Page 105 of To Bring You Back
He had names in mind, solid musicians who’d proved themselves with their roles in other bands. He just had to stop fantasizing about playing a show with Adeline again.
Friends.
He’d thought a kiss would stop the friend talk once and for all, but she hadn’t been interested. The only card he had left to play was the notebook of songs. At this point, the lyrics wouldn’t surprise or impress her. She’d tell him to go ahead and use them if he wanted.
He could pour his heart out for the whole world because Adeline Green didn’t care if he had anything left just for her.
A wooden sign announced another park. Gannon steered in. Trees obscured the two streetlights in the lot, but some of the light that poked through landed on a sedan parked at the far end of the lot. Harper’s rental.
He pulled up and found it empty. The waterfront was out of sight at the bottom of a brush-covered slope. Pulse quickening, he parked, climbed from the car, and pocketed his keys.
The moon turned the wooden steps to the lakefront into gray shadows. The stairs ended in matted grass. A few feet later, an old pier reached over the water, thirty or forty feet long and wide enough for a car, but occasional dark gaps warned him of the structure’s frailty.
A woman sat out at the end. She looked over her shoulder at him and then turned away again.
Thank God. Gannon sent two texts, one to security and one to Adeline, both with the same four words:Found her. She’s okay.
He illuminated his cell phone’s flashlight and stepped onto the pier. The wood didn’t give, so he proceeded, the sound of lapping water surrounding him as he left the shore and its crickets behind.
“Let’s get you someplace safe.” He or security could wait with her at a hotel until her people arrived.
Harper didn’t move.
He reached down to help her up, but she pulled away.
“Leave me alone.”
“You know I can’t do that.” She was lucky she hadn’t fallen in. Could she even swim? And maybe that was the point.
“You keep insisting you can.”
“That’s why you’re out here? To prove otherwise?”
“No … Though I’m sorry about that post. I didn’t realize how seriously everyone would take it. When I saw, I took it down. I guess I crossed the line. Believe me, I don’t want to die. Not ever, and certainly not on a night when all I’m thinking about is how messed up I am.”
He did believe her, but his relief was tempered by the pain in her voice. He couldn’t just leave her here. He looked back toward shore. The only way to force her to leave would be to pick her up and carry her. The attempt would end with one or both of them in the lake if she fought him, which, in her mood, she probably would. He made sure his phone was securely in his pocket and then sat next to her, their feet off the end of the pier.
“I’ll never be perfect.” Her voice brimmed with melancholy, like the haunting notes of a low register wind chime.
Gannon waited for the theatrics to kick in.
“Your girlfriend told me I needed to quit doing all kinds of stuff if I wanted to be a Christian, and I can’t, so why not show everyone how awful I can be?” In the moonlight, he couldn’t judge the details of her face, but her speech was as clear as ever, and he smelled the wet, muddy scent of the lake, not alcohol. Their theory she’d been drinking had been wrong. She was sober. “But I didn’t want that, either, because you’d never even look at me again. So I went out for the most boring night of my life, then found out it didn’t matter. You wouldn’t let me back in, anyway.”
A decision he wouldn’t rehash, though rejecting her as he had tonight meant he might never have another chance to share his faith with her. His hope. “What did Adeline tell you to change?”
“Doesn’t matter. I can’t live like a puppet, even for you. Anyway, why would I? You never loved me. You’ve only loved her. Right?”
There must’ve been a true but kind way to answer, but before he found it, she continued.
“There’s nothing I can do. There’s never anything I can do.” Her posture curved, and she kept her gaze down and away instead of checking his reaction so she could adjust her act accordingly.
Harper English had broken.
John’s warning rang in his mind. Even if she appeared to need him, he couldn’t be Harper’s hero. As soon as he took on that responsibility, she’d pull herself together and infiltrate his life again. Had he already gone too far in seeking her out? He and Adeline were friends. Period. So this decision didn’t depend on what Adeline needed or wanted.
It was about him.
About whether he could trust God with Harper or felt he had to do all the work himself. About acknowledging that enabling Matt and Harper with his energy and friendship would never make up for the wrong he’d done Fitz.
