Keepsake (True North, #3)

by Sarina Bowen

“Really? This is our only moment of privacy, and you want to talk? Have I taught you nothing?”

“There are scars. It’s not the best-looking part of me.” Her head tipped to the side, and her gaze was soft. “I know, cutie. I felt them. But there is no ugly part of you.”

“I have scars,” she said quietly. “Mine don’t show.” “I know,” I whispered, stroking her foot. “I hope they heal up so you can’t feel them anymore. Mine don’t hurt now. I never think about them.”

“Tell me what you want,” she whispered. “Everything.” “No, be specific. I want to hear how your dirty mind works.”

It was entirely possible that I was about to become the first man to ever burst into flames in a bathtub.

When I looked into her big-eyed gaze I saw my own desperation reflected back at me. The need we had for each other was bottomless.

The dragons in my heart blew their noxious breath. Again. And now I was too tired to hold them back. I needed to leave Vermont before I caused this beautiful man any further pain.

I was still so angry at her for pushing me away. This was my first broken heart, and I didn’t know how to mend it.

“I’m a wreck.” “I noticed.” I rocked her against my chest. “I’ve been a wreck, too. It doesn’t last forever.”

I was good for her. I was. But my love wasn’t enough to cure the problem, no matter how much I wished it was.

“You shouldn’t love me,” she whispered. I rocked her in my arms. “Too late.”

“Everyone has a time when they need a lot more than they can give. It doesn’t matter how much you hate it. It’s just true.”

“Four years ago,” I cut her off. “I hitchhiked two thousand miles from Wyoming to Vermont with strangers. I begged for food, Lark. I knocked on strangers’ doors, and I asked if they had anything I could eat. And then I showed up at Isaac’s door with nothing. Not even shoes. I hated doing that. It made me feel like useless garbage. But sometimes there’s no choice.”

“I can handle it, Lark. Just lean on me. I’ll be your Apostate Farm.”

“Don’t,” I said as the first tear slid down my face. They didn’t listen, though. Four arms braced me as I fell apart, right there on the grass beside the cider house. The first sob sort of broke a dam inside me I hadn’t known I had. I’d never cried before. Not that I could remember, anyway.

But saying goodbye to Lark hurt me in an entirely new way. Like I was bleeding and didn’t know if I could stop. Didn’t know if I even wanted to. So I just bled my tears out onto the Shipleys’ soil, while they tried to say all the right things.

Look at the heavens and see; And behold the clouds—they are higher than you.

“Maybe not at first. But Zach needed you, too. He needed to know how it felt to love someone he didn’t owe. He had his own burdens to unload.”

Sometimes the end of a stage in your life doesn’t announce itself with trumpets or fireworks. Sometimes it just seeps in, like the smell of snow on the air as fall gives way to winter.

“I didn’t walk into your life so much as I sort of splattered into it—a hot mess, ready to blow. You deserved better, even if I was doing the best I could at the time.”

“Everything that happened to me almost seems worth it when you’re sitting in my kitchen. Because I love you, Zach.”

“You’re so much more than part of a bad memory. I love you, and even if my life is kind of a mess right now, I still want you in it.”