it had gone finally solved. She set it aside, each memento of their relationship like pouring lemon juice onto an open wound. Or maybe less like lemon juice, more like lancing something that had festered inside her because she’d closed it up without cleaning it first.

She choked on a sob when her fingers brushed paper. She inhaled shakily as she tugged her book from the miscellaneous items still in the box, her fingers reverently tracing her name on the cover. The spine was bound with clear packing tape, the glue visible beneath from where it had been opened and closed so many times. The cover was bent and fraying at the edges, but she’d never seen a more perfect copy of her first book, with the original cover, before it had been rebranded with the movie poster. Flipping it open, she couldn’t even read the messages from her readers—her first readers—because her eyes were welling with tears faster than she could blink them away.

She closed up the box, not needing anything else from it, and placed it back by the closet. She tucked her book inside of her coat, next to her heart, following the sounds from down the hall.

“Did you find it?” Sadie asked, glancing up from where she was arranging a charcuterie board.

Sawyer nodded, flashing the book from inside her coat.

A pained expression flashed across Sadie’s face. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t know. I would’ve never—you sacrificed so much for that book…”

Sawyer rolled her eyes.

“What?” Sadie asked defensively.

“You couldn’t resist one more jab, could you?”

The innocent look on Sadie’s face was almost too convincing.

“You always resented me for how hard I was working. Even now, you can’t not rib me for it.”

Sadie’s jaw went slack. “That’s what you think? That I was mad because you worked hard ?”

Sawyer raised her brows like, Didn’t you?

Sadie laughed humorlessly. “Sawyer, your passion was what I loved about you. Writing was your whole life, and I wanted to be a part of that life, but you wouldn’t let me. I understood hiding your writing from your family, but from me? Do you know how many times I found out things about your career from your fucking Twitter?” Sadie took a deep breath. “Sorry, did not expect that to still get me heated after all this time.” She brought her hand to her chest in a fist. “It’s not that you worked hard. It’s like you got your dream and forgot how to live.”

Sawyer stared at her like she was seeing her for the first time, suddenly seeing all of their arguments, the stony silences every time Sawyer hit a new milestone or canceled plans, through a new lens. And hadn’t Lily said something similar? She was so worried that if she juggled too much, she’d drop the ball again. She’d made her whole life about this one thing, but that’s not really living. It wasn’t just her writing that had been stuck. She had been stuck. When she first made the deal with Mason, she thought his knight in shining armor romanticism would free her from her tower of unending writer’s block. Now, she realized the dragon trapping her there was… herself.

“I—” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Sadie. I guess—I don’t know. Just, I’m sorry.”

Sadie shook her head, her gaze landing on the book-shaped lump under Sawyer’s coat. “I never understood how you could write shit so fucking beautiful that it moved me to tears, and yet you couldn’t tell me how you felt.”

Sawyer sucked in a breath like she’d been punched. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the tears leaked out anyway. “I’m sorry. I really am. If it makes you feel better, I’m still shit at it. And now I can’t even write the beautiful shit.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better at all, actually,” Sadie said sadly.

“Would it have changed anything,” she asked the ceiling, “if, even after things imploded, I showed back up? Wanted to try?” She pressed her lips together to keep her chin from wobbling.

Sadie studied her through narrowed eyes. “I’m not the one you really want to be asking that question to, am I?”

Sawyer gave her a watery smile. “No.”

Leaning forward, Sadie braced her forearms against the kitchen counter. “Then go rewrite your ending.”