but I knew it had all started with me, and that I’d been negligent in letting it be printed at all. I was the chief. The fact that that had gotten past me was unacceptable. The buck, so to speak, stopped here.
As a result of me being asleep at the wheel, I’d destroyed Haven, and Easton too. Dear Jesus. I pictured the wounded looks in their eyes, the way they’d both tried so desperately to hold on to their pride and only barely managed to do it. Two people who’d been unwanted all their lives. It felt so . . . callous. Heartless.
All things I’d been called before. And rightly so.
I’d collected all the flyers, telling the crowd they were a mistake, but it was pointless by then. The whole place was buzzing, debate springing up about whether calling out individuals for misdeeds was right or wrong. I’d been too sick about it to engage, my head spinning uselessly with ways I could fix this.
Bree and Archer had approached me, the looks on their faces such stark examples of disappointment that I’d wanted to sink into the floor.
It would have been easy to place the blame on Spencer, and on Birdie Ellis too, but I’d always taken the easy way out, and I sensed, on some cosmic level, that this was my final lesson.
Lose it all, or lose it all.
I’d come to the crossroads, both paths seemingly leading in the same direction.
I looked out the front window of my truck, raindrops streaking over the glass and blurring the old red barn, misery tracking through my veins.
I hadn’t slept a wink and as soon as the sun rose, I’d driven here, trying to grasp some peace, some clarity. Because all I kept seeing was her expression the moment she realized what she was holding.
The look on her face had ripped my heart to shreds, the way she’d stood there, the judgmental eyes of all of Pelion upon her. The place she’d considered such a dream. The place that had brought her peace.
Raindrops streaked, clouds rolled by, and I couldn’t avoid another harsh truth.
Archer had felt that way once upon a time too.
I’d been part of it.
I deserved to feel like this.
Haven did not.
And neither did Easton for that matter.
The flyer had highlighted Easton’s transgressions, but I knew the list had hurt Haven just as deeply, because she loved him. And they’d both been there to ask for acceptance from the town. I let out a staggered breath. The thing was . . . I knew what reading a list like that must feel like because I’d been him. I’d done things purposely to hurt people. I’d left destruction in my wake, and for longer than two years. But unlike him, I’d been embraced, not shunned. I’d been given a second chance. Hell, I’d been given more than a second chance. I’d been offered not only acceptance, but love.
But I’d wanted what had happened at that meeting, or some version of it anyway, not so long ago.
They’d been there to join the community, to be part of something. To risk asking for acceptance when risk was so very difficult for people who’d been through what they had. I’d known the reason they were there the second I’d seen her and it had sent happiness whirling dizzily inside me. I wanted to know how and why and when she’d arrived at the decision because even before she’d seen the things written about them, she looked like she’d been crying. I knew the choice had taken immense courage. Her eyes had been red and swollen but there had been such raw hope on her face.
“Idiot, idiot, idiot,” I murmured, sitting up straight.
The rest of the photo albums my mother had given me still sat on my passenger seat and I picked one up, leafing through it idly, seeing photos of my father and me as a baby and then as a little boy, photos that stopped after the one of me in front of a cake with seven candles on it.
Why are you doing this? To torture yourself? For the reminder that you’re not worthy of anyone’s love?
To remember why he left?
I closed the album. The only other amendment to the original land deed had stuck to the top and I glanced at it. I’d already read it. It posed no threat to Archer so there was no need to burn it. If anything, it posed a threat to me, but I wasn’t concerned.