She simply didn’t think protecting us was important enough to consider leaving him. As it turned out, money was the catalyst for that.
When I went into the general store yesterday, I was fucking reeling from the realization. And when I saw Autumn and Olivia, I had to get away from them as quickly as I could. They're everything that's good, everything that's light, everything that's perfect. And my bullshit – all of this darkness – would just taint them.
Yesterday at the general store, I was going to tell her to get lost. I was going to hurt her, say something terrible to push her away from me. That's what I should have done. It would be the honorable thing. My family's shit – my history – isn’t the kind of thing she and Olivia should be exposed to.
Instead, I was weak yesterday. I stood there, wrestling with the part of me that should let her go, never see her again. But I couldn't bring myself to do it.
And even worse? Now I'm here. I'm sitting here in my truck, outside of her house, at seven in the morning, as if it's a normal day and I'm about to go to work.
As if nothing happened between us.
As if everything is exactly the same.
I'm sitting here, debating whether to back out of her driveway, go down the road, and turn around. I could do it. I could drive away and never look back. I could put this entire town in my rearview mirror, leave everything in this world behind. I could leave behind this shit with my family, with my mother and Jed and West Bend, just the way Killian did, going back to the oil rig.
It would be entirely justifiable.
Autumn would understand. After all, she did the same thing once before. She left Kentucky without a backward glance.
She expects me to leave. She knows my reputation, and if she doesn't, well, she can assume the worst.
The worst has always been the truth.
I've never wanted more than just a roll in the hay with a girl. That night with Autumn was different. I didn't want to get the fuck out of her house as soon as I could. I wanted to stay there all night, buried as deeply inside her as I could be, touching her and looking at her and breathing her in.
I lay there awake after she'd finally fallen asleep, after we'd talked and talked, the way I'd never wanted to do with anyone, her warmth radiating against me. I lay there and listened to her breathe and felt calm for the first time that I can remember. That restless feeling, the itch that always sends me chasing something – the next girl, the next adventure, the next high – was noticeably absent.
I was still.
Stillness isn't something I'm used to. My life has been the exact opposite of still since the day I was born into the total chaos of the Saint family. Hell, smoke jumping is as far away from still as you can get. It's pure adrenaline, your heart pounding, every muscle in your body tensed and on edge as you parachute from a plane into the path of a raging fire. It's loud, louder than the loudest thing you can imagine, like being in the middle of a heavy metal concert, but instead of music it's the deafening sound of fire: crackling, snapping, the croaking of trees as they fall to the ground.
Lying there holding Autumn, being still… I should have hated everything about that moment. I should have wanted to be out of her bed and on to the next conquest. Instead, it felt like that moment when you catch your breath and drink in big gulps of oxygen after you finish sprinting, and you're glad to be no longer moving.
Right now, I sit here in front of Autumn's house, unmoving. And it's exactly the opposite feeling. I'm not glad to be still.
I'm sitting here because I'm torn between the right thing to do and the thing I want to do. The right thing to do is to keep my family bullshit way the hell away from Autumn, tell her I quit, walk away and let her believe I'm just an immature asshole who wanted a quick lay before moving on to another girl.
That's how this story should go.
That's the version of this story where Autumn isn't tainted by the Saint bullshit, by my family's legacy, by the darkness that follows me wherever I go.
But I don't do the right thing. I don't turn around and walk away. Instead, I open the door and walk toward the house.
23
Autumn
“Daisy,” I say, squatting down to show Olivia the flower. She takes it between her chubby little fingers before putting it up to her nose and sniffing deeply. Overtaken by the need to sneeze, she wrinkles her nose and sneezes loudly.
“Daisy,” she repeats, throwing it on the ground with disgust and wiping her nose as she looks at me accusingly.
“Hey, that wasn’t my fault,” I say, laughing. “I didn’t make you sneeze. What an attitude. You're a toddler going on sixteen years old.”