Always Conall (Bitterroot #2) (15 page)

“I wanted to forget you, too,” Sage said morosely. “Even now, I still do. With you right here in front of me. Even after last night. It still hurts to think about when you left. How it felt to be so alone. How much I don’t
want
to care about you anymore.” She closed her eyes tightly. A fragile, choked sound escaped her throat. “I just can’t seem to get over that, Conall. I can’t seem to move past it,” she whispered in a broken breath.

The weight of her words squeezed the life right out of my heart.
This raw emotion that reflected in her eyes. “Sage—” I began.

“We’re so fucked up,” she interrupted. “I don’t even know who I am anymore, much less who you are. And you need space and time to come to terms with Mattie.
With being a father. I just don’t feel like I can be a part of the picture,” she harshly grated out with her eyes tightly closed. “I feel like this thing,” she motioned back and forth between us, “is so tenuous and my fear is so strong that I’ll end up making everything worse.”

For a minute, neither of us moved. Her quiet sniffles reverberated off the walls as I gently kissed her forehead. Then, her voice, so timid and full of agony, quietly reverberated in my ears.

“I know you’re a good man. You always were. Just maybe not good for me. So let me go, Conall.”

“This is bullshit, Sage.” Every
muscle in my body tensed as she attempted to cull me from her heart. That wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted her to want me. Not just for Mattie. But for herself, too. I wanted her to fight for me.

But she didn’t. She pushed away from me and quietly reached for her dress, slipping it over her head. Combing her fingers through her shoulder-length, mussed hair, she turned her luminous eyes back to me.

“I know you love me,” I said with a quiet seriousness, daring her to deny it. She couldn’t.

“This can’t happen again. I trust you to do what’s best for Mattie, but this
… I just… can’t.”

“I’m not leaving again,” I growled.

“I don’t believe you,” she cried back and turned on her heel. Striding into the great room, she grabbed her purse and keys. “I shouldn’t have come here. We shouldn’t have done this. This was a mistake.”

Another sock to the gut.
Another regret for her that stabbed into my lungs and took my breath away.

“Don’t say that,” I urged.

“You called it a mistake five years ago, Conall. I’ve been living with your mistake. I love your mistake. She’s my whole life now. So you can’t be anymore.”

With that parting shot, she turned and left my cabin. I stood there, thinking back over the years. Over those words I’d said to her so long ago on the riverbank in the rain.

We shouldn’t have done this. This was a mistake.

Those words had planted a seed in her heart, and it had grown and festered and twisted through her soul for the past five years. My poisonous words, my cowardly actions… it all had left her bare and raw.

So she would never forgive me.

And I couldn’t really blame her.

Sage

I managed to dry my eyes and poured about a gallon of Visine in them to get the red out before I went to pick up Mattie. But apparently, my emotions still showed all over my face. Brynn noticed the minute she opened the door.

“Oh dear,” she said with a discouraged tone to her voice. “I was hoping since you didn’t come home till now that things went well last night.”

I shrugged sadly. “Last night… things actually didn’t go too bad. It was this morning that things got a little fucked up.”

“So you
did
sleep together, then?”

I guiltily looked up at her and nodded. “Brynn,” I started as the tears once again filled my eyes, “it’s so messed up.”

She gave me a warm hug in an attempt to console me. “It will all work out, Sage,” she said. “I know things seem awful now, but that won’t last.”

“Shit,” I sniffed, pulling back and wiping my eyes. “I don’t have time for this. Mattie’s got a birthday party
and she’s going to be late I don’t get going.”

“Tell you what, I’ll get her ready and take her.”

“I can’t ask you to do that,” I began.

“That’s what friends are for, Sage,” she murmured. “I know you don’t want her seeing you so upset, and you don
’t seem quite up to a room full of sugared-up four- and five-year-olds. Take a little time while she’s there today. Cry it out. Do what you need to do.”

A short time later, I found myself driving out to the
cemetery. I needed to be close to Matt. I needed to feel him near me. I knew how he’d feel about all this. He’d want me to find a way for Conall to know his daughter. To be her dad. Matt was always so true blue. So I needed his strength to do this. To do what I was so afraid of doing.

As I pulled through the iron gateway into the cemetery, my breath caught. I could see Conall’s pickup through the trees, parked over by Matt’s grave. With a shaky breath, I debated leaving. Letting him have his time with my brother instead. With every conversation we had, things seemed to be deteriorating so fast that it made my head spin.

