I Hear...Love (A Different Road #2) (3 page)

Tonight the beach is relatively empty because of the cooler temperature and the threat of rain. I did notice a petite woman with long, brunette hair, in white, standing just at the water’s edge when we jogged by though.

On our walk back, it starts to sprinkle as I throw a stick far into the water. As Sadie comes out of the water, it starts to pour and we both start running back toward the house. Just before my house, I notice that the woman is still standing in the exact same spot as when we first jogged by. She hasn’t moved at all, but now she’s mid-shin deep in the water. Instead of Sadie running with me to the house, she takes off running along the shoreline toward the woman. I’m surprised Sadie wasn’t going through withdrawals with the lack of people on the beach, but leave it to her to run toward the only person on the beach in a downpour.

“Sadie!” I call.

No surprise, she ignores me. Sadie is in a full-on gallop toward the woman and I’m afraid at this speed, she’s going to knock the woman over. I speed up my pace as she continues to quickly approach the woman. The closer I get, I see that the woman is drenched, and her white skirt and tank top are completely soaked and stuck to her body. Her petite frame shivers as Sadie comes almost to a complete stop next to her, then she looks up at the woman. She then gently places her nose in the woman’s hand and leaves it there. I’ve never seen Sadie do anything like this before.

“Sadie!” I call, again.

Sadie is usually on the hyper-friendly side, nosing her way in between people, or helping herself to their beach towel, but I slow my jog down to a walk when I see how gentle Sadie is being with this woman. The woman looks down at Sadie, who is now beautifully heeled to her left side, then she smiles at her. I don’t know what it is about the woman’s smile, but as beautiful as it is, it’s also laced with a thousand sorrows. And since when does Sadie heel? I’ve had her in at least ten obedience classes and she’s never heeled for me, not to mention she’s even on the correct side. Don’t get me wrong, Sadie is completely obedient and knows every command, but it’s usually on her terms, not mine.

The woman’s hand gently strokes Sadie’s head, and she rests it on the woman’s thigh. She continues to stroke Sadie’s ear as she sits perfectly still. It’s almost as if Sadie knows this woman.

It couldn’t be. Is this Sadie’s owner? My heart sinks at the thought. I don’t know if after having Sadie for two years that I could give her back.

“Come on Sadie, it’s time to go home,” the soaking wet man gently calls to his dog.

I look down at the beautiful black dog that I’m guessing is named Sadie, and she whines in my hand again. She gently nudges me again, but doesn’t remove her nose from my hand.

“This isn’t your dog, is it?” he asks cautiously, coming closer.

Wait? What? This isn’t my dog? What in the hell is this guy on? They jogged down the beach together not thirty minutes ago and he calls her Sadie. He has her leash in his hand, that clearly matches the pink collar with black skulls on it around her neck, and he’s asking me if this is my dog? Just as I finish that thought, the rain completely stops.

“Uh . . . no,” I answer, looking at him like he’s crazy, then I shiver.

Instant relief washes over his face, then it quickly turns to one of concern.

“Do you live close by? I think we should get you home before you catch pneumonia,” he says.

“I just live back there,” I say, pointing in the general direction of River’s house. “I was just about to head home when Sadie and I here became friends,” I continue, looking down toward Sadie, stroking the top of her head.

“We’ll walk you home,” he offers, then Sadie stands on all fours and removes her snout from my hand.

“Really, it’s not that far,” I insist.

Sadie noses her face back into my hand and whines as her soulful eyes look up at me.

“I think Sadie insists we walk you home,” he says with a chuckle. “I’m Cooper Sullivan,” he continues, holding out his hand toward me.

“Kate Mason,” I say, removing my hand from around Sadie’s nose, then placing it in his with a firm handshake.

“Your fingers are like icicles,” he says, wrapping his other hand around my hand to warm it.

My hand instantly warms, as well as my cheeks, and I smile up at him. I study the features of his face and he’s quite a handsome man. He’s probably in his late twenties. He has medium brown hair and striking green eyes. He has a sprinkling of short, dark stubble low on his sharp jawline and chin, and short stubble just above his lip that is tipped up into a gorgeous smile.

“Is this you?” he asks, stopping at River’s back deck.

I hadn’t even realized that we had walked back to the beach house. Sadie prances up the stairs, turns around on the top step, then looks at us, and sits down.

“Oh, ah, yes,” I say and start to walk up the wooden steps.

When we reach the top Sadie stands up, then goes to the back wall of doors at River’s house, smooshes her nose on the impeccably clean glass, and wags her tail.

“I’m in the pool house,” I say, pointing in that direction. “This is my brother River’s house,” I continue.

“Wait?” he says, looking toward River’s wall of doors. “Not
the
River Mason of Mason Group, River Mason?” he asks.

“That’d be him,” I confirm with a nod.

“That’s funny. Sadie and I actually met him and a pretty brunette down at the beach not that long ago. Well, Sadie does what she does best, and she more introduced herself by nosing her way onto their blanket, trying to eat their ice cream,” he says, chuckling.

“That was probably his girlfriend, Joss. She lives here too,” I say.

