Tyler had only received detention for the transgression—he was on the football team, after all—and William had left Antelope Grove, rumored to have transferred to a private school. She remembered being relieved that he was gone. Mostly because Tyler would leave him alone. No other guys at school looked twice at Sadie after that.
She considered William’s small, young face in the yearbook. He was wearing wire-rimmed glasses, his dark, curly hair raising like an aura over his head, and his lips pulled into a goofy smile. It was hard for Sadie to reconcile that boy with the man with whom she’d spent the past month.
Dropping the yearbook on the floor, Sadie walked over to the bed and crawled under the covers, her legs moving against the cold, crisp sheets a couple of times. Reaching over to the nightstand, she picked up her phone and, without thinking too hard about it, tapped Liam’s name.
Holding the phone up to her ear, she only heard it ring once before he answered it.
“Sadie.” His voice was thick with emotion and relief. He’d obviously been awake, too.
“I can’t sleep,” she said quietly, turning over to lie on her side, staring through the window again.
“Me neither,” he admitted gruffly. “How are you?”
“Are you at your parents’ house?” she asked, not answering his question.
“Yes.”
“What’s the address?”
He rattled off a street address just a couple blocks from her parents’ house, and Sadie burst out a disbelieving laugh. “I’m on Christie Street. I want you to come over.”
“Now? It’s one in the morning. Why don’t we meet up for coffee tomorrow?”
“256 Christie. I’ll leave the kitchen door unlocked. I’m upstairs in the first door on the right. My parents are asleep, so don’t make any noise.”
Sadie hung up and waited for him to call or text her and tell her she was crazy. But the seconds ticked by and her phone didn’t make a sound. She slipped soundlessly out of bed and tiptoed down the stairs to unlock the kitchen door.
Returning to her bed, she settled under the covers again and waited. After not being able to sleep for so long, her eyes started drooping, and she worried she’d doze off. But when she heard the faint sounds of the kitchen door opening, followed by telling creaks on the stairs, her senses jumped to attention.
When the door to the bedroom opened, Sadie lay completely still and held her breath.
“Sadie,” he whispered. “Please tell me you’re in here.”
She continued holding still for a few more beats, barely breathing, before she decided to put him out of his misery. Abruptly, she flopped her hands on top of her blanket and sat up straight.
“I’m in here,” she announced, her voice coming out a normal volume.
Sighing in relief, he walked further into the room, carefully closing the door behind him. As he walked toward the bed, though, he tripped on the yearbook. Sadie watched as he leaned down and picked it up from the floor.
He studied it before looking up at her, his questioning face bright in the moonlight. “You were looking at this?” he asked, walking the rest of the way to the bed and sitting down.
“Yeah,” Sadie responded, lying back down in bed and looking up at him curiously.
“So do you remember me?” he asked, setting the yearbook gently on the nightstand and lying down next to her.
“I do,” she admitted succinctly.
“When it all came out last week … I wondered.”
She looked over at him to see that he was on his side, staring at her, a desperation in his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
“It never felt right.” He paused before pressing his lip together and looking at her inquisitively. “If you remember me but you didn’t recognize me?”
Sadie shifted her gaze away from his face and inhaled a deep breath, an uncertainty shrouding her judgment. “You look so different, Liam,” she said softly. “And to be honest, I didn’t think of you much after you left Antelope Grove, so it just … never occurred to me.” The lie went down like a giant pill, settling uncomfortably in her stomach.
It wasn’t completely untrue—shehadn’trecognized him, but she had thought about him in the years since high school, mostly when Tyler said something cruel or treated someone badly.
Why am I with this person?she’d think, sitting at a restaurant with him while he berated a waiter. And without fail, an image of Tyler beating on William’s helpless, still form would flash through her mind while she had just … stood there.