But a part of me wondered if the healing presence of my brother could help us find common ground. He was what had brought Conall and I together. He was what had torn us apart. And maybe he was showing me, by Conall’s presence at his grave, that I maybe needed to put myself in Conall’s shoes. To see what he had been through.

I want her to know who I am…
His words echoed through my mind.

Conall didn’t move as I slowed my car to a stop and climbed out. His back was to me, his face looking towards Matt’s grave. He sat on his knees in the cool grass, shaded by the quaking aspen trees. I slowly walked up behind him, standing there just feeling his turmoil of emotion, until he turned slightly towards me. His jaw was clenched tightly and his eyes held a raw pain. I lowered my fingertips to his shoulder, and with the slightest hint of my touch, his arm encircled my legs, pulling me closer as he rested his head against my stomach. Every muscle in his body was wrought with tension, his heavy arms held me tightly and he breathed in a shaky breath.

“I miss him,” he finally whispered. “Every day.”

“So do
I,” I murmured back, trying, but failing miserably, to keep the tears from streaming down my cheeks. My fingertips combed through his short hair, gently soothing the pain that radiated from his soul.

And letting it mix with mine.

Conall

For a long time, I just held her, trying not to turn into a total girl and burst into tears. Her fingernails grazed my scalp, soothing the agony that ripped through me. Her touch was healing, comforting, although I had no right to feel comfort in it. After a while, she pulled away and settled onto the grass beside me, leaning her head on my shoulder.

“It’s easy to forget sometimes that you lost them too,” she murmured, her quiet voice caressing the fabric of my t-shirt. “My dad loved you like a son. Matt loved you like a brother. My mom… she was always so worried about you. When you left, I know I came off selfish, wanting you to stay for me. But I also was worried about you. Who was going to look out for you?”

“When I left, I didn’t feel like I deserved looking after.” My own voice could barely be heard over the rustle of the leaves overhead, the light breeze that dusted her hair against my bare arm.

“Is that why you didn’t call me?” she asked.

I shook my head and looked down at my hands. “I wanted you to be happy, I guess. I felt like I was just a stain in your life.
The wastoid neighbor boy who sponged off your family until there was nothing left. My own mom didn’t even want me, really. She left as soon as it was socially acceptable to do so. And, to your mom, I was only a reminder that Matt was gone. I had to go.”

“I waited… whenever I could, I sat by the phone.
Every day, especially those first couple weeks. Every minute I was home.” With an almost angry expression, she plucked at a blade of grass. “I’d wake up at night thinking I heard it ring. But you never called.”

“And, if I called,” I countered, “what was I supposed to say?”

“That you were okay,” she whispered fiercely. I turned to face her more directly, and her pained eyes locked onto mine. “That maybe you missed me… a little. That you at least thought about me.”

“How would that have helped you, Sage?” I asked hoarsely. “I was a shitty reminder that your brother was gone. Fuck, it was my
fault
he was gone.”

She shook her head in confusion. “It wasn’t your fault, Conall.”

“Over the years, I’ve sort of come to grips with it, but I don’t know that I’ll ever totally get over it,” I started as I looked down to where my hands lay flat on my thighs. I didn’t want to tell her this. I didn’t want to see the condemnation in her eyes. I’d given her so many reasons to despise me over the years already. “I couldn’t tell you then. I didn’t want you to hate me. I hated myself enough already.”

“What do you mean?”

“If I hadn’t talked him into going to that party…” I started, and my voice left me. I’d thought this a million times, turning it over and over in my mind.
If only
…

“That? You can’t blame yourself for making him go to a party. That’s… shit, Conall, that’s what you guys did. That doesn’t make it your fault.”

“But, he didn’t want to go,” I replied, looking back at her, “not to that one. Not that night. I don’t really know why. I didn’t really care. I talked him into it because I was all hot for Lacey Riggs, and she was supposed to be there.”

Sage’s eyes dropped to her lap, and she swallowed hard. “It wasn’t your fault, Conall…” she repeated in a tormented whisper.

“And then, I just bailed on him once we got there. I found Lacey, I got bombed and went off to bang her while he was falling asleep at the wheel on his way back to town. So, yeah, it was kinda my fault that he died.”

“You didn’t make him leave,” she said quietly.

“I gave him all kinds of reasons to go and didn’t give him any reason to stay,” I frowned. “I know now that it was really bad circumstance. But I still – I will always – feel like it’s it a little bit my fault.”

