TWO WEEKS AFTER the tornado, country music stars, professional fishermen and tourists crowded the downtown area of Slippery Rock.
Collin sat off to the side, watching people traipse around what used to be the abandoned warehouse but was now a staging area. He still didn’t understand how dropping everything to build a staging area for a fishing competition that was still months away was a better bet for Slippery Rock than rebuilding their existing businesses. He also didn’t buy the town council’s explanations about future tourism, bigger events and community theater. Frankly, Collin was tired of thinking about it.
If Amanda hadn’t wanted to come, he would be at the orchard today, watching the new saplings take root.
As it was, he sat in a folding chair between James, who was considering running for sheriff during the fall election cycle, and Levi, who was considering all the pretty, nonlocal girls wandering around the event area.
Collin tried to get interested in the girls, but none of them appealed. Their skin was too pale or their tans too fake, their hair too straight, their legs too short.
The truth was none of them was Savannah, and that annoyed the crap out of him.
What kind of fool was he that he was still hung up on a woman who had never been fully truthful with him?
You weren’t exactly truthful with her, either. The voice in his head was angry. Annoyed. Sexually deprived. You didn’t tell her everything about your past, so why hold her to a higher standard?
Because his past didn’t include an affair with a married man.
The crowd began to settle, and Savannah came onto the stage. She wore that blue dress she’d worn when he’d taken her to the restaurant overlooking the lake, but instead of strappy sandals, she’d paired the dress with cowboy boots. His heart caught in his chest. She looked pale. Sad. Nervous.
Beautiful.
He wanted to go up on stage and tell her everything would be okay. Add another layer of stupid to his hormones.
“Welcome to Slippery Rock, everyone,” she said, her voice booming through the speaker system. “I’m Savannah Walters, and my family owns a dairy farm just outside town called Walters Ranch.” The crowd applauded, and Savannah waited for them to calm down. A light breeze swept her hair to the side. “Some of you might also recognize me from a reality show competition, but today I am just here as a resident of Slippery Rock. I’d like to thank everyone who is helping us to rebuild our town.”
A stage worker brought a guitar on stage and Savannah slipped the shoulder strap over her head. Collin blinked. She was performing? He stood to go but Levi put his big hand on Collin’s arm, stopping him.
“You’re going to want to hear this,” he said, and as he had always followed Levi’s instructions since their football days, Collin sat.
“Before the real acts come out to entertain you, I’d like to ask a favor. My parents never got to see me perform in person on that reality show, and I’d like to remedy that now.” She strummed her hand over the strings and a light melody drifted into the night air.
Collin found himself transfixed. He’d heard Savannah sing several times on TV, and a few times in person when she didn’t realize she was singing. Like that day they’d planted the berry garden. He’d never once seen her use an instrument, though.
Her thin fingers worked the strings and, although her playing was tentative, it was as if she became part of the guitar, part of the stage.
He swallowed.
Savannah sang about a lost girl, unsure which direction to turn. “All this time, I was waiting for a rescue. I didn’t realize the rescuer was you.” Her fingers strummed, filling the air with her melody. “I didn’t realize I could rescue you, too.”
Collin searched out Mama Hazel in the crowd and saw tears tracking down her face. She was Savannah’s rescuer. Her mother had finally made Savannah see that she was worth saving, and it must have worked. If it hadn’t, she wouldn’t be on that stage, wouldn’t still be in Slippery Rock.
He drew in a breath. Loving Savannah wasn’t the problem. Allowing her to love herself? That was the problem. He’d wanted her to be like him, but she was a different person. Stronger maybe, because she had every reason in the world to leave this town and yet she had stayed.
“I’ll be back,” he said and left the table.
“Told him he’d want to stick around for this,” he heard Levi tell James before he was out of earshot.
Collin made his way around the staging area. Thunderous applause shook the ground when Savannah finished singing.
“Okay, okay, thanks for bearing with me. Now, give it up for Twila Jones,” she said, and the crowd went wild.
“Is that an amazing song or what? You better give me first crack at it for recording, girl,” Twila said, and then the music went hot as she started her set.
Collin didn’t know why he was back there, other than to make a fool of himself again. He needed to apologize to her. Needed to see for himself that Savannah was okay after that performance.
He crossed behind an extra set of stage lights and stopped short. Savannah sat atop an old wooden spool the builders must have left behind when they’d finished construction earlier that day. Her feet tapped along with the music and she swayed side to side.
He couldn’t see her face, but she seemed happy.
