His Everlasting Love: 50 Loving States, Virginia by Theodora Taylor Read Free Book Online

No one out here, thanks to the recent rain.
    She walked as far away from the door as she could get and carefully pulled out her phone so she’d have an excuse if anyone came out there.
    Then for the first time in her entire life, she looked directly at Sawyer Grant on purpose.
    “My name isn’t Stork,” she said to him, her voice tight. “It’s Willa.”
    If she expected him to look chastened, she was mistaken. Instead his whole body sagged with relief as he said, “Oh God, thank you, Willa. Thank you. I thought I was going crazy.”
    “You’re not going crazy,” she said, her soft heart constricting because no one, not even Sawyer Grant, deserved the confusion that came with suddenly waking up in spirit form. “But you’re not exactly here either. You’ve been hurt, Sawyer. Bad. And you’re in a coma, somewhere between life and death…”
     
     
    HUGE, HUGE, STUPID MISTAKE, Willa thought to herself as she waited for Trevor in the car. Six years ago she’d felt compelled to help Sawyer with his undecided spirit problem. Just like she’d felt compelled to help him with his ghost leg now. Especially after she seen its specter, still attached below the cut off point. Strong and mutinous, refusing to believe it was long gone now, incinerated at some medical waste facility.
    Appearing to Willa just as real as its fully corporeal right counterpart, the ghost leg clung to the place where it had died. She could only imagine how much pain it must have been causing Sawyer all these years. That was why she hadn’t been able to keep herself from accepting his offer.
    It was one thing to give up her dream of becoming a physiatrist six years ago. It was another to completely ignore the skillset that had led her to apply for the Landstuhl fellowship in the first place. She knew she could help Sawyer with his leg. And in this, she and only she could help him. Again.
    But helping him six years ago had blown up in her face and the stakes were even higher this time around—
    The sound of the car’s back door opening cut off her panicked thoughts.
    She watched Trevor crawl into the seat and buckle himself in, flashing her a triumphant smile when he was done.
    “Now you say ‘Good Job, Trev,’” he instructed her.
    “Good job, Trev,” she said, indulging him. “You got a book for the center?”
    Of course he did. He waved her high school edition of Old Yeller at her from the back seat, “Pappy says this became his favorite book after you taught him to read.”
    Okay, still wildly inappropriate for someone at Trevor’s reading level. But at least they didn’t have a dog. So maybe this one wouldn’t give him nightmares, like when her mother decided it would be a good idea to introduce him to Animal Farm , even though one of Trevor’s chores used to be the daily feeding of Mr. Chekov, The recently deceased pack horse her grandfather had bought to pull his cart shortly before he died.
    But hopefully Old Yeller wouldn’t haunt Trevor like Animal Farm had. Like Sawyer continued to haunt her. Even more so, now that he was no longer a spirit.
    He’d looked so different standing in his doorway. Hair now shaved close to his head with a beard that didn’t look like it had been tended to in weeks. Same swamp mud eyes, but this Sawyer only bore a passing resemblance to the clean-cut SEAL who’d begged her to talk to him. And he’d been drinking too much, she could tell. From the bleary eyes and the lingering smell of alcohol mingling in with the scent of fresh soap.
    He was a hot mess and going through all the motions his father had set forth for him to cover it up.
    Yet, she could still feel it between them. The thing she’d tried so hard to ignore during their time together in Germany. Like a dangerous promise humming in the air.
    God, she couldn’t wait for the six weeks to be over. She reached over and started up the car.

6
    Apparently Willa couldn’t wait for their appointment.
    Sawyer grinned when the doorbell