Sage looked up at me with a haunted, dead expression before her eyes drifted shut. Something about the hitch of her breath caught my attention and slowly pulled me from my self-abasement. With a faint sniffle, she shook her head in remorse, her eyes tightly closed. “It’s not your fault,” she whispered. “It’s mine. I called him.”

“What?” I asked.

“That night.
I knew what you were going to do, or, more precisely,
who
you were going to do,” her lip trembled and she took a deep breath, “and I was jealous. So I called Matt’s cell. I told him mom was freaking out, like she used to do sometimes after dad died. I really turned on the waterworks and begged for you guys to come home… but he came alone.” Her breath caught as a flutter of her eyelashes sent a single tear trailing down her cheek. “So, you see, it wasn’t your fault. It was mine. Matt died because I was selfish. I didn’t want you with her,” she whispered. “I wanted you with me. I’ve made a mess of my life, of yours… all because I wanted you with me.”

She started to rise, the clear need to bolt reflected in her tearful eyes, but I grabbed her arm and pulled her back down to her knees, up against me.

“Let me go, Conall,” she brokenly shivered, her face turned away. Her eyes darted away from my face – towards the trees, the tombstones, the floral arrangements… the buttons on my shirt. Anything but me.

“Fuck that, Sage. You can’t tell me something like that and then take off.”

Her body shook with remorse as she pushed at me. I wrapped my arms around her and felt her warm, wet tears soaking into the thin material covering my shoulder. Her struggles finally lessened and I was able to coax her to settle in my arms as she poured out five years of guilt.

“Shhh…” I murmured against her hair. “Sage,
honey… don’t cry. Don’t feel that way. It’s not your fault, either.”

“But it is. And my mom,” she inhaled with a broken breath, “she was bad before. She was already on edge. But when I told her that, she could see it, too. She blamed me. She froze up. She wouldn’t talk to me anymore.
Wouldn’t even respond to my touch or my words. She just… went somewhere else in her mind. So, I never told anyone else,” she mumbled almost incoherently. “My own mother hated me for it. She just shut off. Because she knew that, if it wasn’t for me, Matt would still be alive.”

My chest constricted with the onslaught of her agonized keening. “That’s not true,” I murmured.

She pulled back and looked up at me. “But it is, Conall. You weren’t here. You didn’t see it. You left me, too. You all left me.”

I brushed my fingers along her flushed, wet cheeks. “I had no idea,” I said. “I’d have never gone if I’d known. But, Sage, you’ve got to know now, it’s not your fault—” I began.

She shook her head as another sob hiccupped through her fragile body. Pulling her head back, she looked at me with a tearful gaze, her fingertips against her trembling lips. “No, it’s not
yours
.”

Her still forceful regret and the remnants of my own swirled through the air, biting and angry.
Hopeless and desolate. In the past five years, feeling responsible for Matt’s death, I’d hoped to take her pain away by leaving. To remove the constant reminder that her brother was gone. And to ease my own conscience that it was because of me.

And all the while, I’d only hurt her even more.

“Sage, there will always be a part of us that says what if, but it isn’t your fault and it isn’t mine. Not really,” I assured her. My thumbs caught her tears as I tried to brush them away. “In the years that I was in the Army, I saw quite a few men die. Friends. Guys I didn’t even really like. Some people that I didn’t even know. Civilians or even guys on the other side of my gun. I ran into all that headlong. I wanted something to take this feeling of guilt away. That’s why I left, really.”

Her eyes dropped to the buttons of my shirt and she sniffled softly. I pressed my lips against her forehead and continued. “But I found that there is so little we can actually control. And the guilt that swirled through me, that still does to a certain extent…
logically, I know that it wasn’t because of me. And it wasn’t because of you either. It was just a really shitty coincidence.”

“But if I hadn’t—”

“You can’t think that way. All that’s doing is keeping you from living now.”

“It’s hard
not
to think that way.”

“I know… but I think, deep down, you know that
’s not true.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her watery blue eyes lifting to meet mine. Her lashes were spikey from tears, and her cheeks were flushed the sweetest shade of pink.

“For what now?”

“Everything that’s happening now… this is
all my fault, too.”

“Sage—”

“I knew it was wrong. That day you left, I knew what we were doing was wrong. I just… I’d loved you for so long. I couldn’t let you leave without… something. Without telling you, without showing you.”

I pulled her close again, giving her time, feeding her my strength.
Trying to absorb some of her remorse and fear. Her tears slowly lessened. Her tremors slowly relaxed. My fingertips brushed through her hair, smoothing it back from her face.