Dare Me(74)

When the thermometer beeps, Brent reaches over her and plucks it from my mouth. Ninety-five point two.

My mom shakes her head, displeased. “Take it again in five minutes. If it doesn’t go up, she’s going to the hospital.” Standing up, she paces the living room floor. Brent starts a fire in the fireplace, and my mom takes my temperature again, then she sits on the edge of the couch and gently massages my arm.

“Ninety-five point eight,” she says quietly with a concerned smile on her face.

“I’m fine,” I reassure her. “Just need to warm up.” My teeth chatter, but I force a small smile. We all sit silently in the living room, Brent and my mom taking turns checking on me until sometime in the middle of the night, I give in to my exhaustion.



“Morning, Piglet,” Brent mumbles between sips of coffee. He rocks slowly in his recliner and rubs his eyes. I can hear pans clanking against each other in the kitchen, and I can smell the aroma of biscuits and gravy wafting through the air.

“Did you stay up all night?” I ask, stretching my arms over my head, finally able to move them without extreme pain.

“I dozed off for a bit,” he admits.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him.

He shakes his head slowly and swallows hard. I push myself up to a sitting position and rest my back against the arm of the couch.

He sets his coffee down before he speaks. “You scared us.”

“I know.” I instantly feel guilty thinking about how he and my mom must have felt. The same way we all felt ten years ago. “I didn’t try to—”

“I know,” he cuts me off. “But it’s always in the back of our heads, Saige.” He uses his feet to shove the footrest of the recliner back into place, and he leans forward in his chair. “Look. I know it’s been a rough couple of days for you.”

“Days?” I mutter.

“Days, years . . . whatever, Saige.” He raises his arms and drops them again in agitation. “We get it. We do. And there is no easy way to say this, but we’re all still hurting. Michael was more like a brother to me than a brother-in-law. Losing him was hard on all of us, but Saige, we can’t change what he did. That was his choice. We have to live and move forward.” He rakes his hand over his cheek.

I absorb what he’s saying, exactly what Holt told me. I close my eyes against the sting of tears forming, and I nod my head. I’m barely able to choke out. “I know.” Both of them are right. I do need to move on, but letting go of the grief feels like letting go of my father and I’m not sure I’m ready to let him go yet.

“Then give him a chance, Saige.” He leans back into the recliner. “That man flew to North Dakota to apologize to you.”

“Would you forgive him?” I ask, feeling that anger and bitterness rise up in me again.

He looks at me long and hard. His mouth opens to speak, but then he closes it. He rakes his hand over his face before he finally finds his words. “No one is perfect, Saige. I’m far from it. I know you’re not going to like my answer, but yes. Yes, I’d forgive him. I’d give him another chance, and the opportunity to make it right.”

I sigh. “What if I don’t want to?” Because I’m hurt, because I’m angry . . . because I’m scared.

Brent’s normally hard face softens. “Then you’re letting the best thing that’s ever happened to you get away.”

I swallow hard and take in the depth of his words. “You like him that much, huh? Enough to believe him?”

He nods his head slowly. “Enough to know that he’s crazy about you and he’s tried to make it right. It’s on you now, Saige.”

It’s on me, I think to myself, inhaling deeply.





Saige

I drop my last suitcase by the back door and throw myself into a chair at the kitchen table. Brent looks over the top of his coffee mug at me as I let out a deep sigh.

“What time is your flight?” he grumbles, setting down his mug.

Mom shuffles back and forth between the kitchen island and the table, setting down plates of bacon and bowls of scrambled eggs and fruit. One last home-cooked meal before I head back to Chicago.

“Noon.” I take a sip of orange juice as Brent reaches over the table to pour me a mug of coffee.

“Have you talked to him since he left?” Mom asks casually while she stacks pancakes from the griddle onto a platter.

“No. I haven’t checked any of my messages.”

“Saige, you’ve been here for almost three weeks,” Mom scolds me.

“I needed to disconnect, and I really needed this time to think; not be distracted by text messages and social media.”

Brent grabs a piece of bacon and takes a bite, commenting with a full mouth, “Well, I think that’s a good thing. Social media is a f*cking waste of time anyway.”

“You sound like such an old man.” I toss my napkin across the table at him and roll my eyes. We laugh together, and Mom finally sits down at the table to join us. As we eat breakfast, we talk and laugh, and for the first time that I can remember, I feel content. I feel at peace. I look around the kitchen and my heart feels like it’s slowly rebuilding itself, broken piece by broken little piece.

Whatever awaits me back in Chicago is yet to be seen. I’m anxious to move back to the city that I love so much and move forward with my life.