Always Conall (Bitterroot #2) (4 page)

My chest squeezed with remorse. All this time, I’d thought my absence would have been helpful. I didn’t want to be a reminder of everything she’d lost. I had rationalized leaving by thinking she could have a clean break to heal.

“Anyway,” she continued sadly, “once the school got in touch with the authorities, things changed pretty rapidly. My mom was practically comatose, completely unresponsive to everyone around her. She was like a robot, like a switch had flipped and turned her awareness of others completely off. She was institutionalized immediately, and I was to become a ward of the court. I didn’t have the will to fight it, even though I could have probably emancipated myself. But I guess part of me was actually hopeful that someone might… care.” She paused for a minute before she went on. “They were making preparations to place me into a foster home when I realized I was pregnant.”

Something about her saying that, something about the words coming out of her mouth, shook me. Hooked me deep in my chest and pulled. I
’d obviously known. I’d seen Mattie, for Christ’s sake. But that phrase leaving her lips squeezed at my soul and rendered me speechless. Her eyes lifted to mine, and she continued on.

“I didn’t know what to do. At first, it was like if I just didn’t face it, it might… go away.
As stupid as that sounds.” She smiled sadly and huffed out a bracing breath. “But I finally told my caseworker. Instead of foster care, she helped me get into New Beginnings instead, that home for young mothers. While I was living there, I entered an alternative high school program. Got my diploma right after Mattie was born. Some of the classes were dual enrollment, so I even had a little college credit under my belt by the time I graduated. And by the time Mattie was just under a year old, I had a job at Hyper where I made awesome tips. I had a small apartment, and I’d been accepted into nursing school.”

“
All on your own,” I murmured with the pride of her accomplishments making my voice strange and hoarse.

“
The school helped, and the ladies at New Beginnings were amazing.” As she always had, Sage downplayed her own role in her success. “I wasn’t totally alone.”

“
You just didn’t have any of the people you thought you could count on, which sucks,” I regretfully noted, and she shrugged at the notion as though it wasn’t a big deal. Again, typical Sage. Never one to fuss about attention.

For a moment, my mind flashed back to a time when Sage was about eight. She’d fallen and cut herself on some sharp rocks. Their mom had been furious with Matt and
I for not bringing her straight home, but Sage hadn’t even let us know. Turned out, the cut was so deep that she almost fainted and had to have fourteen stitches. But she hadn’t said a word because she was afraid we would take her home and go off again, having fun without her. She was always a tough little shit.

And the nagging pain from Mattie
’s flurry of kicks earlier in the day had me thinking that Sage had passed some of that spunk and metal on to our kid.

Our kid.

Fuck
, that sounded crazy.

Pushing that thought back, I again focused on the conversation. “So
… your mom,” I finally asked, “how’s she doing now?”

Sage pursed her lips thoughtfully before responding. “Well, she has good days and bad days. She’s doing better for the most part as long as she’s on her meds. She talks to me again, recognizes it’s me. She just adores Mattie. About two years ago, she was well enough to move from the psych unit to an assisted living place. Fortunately, this has all been covered by my dad’s veteran benefits, so she
’s been able to get a lot of the help she needed. In this place she’s at now, she has a lot of independence, but they check on her a couple times a day and make sure she’s taking her medication like she’s supposed to. Every once in a while, she still has a bad day where she kind of shuts down, and I do my best to keep Mattie away from her then. As much as I think it helps Mom, it sorta freaks Mattie out, and she’s got to be my first priority.”

“You know, I’m a little… awed by you,” I couldn’t help but murmur. “You
’re so strong. You’ve done really well.”

“I didn’t have a choice, Conall,” she looked me dead in the eye, a flicker of spirit, possibly even a little anger, flashed in her eyes. “I wanted to just fall apart. Everything around me was complete train wreck. It would have been so easy to just throw my hands in the air and bail on it all like you did.”

The vehemence in her voice caught me off guard, and, as much as I fought it, my tone became hard, laced with defensiveness. “I thought I was doing the right thing, honey.”

“No, you thought about yourself.”

“You’re pissed at me for leaving, aren’t you?”

“Of course not.”
But her voice trembled. Her chin quivered, and she looked away, blinking rapidly as though she were fighting off tears.

“Are you sure about that? Because, I’ve gotta say, you sound pissed.”

Her eyes shot back to mine, and I could see the moisture collecting, threatening to spill down her cheeks. The deep blue became luminous, and a strange tightness caught my throat as I watched her fight to stay in control, as I listened to her voice subtly crack with emotion. “Do you have any idea how it felt for me to watch you walk away?”

“Do you have any idea how things would have ended up if I stayed?” I turned towards her, leaning into her. Fuck, I wanted to touch her, to pull her close.
To comfort her and take away the wretched feelings that my very presence was inflicting. She just had to understand why I left. “My God, Sage, I was fucking destroyed when Matt died. I was toxic to everyone around me, going nowhere. All the guilt and anger over Matt. My own family had been crap for so long, and yours was all I had. But I obliterated it all that night.”

“That’s a bunch of shit, Conall,
” she muttered back. “It’s a sorry excuse for you being a coward.”

“
And then,” I ground out, “as if I hadn’t done enough already, I fucked my dead best friend’s kid sister.”

“
I wasn’t a kid when you left,” she coldly uttered.