Just then a bright flash of lightning streaks across the sky, quickly followed by a huge crack of rolling thunder. Cooper practically jumps out of his skin. Sadie tucks her long tail between her legs and positions herself between Cooper’s legs, while I look up at the sky and smile. I absolutely love the sound of thunder. It’s another one of the few things loud enough to cover up the sounds in my head. The only bad thing about thunder is it only lasts a few seconds.

Cooper quickly looks at me to see if I saw him jump, but his face quickly turns up in a smile when he takes in my delight. Sadie comes to my side and puts her nose in my hand like she did down at the beach. Then, just as quick as the first, another bolt of lightning lights up the sky with jagged streaks, then the sky opens up and it starts to pour.

“Come on, Sadie. We better get home,” Cooper calls loudly, over the sound of the rain hitting the deck.

“Thank you for walking me home,” I shout, as they both jog down the steps.

The rain is coming down in sheets sideways, and I can barely see them as they disappear down the beach. I open the door to the beach house, run inside, then quickly close it. Once inside, I lean against the door and bring my thumb between my teeth and smile. Rain drips down my face and off my chin, as I think that it was really nice of Sadie and Cooper to walk me home.

There’s something really special about Sadie. She pulled me out of my dark place when she put her nose in my hand, and her eyes . . . her eyes were captivating. I saw something in them that I’ve never seen in another human being. They held understanding, compassion, and a healing power I’ve never seen or felt before.

The thunder that follows the last streak of lightning, is muffled by the door being closed, so I turn around and crack the door open. I take in a huge breath of the cleansing, rain-filled air, then I sit down on my ass just inside the door to enjoy the thunder.

After about an hour, the storm passes. I get off the floor, grab a tank top and comfy shorts then head into my luxurious en-suite bathroom to take a hot shower. I grab the remote off the marble counter and click on the radio. After I moved into River’s pool house, he did some remodeling to make me feel more at home. He upgraded the small kitchenette with all new appliances and counter tops, he added new furniture throughout the house, spruced up my bedroom with all new bedding and decorations, and had the bathroom completely made over. He had a state of the art shower enclosure installed with a built-in speaker system. Not only are there speakers in the ceiling, but there’s one in the shower stall as well. River knows how important music is to me and I love him for that. There isn’t a room in the house that I go into that doesn’t have a speaker in the ceiling.

After my shower, I climb in my comfortable bed, switch on the television for the flicker of light, place my headphones on my ears, and crank up my favorite satellite radio station. Simply having the television on by itself isn’t enough sound for me. In order to fall asleep, I need the noise to be loud and as close to my ears as I can get it. I don’t sleep much as it is, but in order to fall asleep, I need it loud enough to shut up the phantom noises in my head.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve never needed much sleep. I can fully function on as little as four hours of sleep a night. I think it’s both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because I can function on that little amount of sleep, but it’s a curse because every waking minute is a struggle for me to consciously fight the turmoil that goes on in my head.

I have a routine, and if I stick to it, most days I can fight the good fight with my doubts, the noises in my head, my self-worthlessness, the guilt, and the urge to down a bottle of pills.

Pills . . . that’s my poison.

A little over a year ago, I lost the good fight. I let the voices of the past and the thoughts in my head take over, and they consumed me. I talked myself into believing that everyone would be better off if I weren’t here. I felt like I didn’t deserve to live. The voices and noises in my head became too loud to hear the voices of hope and reason. My head crowded with too many words, too many screams, and too many noises, that it consumed me and emptied my heart of everything good.

I felt like I was taking the coward’s way out, but none of that mattered. None of anything mattered.

I am my own worst enemy.

I wrote a letter to River, and I asked him for his forgiveness for killing our parents and for being the reason that he’s blind. I took a bottle of my roommate’s prescription strength painkillers from her bathroom medicine cabinet, then I sat on the floor in the middle of our family room with a bottle of water. As I sat there, the screams of my mother, the gurgling of my father, the guilt, all the words jumbled together and started chanting at me, telling me to grow a pair and finally do what I deserve. River’s cornflower blue eyes morphed into aquamarine, then turned black. I grabbed my hair with both fists and pulled as hard as I could to try to get them to stop.

There was no hope.

There was no forgiveness.

I felt no love.

I was dead inside.

I twisted the top off the amber colored bottle and poured a handful of pills into my palm.

I didn’t even hesitate.

I believed those tiny, white pills were the only thing that could shut it all up and make it all just stop. I begged them to make it stop.

I slapped my palm over my open mouth and swallowed as many as I could dry, then forced them down with water. I choked on the bitterness and regurgitated them back up my throat, but swallowed it back down. None of them could go to waste. I poured another handful of pills, then swallowed those too. Some went flying past my face and bounced on the floor by my side. I repeated palmful after palmful of pills until the bottle was empty. I held the bottle up in the air and I swear, I saw a ray of hope at the bottom. I picked up as many stray pills as I could find on the floor, put them in my mouth, then I gulped down more water to make sure they were all good and swallowed. I needed to make sure that what I had taken was enough to get the job done.