Soul Searching: A Sweetwater Peak Novel

by Lyla Sage

For better or worse, my sister was my other half. She was my rock, even if I wasn’t hers. Maybe I was her wind—something that blew in and out as it pleased and made messes. But every once in a while, maybe I pushed something in the right direction. Or perhaps that was just wishful thinking.

“I like a bare-minimum day every once in a while,” I said. “You’re talking to a girl whose entire life is held together by bare minimums,” she said.

I didn’t want to explore the world anymore. I didn’t want to take pictures. I didn’t want to try and fix my life. I didn’t want to do anything.

She opened the passenger door, but I reached over her shoulder and pushed it shut before grabbing the handle myself and pulling the door open. “Well, that wasn’t boring,” she muttered before looking back at me and then hopping in the truck. Boring? She thought I was boring?

“God, you must think I’m crazy.” “Kind of,” I said truthfully. “But you think I’m boring.” “You’re less boring today,” she said, not even trying to deny it. “The day is still young, though. You have time to revert.”

Okay, only one of us was doing the avoiding. I don’t think Collins gave me a second thought, but I gave her a lot of thoughts.

“I can’t believe this is the second time you’ve seen me cry behind this stupid shop.” “Do you want me to cry, too?” I asked. “Try and even the score a bit.”

Her body was angled toward mine and her arm was on the back of the couch, and she was looking at me with her head resting on her palm. If I moved my knee two inches, I’d bump her. I moved my knee.

“My dad always says, ‘Today, you rest. Tomorrow, you fight.’ He said it whenever Clarke and I were struggling with something.”

But of course, it all came back to Collins. I thought about her constantly. I was pretty much desperate to always have her mouth on mine, even though it would inevitably result in my untimely death because, for some reason, kissing her made me forget to breathe. But if I died while kissing Collins, I’d die a happy man. Fuck, I was down bad.

It made me think of the ghosts—how they were anchored to places. When Brady’s hands were on me in any way, it felt like he was my anchor—the thing holding me to the ground so I didn’t float away.

“That does sound pretty great. But…do you want to go somewhere with me?” I asked, softly. “No murders took place there that I know of.” “That’s not as comforting as you think it is,” Brady said. “Another Collins spot?” “For now,” I nodded. “It’s about to be a Collins and Brady spot, just like the rest of them, though.”

“You really do love this town, don’t you?” I thought about that for a second. Anytime someone had asked me that previously, I answered with a sharp, resounding no. It felt like a defense mechanism—a way to avoid how much I missed it when I was gone and to make leaving easier when I came back. But as I had been revisiting these places that I had called my own, I felt different. Or maybe I felt the same, and this was the first time I had gotten out of my own way enough to see it. This place built me—for better or worse. It was the place I left to find myself, but it was also the place I came back to, so I could do the same thing.

“Do you believe in fate?” she asked in response. “That people can be tied together by something bigger?” “That’s quite a question for nine a.m.” Collins smiled at me. “I just…I wonder if every decision I’ve ever made was leading me to you,” she said, and my hammer slipped out of my hand. I didn’t even hear it hit the floor. “I know mine led me to you,” I said quietly. I’d never been more sure of anything—the discovery in the cellar only confirmed it. Collins came into my life exactly when I needed her—when I needed something to hope for and something to push me forward, and she did that for me years before I met her on that stormy night.