“
I was old enough to get pinned with statutory rape for nailing you. Fuck, Sage, I was supposed to protect you from assholes like me.”

“
Well, you sure as hell taught me a good lesson about what fuckheads guys can be.” Rising to her feet, she started to walk away. I stood and took a step after her.

“
Hmm, but you’re not pissed at all, right?”

“Fine,” she whirled around and glared at me. “Yes. I’m really fucking pissed at you. I’ve been holding it in for five fucking years.
Because you ran away.
I needed you
and you ran away.”

“I didn’t know you needed me.”

“No, you didn’t know about Mattie, but you knew
I
needed you. Me, Sage… I needed you.” I took a step closer to her, and she retreated, backing away as her voice became hoarse and quiet with a ragged breath. “Conall, I begged you not to go. I begged you to take me with you.” I took another step towards her, reaching out to grab her by the shoulder. Her eyes lifted to mine and a single tear slipped down her cheek.

“I couldn’t take you with me, Sage.”

“And now,” she continued, “what the fuck do I do now? My God, I was finally starting to get this single-parent shit figured out.” She dropped her forehead, looking down at her feet as she shook her head dejectedly. “But now,” she whispered, “I don’t know what you want—” Her voice broke and her eyes rose to mine again. I couldn’t help but reach up to brush the tremulous tears from her cheeks with my thumbs. “I don’t know if you want her or not. And if you do, I don’t know if you’ll stay. You’re the one part of her life that she’s missing. She
knows
she’s missing that, and I want to tell her about you, but I can’t. I can’t give her that because I don’t even know who you are anymore. I don’t know if you’re good for her, or if you could fuck it all up even more.”

Sage wrenched away from me. The sting of her words left a stark hole in my chest, and I suddenly lost the will to fight her. I lost any will at all.
The will to breathe. The will for my heart to beat.

“Part of me just wants you to leave. I want you to just… stay away from her. Part of me wishes,” she whispered again with a ragged sob, “that you had just stayed gone.”

And a part of me wished that I had stayed gone, too. That I had never known about Mattie, or about how Sage had suffered… because of me.

“Maybe I should have, honey.”

Sage

Honey…

Oh God, how I loved and hated to hear that word from his lips again. It took me back to this very bank, five years ago, and his tortured whispers in the rain.

“Please don’t call me that,” I whispered as I angrily swiped the tears from my cheeks.

He looked at me and frowned. “Why?”

“You may call everyone that now, but I remember when you called me that once before. And, fuck, I loved it. But things are different. I’m different. And now… it hurts.”

With a gruff expression tightening his features, he looked back over the water. The pink cast to the sunset had changed to a deep red, close to the horizon and fading wide across the sky. The tones reflected in the water. It would have been awe-inspiring if this moment wasn’t so excruciating.

“I never wanted to hurt you. I don
’t want to hurt you now. Or Mattie.”

“Then let me know what to expect. What are you gonna do?”

“Honestly,” Conall began as he took a deep breath, “I hadn’t really planned on staying after I saw you.”

His words drained all the hope right out of me. There were no coherent thoughts in my mind, only an empty cold buzz. After all this time, knowing he left me when I had loved him so
fucking much
still twisted my soul. Even more so now to know he hadn’t wanted to come back at all. That it obviously pained him to do so and that he didn’t plan to stay. I released a shaky breath and bit my lip to reign in the useless sorrow. Because it wasn’t about me anymore, it was about Mattie. I had to know how Conall being back was going to affect Mattie.

“Well, don’t feel like you have to be here for our sake. Mattie and I were doing fine before you came back. We
’ll be fine when you’re gone.”

I was
lying my ass off. I felt like nothing would ever be fine again. But I also didn’t want him to know how much he affected me. Not anymore.

Conall stepped back over towards the lakeshore and stared out over the water for a moment before he spoke again.

“This afternoon, I ran into old Jacob Anderson, that rancher that Matt and I used to work for during the summers in high school. He’s got a cabin out at his place that’s just sitting empty, away from the main house, back in the gulch. He needs some help around there since none of his kids chose to come back after college. He was thinking about putting his place up for sale, although he really doesn’t want to. So, I offered to help him out. Gives him more time in his home, gives me a job and place to land.”

Silently, I nodded. Exhilaration and apprehension warred through my heart to know he was staying… for the time being, at least.

“So you are staying?”

Conall nodded slightly. “I really hadn’t planned to, but… seeing you today.
Seeing Mattie. It changed all that. For now, at least.”

“And what about Mattie?”
I finally asked in the barest of whispers. “Do you…?” I couldn’t finish the question. As much as I needed to know, I didn’t really want to.

“She’s a cute kid. You did
good,” he smiled sadly, thoughtfully. “I feel like I don’t even have the right to be her dad, like it should be earned or something.” His features softened for a minute as he gazed over the lake, the sunset-kissed ripples lighting his face warmly as he gave a grim, dry chuckle. “She’s a little firecracker, isn’t she? She had no qualms taking me on when she saw you were upset.” The warm pride in his voice felt like salve on a jagged wound.

“She’s protective of those she cares about,” I reflected. “Plus, she’s been taking some martial arts classes from Kian, and, um… she
’s sorta getting a little big for her britches. In her mind, she’s a pretty bad ass four-year-old.”