Collin sucked in a breath and started forward.
“Van,” he said, using her family’s nickname for her. She stiffened in her seat and then slowly turned to face him.
“Collin,” she said. Her voice was flat.
“Could we go somewhere to talk?”
She pointed to the main stage. “I’m kind of on the job,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the music.
“This won’t take long.”
She considered him for a long moment and Collin couldn’t help the feeling that she might somehow find him lacking. Too late now, he was here, and this needed to be said.
They left the area and crossed the street, passing by Bud’s and continuing along the new dock that had already been built to replace the one destroyed by the tornado. At the end, Collin gestured for Savannah to sit beside him.
Side by side, they stared at the middle of the lake for a long while. Twila’s set raced on behind them, the crowd hooting and hollering along with her songs about breakups and girls’ nights.
Finally, Savannah said, “Well, this was enlightening, Collin, thank you.”
She stood to go.
“I’m sorry.” He forced the words past his lips. These two, he knew, would be the hardest. He’d never liked admitting he was wrong and “I’m sorry” meant exactly that.
“For walking out on me? For repeatedly ignoring my calls and texts? For that day at the lake? Or the afternoon at the cabin or any of the days or nights we spent in the loft?”
He stood and turned to face her. “All of it,” he said, and when her face paled, he wanted to take the words back. He couldn’t take them back, though, because they were the truth. “I’m sorry that I walked out and for everything after. I’m sorry for starting all of this on a lie.” Savannah blinked. “I’m not who you think I am.”
“You’re Collin Tyler, Orchardist, Plum Tree Planter.”
He smiled and shook his head. “I’m all of those things. But I’m also an idiot who has a problem seeing any viewpoint that is different from his own.
“My father wasn’t a traveling salesman, and we didn’t come to live here because he was gone too often. Samson and Maddie Tyler weren’t cut out for parenting. They didn’t like the structure or the responsibility. From the time I was small, I can remember them leaving the three of us home alone. I was the oldest and so I was expected to care for Mara, and when Amanda came along, her, too. That way they could... I don’t know, go to Las Vegas or Mexico or whatever places sounded better then Kansas City or Tulsa or Little Rock or whatever town they decided to move us to.”
“How could they...how were they not reported?”
The smile he offered her was sad. “How could your biological parents get to the point they left you on the steps of a building? People abandon their children every day in a hundred different ways.”
“What happened?”
“I was ten. Maddie told me Samson had a job interview, but she had to drive him. I knew what that meant. They needed a break. She left two twenties on the table, told me to make sure we all got to school and to order pizza for dinner.
“When I woke up the next morning, Amanda had a fever, so I knew she couldn’t go to the babysitter’s. I told Mara we had a free day, and she hated school so she didn’t complain. What I didn’t account for were the ten days we’d already missed that year. The truancy officers banged on the door and they had a woman from children’s services with them. She slid her business card under the door.”
Savannah sat back down at the edge of the dock.
“We avoided the truancy officers and the aid worker, but the money Maddie left only lasted three days. By the fourth, it was impossible to keep the girls from crying, and I knew if anyone found us, we’d be taken and maybe separated. I knew if we weren’t together I couldn’t protect them.”
“My God, Collin, you were just a baby.”
“I’d seen Maddie pack this red book with us every time we moved, and I figured it had to be important. I thought maybe there was money hidden inside or something. There wasn’t. It was an address book. I called five numbers before I found anyone who admitted to knowing us. It was Gran and Granddad. They came to get us the next day and we’ve been here ever since.”
“But I’ve met your parents. Maddie and Samson.”
Collin nodded. “They come here from time to time, usually when they need money. Sometimes when they’re feeling nostalgic for family. Every time, they leave as suddenly as they came.”
Savannah didn’t say anything for a long moment. Collin gripped the dock tightly, his legs swinging a bit over the water.
“I know what it is to be abandoned, to not know why the people who are supposed to love you don’t. What I didn’t understand, not until tonight, was that I never allowed myself to truly feel that void. I had to be strong for my sisters, and then I wanted to make sure Granddad knew I was a good worker so he wouldn’t send us away.”
“I felt the void.”
“I know. And I should have realized it when we talked about it that night, but I couldn’t wrap my head around why you would blame yourself.”
“And now you do?”
He nodded. “Because I finally felt the void. Without you.”
* * *
SAVANNAH DIDN’T WANT to hear any more. Not about Collin’s parents, who had abandoned him not once but several times. Not about his determination to be strong for his sisters.
