Page 5 of The Promises We Broke
Tell him I don't do anything I don't want to do. I'll be in shortly.
Don't stand on the porch all night.
I shook my head and laughed. Of course Xander would have noticed I was already outside. But I just needed another minute. Another minute to remember that I wasn't eighteen anymore. I was twenty-nine, a successful professional with my own life, my own accomplishments, my own identity beyond being the girl Gage Farrington had left behind. I'd built something good here in Willowbrook. A career I loved, friends who supported me, a sense of purpose that had nothing to do with him.
I could handle seeing him again. I could handle being his physical therapist without falling apart. I could handle the inevitable moments when our hands would touch during therapy sessions, when I'd have to put my professional hands on his damaged body and help him heal.
The thought made my stomach flutter with something that wasn't entirely anxiety.
Stop it, I told myself firmly. Professional. Clinical. That's all this was.
I grabbed my purse and the bag of medical supplies I'd brought from the office. Resistance bands, a goniometer for measuring joint angles, some topical pain relief cream that worked better than anything the hospital would have given him. Tools of my trade that would remind me who I was in this equation. Billie Schulster, physical therapist, not Billie who'd once daydreamed of becoming Billie Farrington. And as I stepped toward the front door, I lied to myself that I was onlyhere for the job, for the patient, and those old feelings meant nothing anymore.
The front door opened before I reached it, and Reece appeared with a warm smile and concerned eyes. She'd been part of the family for over a year now, Booker's anchor and the woman who'd helped him learn to trust again. If anyone understood complicated family dynamics, it was Reece.
"How are you holding up?" she asked, pulling me into a quick hug. "This has to be surreal for you."
"That's one word for it," I said with a shaky laugh. "How is he?"
Reece's expression grew thoughtful. "Hurting. And not just physically. He keeps apologizing for everything. For being here, for needing help, for existing. It's heartbreaking."
That sounded like the Gage I remembered, the one who'd always carried guilt like other people carried wallets. Even before Regina’s actions had driven him away, he'd been too quick to blame himself for things that weren't his fault.
"The others are giving him space," Reece added gently. "Trace and Delaney wanted to be here tonight, but they thought it might be too much all at once. They're giving him time to settle in. Seeing Cade is going to be difficult."
I nodded, emotion tightening my throat. That made sense. And it was probably smart. But I knew Gage. I knew he would take their absence as confirmation that he didn't deserve their forgiveness, that even now, they couldn't bear to be near him. That kind of assumption, I suspected, would hurt him more than any of his injuries.
"Xander's already laid it all out for him before they came home," Reece continued quietly. "About how they know she manipulated him into helping separate Trace and Delaney. How we've all been searching for him to try and bring him home. But he can't seem to accept that he was a victim too."
My heart clenched. I'd heard bits and pieces of the story over the last year. Regina had orchestrated Delaney's departure from Willowbrook by somehow convincing Gage to help her. But hearing that he was still carrying that guilt, still punishing himself for choices he'd made as a confused teenager under the influence of a master manipulator...
"He's in the living room," Reece said gently. "We're all pretending this is just a normal family dinner, but everyone's walking on eggshells. Maybe you being here will help."
Would it? The more I thought about it, the less convinced I was. I'd certainly thought I knew him better than anyone back then. I'd been so sure I could read every expression, understand every silence. But if that had been true, wouldn't I have seen the signs that he was planning to leave? Wouldn't I have known something was wrong before that final night at the swimming hole? Wouldn't I have been enough to save him from all this pain for so many years?
Maybe I'd never known him as well as I thought I had.
Taking a deep breath, I followed Reece into the house. The familiar sounds and smells hit me immediately. Blake's laughter from the kitchen, Val running up to greet me, her tail wagging and her tongue drooping out her mouth in a way that always looked like she was smiling. It was the comfortable chaos of a large family gathering. Or at least, it should have been comforting, but instead it made my nerves spike higher.
Because somewhere in this house was the man who'd shaped my understanding of love, who'd set the standard by which I'd measured every relationship since. The man who'd disappeared from my life without warning and left me wondering if I'd ever been enough.
"Billie's here," Reece announced as we reached the living room doorway.
The awkward sounds of a house full of people unsure what to do suddenly fell silent. And there he was.
Gage Farrington, sitting in Booker's favorite armchair with his left leg elevated and a cast that ran from his ankle to his thigh. Eleven years of hard labor had transformed the lean teenager I'd known into something altogether more devastating. Broad shoulders straining against his shirt, forearms corded with muscle, his jaw sharper and more defined. Fresh scars from the road rash marked his face, but they only seemed to emphasize the rugged masculinity that had replaced boyish features. But his eyes, those storm-gray eyes that had haunted my dreams for a decade, were exactly the same.
Those eyes found mine across the room, and the world seemed to tilt on its axis.
He looked like he'd seen a ghost. Hell, maybe he had. Maybe we both had.
"Hello, Gage," I managed, my voice steadier than I felt. "Welcome home."
The silence stretched between us, loaded with eleven years of unspoken words, unfulfilled promises, and a love that had never quite learned how to die. The air in the room seemed to thicken, crackling with an energy that made my skin feel too tight, my heart beat too fast. Around us, conversations faltered and died as one by one, his family became aware of the tension radiating between us like heat from a fire.
I heard the soft scrape of chairs being pushed back, the murmur of voices making excuses about checking on dinner, needing fresh air, suddenly remembering something urgent in another room. Within moments, we were alone. Two people who had once been everything to each other, now separated by a chasm of hurt and terrible choices that couldn't be undone.
My entire focus had narrowed to the man in the chair, the one who'd once been my everything and might still bemy undoing. He was looking at me like I was salvation and damnation wrapped in one package, his storm-gray eyes dark with something that might have been longing, might have been regret, might have been the same desperate love that was clawing its way up my throat.
