Page 36 of Worth the Wait

“When Addi’s mom moved away, did you think she’d come back?”

I couldn’t help but compare the similarities of what had happened back then to what seemed to be happening now. Was the past repeating itself? I dared to let myself insinuate.

“You know, at first, I thought she just needed to get it out of her system. That she’d go to New York, see it, do whatever it was that she needed to do, and then come back home, where I always thought she belonged.”

“But that wasn’t what happened,” I added somberly because I knew how their story ended. And it wasn’t happily.

I started dreading that Addi might be more like her mom than I’d ever thought possible. But how could I know that really? I didn’t know her mom at all; I had never once even met the woman.

“No, it wasn’t. I was wrong about that.” He shook his head, but didn’t seem bothered or upset by it in the least. “It wasn’t New York that she needed to get out of her system, but Sugar Mountain. I realized pretty quickly that she wasn’t ever coming back here.”

He and I had never talked about this before. Sure, Addi and I had had conversations, but they were from Addison’s perspective—how she’d felt as a child whose mother chose to leave her behind and take her little sister away. She’d never once wished that she’d gone to New York with them, but it was still something that had affected her nonetheless.

“Do you think Addi won’t come back either?” I finally bucked up the courage to ask the question out loud to someone who wasn’t myself or my dog.

“To be honest, son, I never thought she’d stay gone this long,” he breathed out before leaning back in his recliner.

“Me neither.”

“I know how bad you’re still hurting.” He wasn’t judging me or acting like I should be over it already, the way I figured other people did. Jeremiah had always understood me.

“I just never thought we wouldn’t be together,” I admitted, feeling a little more emotional than I wanted to.

“Me neither.” He grinned as he repeated my words back to me.

“What the hell am I going to do when she gets here tomorrow?”

Knowing that Addi was going to be here was making me feel like I could crawl right out of my skin and leave it behind, like a snake. I knew I’d want to run straight to her, take her in my arms, and beg her to stay in Sugar Mountain.

But I also wanted Addi to be the one who came running to me. I needed her to choose me over New York. To want me more than she wanted anything else, the same way I wanted her.

Was that selfish? Cruel? Naive?

I wasn’t sure.

“Let her come to you,” Jeremiah suggested, breaking through my thoughts.

“But what if she doesn’t?” I swallowed hard as I stared at him.

“You let me worry about that part.” He gave me a wink, and instead of asking him what he was up to, I let his statement go.

Jeremiah had always been on our side, rooting for me and Addi to make it. Knowing that he still felt that way made me feel less crazy for still wanting her the way that I did. After all, who found their other half in high school and still felt that way ten years later?

WELCOME HOME

ADDISON

The flight from the closest city to the Sugar Mountain airport, if you could even call it that, had taken all of twenty minutes. The tiny plane had rocked back and forth in the turbulent air, and there were honestly times when I’d thought we might fall right out of the sky. So, when the wheels touched down on the single landing strip, I breathed out a sigh of relief and glanced at my sister’s arm, which I had been holding so tightly that it was turning white.

“I think you cut off my circulation.” She started shaking her arm to get the blood flow back.

“Sorry. I’m a nervous flyer sometimes,” I apologized.

“I noticed,” she said before glancing out of the small window. “This is it, huh?”

“Do you not remember it?”

She shook her head at me. “Not really.”

---