Definitely not the part about her being the cause of his void.
God, if he said that again she was going to crumble. She was going to fall into his arms and pretend he hadn’t shattered her when he’d walked out of the Slope that night. And when something happened that he didn’t like, he would leave and she would be shattered again. Only she wasn’t sure she could pick up those pieces again. Savannah wasn’t completely sure she’d picked them all up this time. There were still some jagged edges she kept scraping up against.
Edges like the way he looked sitting beside her. There was a vulnerability in his gaze she hadn’t seen before, and she thought she’d never seen anything sexier. And sexy was definitely not where she wanted this conversation to go.
“Don’t say that,” she said. “We were barely dating—”
“‘All this time, I was waiting for a rescue. I didn’t realize the rescuer was you. I didn’t realize I could rescue you, too’.”
“Don’t quote my song lyrics to me.” Don’t, Collin, please.
“You wrote that.” She could only nod. “You wrote it for your mom.” Savannah nodded again, wishing she could stand and walk away.
Why was it the guys who always did the walking? She wanted to be the one to walk. And yet, she stayed.
“I think it’s about you. I think you wrote it not about a mother who saves an unwanted child, but about the unwanted child finding worth in herself.”
“Stop.” Savannah couldn’t do this, not with Collin. Not when he was sitting there telling her what she was feeling after he’d walked out on her.
“You were always worthy, Van. It was the people around you who weren’t. I wasn’t.” He paused. “I didn’t want to admit that I needed anyone. I wanted to be that solo person, free from baggage and responsibilities, at least on a personal level. Turns out, I’d filled my life with responsibilities so that people would need me. So that I couldn’t be left behind. Gran and Granddad. My sisters.
“You didn’t need anything from me, so I pushed you away, and when I didn’t want to push you away anymore I convinced myself that I was what you needed. My solid, straightforward, Boy-Scout-wannabe persona would solve the problems of the wannabe country girl singer with anxiety.”
“You’re pretty good with that Boy-Scout thing.”
“I’ve practiced it nearly my entire life, I should be. I never admitted to myself that I needed you. I admired your spark and fire. Your willingness to change your life. I admitted that I love you, but I still didn’t want to need you.”
He said love. Savannah tried not to read anything into the word, but it roared through her veins like the winds that battered the cabin. Love was present tense. Love was possibility.
“I need you, Savannah Walters.”
Her hands trembled in her lap. She drew in a long breath. “I’m not the woman you need, Collin,” she said.
Savannah stood and walked off the dock.
When she crossed the street, Savannah ducked inside an open door leading into what used to be part of the farmers’ market. She leaned against the cool wall and tried to breathe.
Collin might think he needed her, but he was wrong. And she was too scared to take a chance on his being right. He couldn’t need her. No one needed the lost little seven-year-old with the dirty clothes.
“You can walk away a million times and I’ll come after you a million and one,” Collin said from behind her. He’d followed her into the cavernous room. “You don’t have to love me back, and you don’t have to need me the way I need you, but I want you to hear me. I need you, Savannah Walters. Not for sex, and not to volunteer in the orchard and not to give my baby sister advice on finding her purpose—”
“Technically, I was advising myself. She took it to mean her. I’m not sorry she took it as advice for herself, though, because every human being needs purpose.” She bit her lip. “I want you to know that.”
“Then I know it.”
His expression was earnest, his hands hanging loosely at his sides.
“How do I know you won’t just walk out again?”
“How do I know you won’t?” Collin reached across the space between them and took her hand.
The touch sent a jolt of awareness through her that settled into a warm buzz.
“What I know about you is that you are strong. You were left alone in the cold when you were seven. It cracked you, but it didn’t break you. When my parents walked out, it broke me. Every single time. And until I walked out of the Slope the other night, I didn’t realize how badly. Because what you did before we were together, it’s the past. We all have regrets, Van, and I don’t want us to be a regret.”
Savanna looked up, focused on him for a long moment. “You don’t mean that. What I did—”
He cut her off. “The baggage we carry shapes us, but it doesn’t have to define us. I don’t want mine to define me, not any longer. I want to define myself. With you.”
His hand was gentle along her jaw and Savannah leaned into the soft caress.
“I can’t change the past or how it affected me.” She swallowed. “Walking onto that stage this afternoon took every ounce of courage I have. I don’t have any left to walk away from you.”
“Then have the courage to just stand,” he said. “I can promise you, I’ll stand right here with you.”
Savannah looked into his eyes. And though her impulse was to run, she stood still.