Page 96 of Secret Surrender (Harlow)

Forty-Three

Dean had returned to Harlow to pack up his life and let Sarah go—but seeing her now, seeing what he’d put her through—he couldn’t just leave. His future quite literally backed away from him, her jaw trembling and skin flushed from her tears. Even as his conscience screamed that he didn’t deserve another chance, he would grasp at one, anyway. Because he loved her. Because she was the culmination of what he’d been headed toward his entire, miserable life.

I don’t want to look at you at all.

Those words latched to his soul like rusty old hooks, a long-worn ache drawing him to her with the knowledge that backing away would only intensify his pain. She never wanted to see him again. Frankly, why would she? Yet, she didn’t turn away. Didn’t run through the night to throw herself into her car and leave him in the dust of Maynard’s nearby parking lot.

“We don’t need to do this.” His voice took on a life of its own. Despite all her justified anger, she’d softened in his arms just seconds ago. That meant something, didn’t it?

He spoke some more, hoping to get through to her. “Please, Sarah.”

“Let it go, Dean.” Her voice came out weak and husky, and her halting retreat betrayed her words. “Just let it go.”

“I can’t.” The buckling resignation in his tone surprised him, but then of all the things that had happened in his life, this one left him the most helpless.

He strode closer. She jolted and blinked, then shook her head as if coming to her senses and turned away.

“No one here will ever forget what you did.” She stalked away, and he trekked the several yards to her car where she wrenched her driver’s side door open and played out his worst nightmare. “They’ll hate me even more if I stick by your side.”

She pulled a water bottle from the holder in her door and took a swig, swishing the water about in her mouth before spitting it to the ground. The action doused his moment of panic that she might leave, all whilst igniting a light within him, one that made the corners of his lips twitch. Her water swigging and spitting wasn’t exactly ladylike, but he didn’t want ladylike, he wanted her. Her with all her brash and fragile confidence. The strength and beauty he’d rightly gleaned off her that first night.

She paused, staring at him, her brows knitting together while she took a slow and proper drink from her bottle. “I can’t believe I just puked in front of you.”

A small laugh escaped him, her comment another sliver of hope, even though his heart clenched at what he’d done. He’d put her in a dangerous situation. Failed to live up to his promise to keep her safe. The puking and crying and unmissable fear… he’d put her in a position where she’d genuinely believed she would die. And if Ramos hadn’t intervened, maybe she would have died.

She stared at him, her eyes narrowed as though she read what went on in his head. “You’re asking for the impossible.”

Despite the sinking feeling opening up in his chest, he drew closer and pulled the water bottle from her hands, tossing it into the car, before putting his finger under her chin, and forcing her to look at him. “You took me home that night at the soiree thinking there was no way we would become more. You were sure we wouldn’t work. But we do work, Sarah. When there are no external forces in our way, we work damn well. Isn’t that what all this has been about all along? Doing the impossible?”

She shook her head. “Not like this.”

“No. I understand that. And I will spend the rest of my life apologizing to you and the rest of this town for what happened, but Sarah…” He shifted his hand from her chin and cupped her face. “Do you really want our lives to go back to what they were before we met?”

Her posture sank and she broke eye contact, her gaze drifting to some lower point. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe?”

A small scoff escaped him, though not at her indecision so much as his reaction to the inescapable truth. “You know, there’s not a damn thing either of us can do to return to who we were before. Both of us, we’re changed, though maybe that’s not such a bad thing. I can’t speak for you, but I don’t want to go back. Not for anything. Especially not without you.”

Her expression dropped, but the tension around her eyes suggested an element of internal conflict. He knew this woman, could feel the defiance flowing from her.

“You don’t know me as well as you think.”

But just as Ramos had learned, she was a fighter, and she didn’t give up or take the easy way out of difficult moments, and Dean honed in on that trait.

“I know you were lonely.” He stroked his thumb over her cheekbone, trying to smooth out the strain. “Just as I was lonely. As bad as this all is, we match. In some crazy, unexplainable way, we match.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know if it’s enough.”

Even with that denial, she leaned her cheek into him, hinting that she wanted him to convince her. “Sarah, tell me what I have to say to get you back.”

“What can you say that will make everyone in Harlow, much less me, accept your apology or forget?” Her expression crumpled, and she tore her focus off him once again. “And the worst part is, I still want to. I still want to believe you’re a good man, that your past never came out to hurt me and the people I love. How am I supposed to forget any of that?”

Her question cut him like a knife to the heart, the sharp sting eclipsing the miracle that she even still spoke to him. “You won’t forget. Neither will they. I sure as hell never will.” He paused, questioning whether he did the right thing, but there seemed no other future than the one he wanted with her, that future the only thing he’d ever truly wanted. “But there is something you’ve always known.”

She tilted her head and gave him a sidelong stare. “What’s that?”

“That even before my past came back for revenge, that past is mostly all stuff that happened to me, not who I am. I was never anyone other than the man you met. The man you fell in love with.”

Her expression stilled, only to widen in a suggestion of shock. “I’m not—”

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