His nostrils burned with unshed tears as he stared at the engraved letters on the stone in front of him. Meghan Ann Thomas. January 13, 1975 – November 9, 2004. His beautiful wife had died less than three months before her thirtieth birthday.
God, he needed a drink. Something to settle his thoughts, to numb the ache in his chest. Whenever he allowed himself to drift back into the past, he felt the little pieces he’d worked so hard to restructure just fall apart again. He wasn’t whole; hell, he wasn’t sure he ever would be again. But yes, time was dulling the pain. Except for days like this. The horrible fucking days when the memories would invade, taking over his world, reiterating the fact that he would never get to celebrate anything else with the woman he’d loved more than life itself. It was cruel that he did it to himself, but as he’d told Meghan, he didn’t think he could move forward.
No matter how desperately he now wanted to.
His throat burned and a sob racked his chest, but he refused to cry anymore. He’d done more than his fair share over the years.
“Honey,” he whispered, “I need you to tell me it’s okay to let you go. I need you to tell me that it’s okay to be me again. I can’t keep hiding from everyone. I need something … someone. I know Sarah doesn’t deserve the hell I’ll likely inflict on her, but … I want her in my life. There. I said it. It’s true. I want to feel alive again and … God, Meg … she makes me feel that way. I didn’t think it was even possible.”
The next thing Dylan knew, despite the effort he put forth to avoid them, the tears were coming, but so was the rain. The sky had opened up, and fat, cold raindrops began falling on him until he could hardly see more than a few feet around him. But rather than run back to his truck to try and escape, he remained right where he was and used the rain as another excuse to let the emotions go.
One day, he was sure he wouldn’t be able to cry anymore, and maybe then he’d figure out a way to move on. But until then, Dylan feared this was his destiny.
chapter FIVE
ONCE SHE’D HUNG UP THE phone with her mother, Sarah had immersed herself in housework. She’d pulled out the vacuum and run it over every inch of her two-thousand-square-foot house. Not only on the floors but the corners of every room, the ceiling fans, the couch, and the baseboards. Did she have a problem because she did this at least three times a week? Perhaps. Then again, Sarah knew that having two cats made vacuuming a requirement, so she wasn’t going to apologize for it.
After that, she got the broom and the mop and took care of the tiled floors, then ran the Swiffer duster over all the shelves throughout the house.
But now, as she looked around, she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. Truth was, she was trying to outrun her thoughts by cleaning, but for the first time in a long time, it wasn’t working. Her mind continued to drift back to the one person she shouldn’t have been thinking about in the first place. No matter what she tried to tell herself, Elaine was right. Sarah was still searching for a way to help others even when her help wasn’t needed. Dylan had made it this far without her interference, so she needed to figure out a way to move on.
Still, she had to wonder if he was still broken. It seemed possible. She didn’t know him anymore, wasn’t even close to his family or friends to really know the truth. Was that what he wanted from her? A friend? Someone who could help him?
Damn it. Sarah hated that she wanted nothing more than to help him, to fix him.
Yep, that was something she’d come to accept thanks to years of talking through her problems—she was a fixer. That might be somewhat true, but Sarah knew what her real problem was. By focusing on everyone else’s issues, she didn’t have to focus on herself. Plus, she didn’t want anyone to suffer the way Paul had. Sarah didn’t want anyone in the world to have to come home after work to find the person they loved most dead because they’d overdosed on pills in an effort to extinguish the pain completely. And although Sarah now understood Paul’s illness, and she’d reached a point where she could accept that it had happened, she knew she would never forget. Granted, forgiving him wasn’t entirely possible.
Was she still angry? Sure. At times irrationally so. But she knew deep down that it had been the disease that killed Paul, and she fought tooth and nail to believe that he wouldn’t have left her if he could’ve helped it.
Her therapist had told her time and time again that she needed to work on herself and not everyone else, but Sarah had a hard time accepting that. It was a wonder Elaine hadn’t thrown up her hands already. Then again, the therapy Sarah had been undergoing for the last five years—that and the once-a-month grief-support group she still met with—had been a way for her to deal with the painful loss of her husband.
Only the sessions had unearthed a shitload of issues she hadn’t realized she had in the first place. She had a deep-rooted anger toward her father and her sister, which had festered inside her for most of her life. Not that she wanted to, but deep down, she still blamed Paul for the many years she’d lost to grief and overwhelming heartache even though she knew it wasn’t his fault.
He’d suffered from an illness that no one had seen. A disease that he’d hidden so well Sarah hadn’t known about it. Not entirely anyway. Sure, she’d been aware of his drastic mood swings, thought perhaps he’d been depressed a few times, but who wasn’t? Never had she suspected he had bipolar disorder, or that he would find himself feeling so hopeless that he would end his life, demolishing Sarah’s in the process.
So, in a sense, the years of therapy she’d forced on herself had worked. In the beginning, she’d spent months trying to learn more about Paul’s disease, wanting to help, desperate to find a way to get others to recognize what she’d found out too late. There for a while, she’d even felt worthwhile, content with focusing her energy on others. However, devoting herself entirely to the cause had repercussions of its own. With the help of her therapist, Sarah had realized—three years after Paul’s death—that she had been neglecting herself, her own well-being.
“And then Dylan walked into my life,” she mumbled. “Again.”
And that had been a turning point for her. The straw that broke the camel’s back.
Before he’d reappeared in her life, Sarah had attempted to get back on the horse, so to speak. That year, she’d been focused on living and not merely existing. She’d been proud of the progress she’d made, too. It had been a turning point for her. Or so she wanted to believe.
Then she’d started getting closer to Dylan. As friends.
Without meaning to, Sarah had unearthed a wealth of feelings that she’d had for the man back in high school. In a short period of time, at that. Months of casual conversation and she’d been hooked on him, causing her to do things that weren’t in her heart’s best interest, leaving her right back where she’d started. Alone. Heartbroken.