Page 21 of Unearthed Dreams (Sable Point #3)

Chapter Eighteen

KAI

Seven days.

That was all it took for my entire world to shift on its axis.

Seven days of stolen kisses and quiet laughter, of watching Charlie work on her novel with that adorable furrow between her brows, of falling asleep to the sound of her steady breathing.

The peace I’d found in these simple moments was foreign to me—dangerous in its perfection.

I’d never known this kind of contentment could exist. With Kelsey, everything had been chaos and passion, a constant storm of emotions. But Charlie brought calm. She filled my space with warmth instead of darkness, with possibility instead of regret.

The past week had settled into an easy rhythm.

She’d slip through my back door after the bar closed, laptop tucked under her arm and wearing a shy smile that was just for me.

We’d developed a routine—she’d work on her revisions while I did inventory, then we’d curl up in my bed where I’d read whatever book she’d pressed into my hands that day .

I stood in the kitchen, sipping from my mug of coffee while she worked, laying on her stomach in my bed, laptop open.

The screen cast a soft glow across her face as she looked up from her writing, those blue eyes sparkling with curiosity.

“You know how in books, they describe the way characters smell? Like, ‘he smells like pine and snow.’”

I kept sipping my coffee, trying to ignore how adorable she looked when she got caught up in her writer’s mind. “Sure.”

“How would you write what I smell like?”

I cocked my head to the side, fighting back a grin. “You want me to sniff you?”

Her cheeks flushed pink, and she fidgeted with the corner of her laptop. “Well, no, I just thought?—”

The wooden floorboards creaked under my bare feet as I crossed the room, drawn to her like a magnet.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

I crouched in front of her, my fingers trembling slightly as I swept her silky hair over her shoulder.

The scent of her shampoo teased my senses, but I wanted more.

I leaned in close, letting the tip of my nose trace up the slender column of her neck as I dragged in a deep breath.

Her pulse fluttered beneath my lips, and my cock stiffened.

“Mmm. So sweet. Like strawberries and sugar.”

My phone vibrated on the nightstand, shattering the moment. The screen lit up with Pineview Cottage.

Fuck.

“Hello?”

“Hi Kai, it’s Gladys.” Her usual warmth was muted, setting my teeth on edge. “I’m afraid we’ve had an incident with Billy. ”

My fingers tightened around the phone. “What happened?”

“He fell in the shower this morning. Hit his head pretty good.” She paused, and I could hear the bustle of medical activity in the background. “We’ve got him stabilized, but protocol requires a trip to the ER for imaging.”

“Fuck.” I was already standing, searching for my jeans. “Was he conscious?”

“In and out. But Kai...” Gladys’s voice softened. “He was lucid when they loaded him in the ambulance. Asked for Kelsey.”

The words struck, leaving bruises only I could feel. Some days he didn’t remember her at all. Other days, he remembered too much.

“I’ll be there in an hour.”

“We’re heading to McLaren Northern Michigan. I’ll keep you updated if anything changes before you arrive.”

I ended the call, my movements mechanical as I dressed. This wasn’t like his other “adventures”—wandering into the wrong room, trying to check himself out, insisting he needed to open the bar. This was different. This was...

“Kai?” Charlie whispered. “Everything okay?”

I turned to find her sitting up, hair mussed and eyes concerned. The sight of her there, soft and warm in my bed, made my chest ache. How had I let myself get lost in this fantasy? Pretending I could have something simple and good when my life was anything but?

“Billy’s hurt. I have to go.”

“Oh god.” Charlie was instantly alert, throwing off the covers. “What happened? Is he okay? ”

“Fell in the shower. They’re taking him to McLaren.” I grabbed my keys, my wallet. “You should go home.”

“Let me come with you.”

The offer, so genuine and concerned, made something in my chest crack. “No.”

“Kai...” She stepped toward me, her face etched with worry. For Billy. For me. “You shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

“I’m used to it.” I forced a harshness into my words that I didn’t feel, because maybe that was better. I finally met her eyes, and immediately wished I hadn’t. The combination of hurt and determination threatened to undo me completely.

“This isn’t your problem,” I said roughly. “This is my mess. My life. And it’s not pretty or simple or—” I broke off, running a hand through my hair. “It’s not a romance novel, Charlie.”

“I know that. I never thought?—”

“Go home.” I turned away, unable to watch her face crumple. “Your family will be looking for you soon, and I need to get to the hospital.”

“Kai, please?—”

“No.” The word came out sharp, final. “This week was... it was good. Really good. But it wasn’t real life. Real life is my mentally deteriorating father-in-law bleeding in an ER, asking for his dead daughter. Real life is complicated and messy and not something you need to be part of.”

“That’s not your decision to make.”

“Yes, it is.” I grabbed my jacket, still not looking at her. “Go home, Charlie.”

The silence was deafening. I could feel her standing there, could practically hear her searching for words that might change my mind. But I couldn’t let her. Couldn’t drag her into my mess of a life.

Without another word, I walked out, leaving her standing in my apartment, wearing my t-shirt and all my regrets.

The hour-long drive to McLaren felt like an eternity. My knuckles whitened on the steering wheel as my mind ping-ponged between Billy bleeding out in an ER and Charlie standing alone in my apartment. Both images twisted like a knife in my gut, but I pressed harder on the gas.

The fluorescent lights of the ER made everything feel harsh and over-exposed. Gladys met me at the nurses’ station, her cheerful demeanor subdued.

“He’s with the doctor now,” she said, touching my arm. “They’re running tests.”

I nodded, and we sat in uncomfortable plastic chairs while various medical personnel rushed past. The clock on the wall ticked endlessly. Finally, a tall woman in a white coat approached.

“Mr. Callaghan?” She extended her hand. “I’m Dr. Reynolds. Let’s talk somewhere private.”

My stomach dropped. Nothing good ever came from that sentence.

She led us to a small consultation room—the kind with boxes of tissues strategically placed and paintings of peaceful landscapes on the walls. The kind where they delivered bad news .

“The fall caused significant bleeding in Billy’s brain,” she began, her voice gentle but direct. “We managed to stop the bleeding, but between this trauma and his advancing dementia...” She paused, letting the words sink in. “The damage is extensive.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that even if we were to attempt aggressive treatment, the quality of life would be... minimal.” She folded her hands on the desk. “Given his advance directives and current condition, I would recommend transitioning to hospice care.”

That single word snatched the air from my lungs. Hospice.

“How long?”

“It’s difficult to say exactly, but...” Dr. Reynolds met my eyes with genuine compassion. “I would be surprised if he made it through the week.”

Gladys sucked in a sharp breath beside me, but all I could focus on was the rushing in my ears. A week. After everything—the drugs, the betrayals, Kelsey’s death, taking over the bar—this was how it would end. In a sterile hospital room with machines beeping the final hours of a life barely lived.

“Can I see him?”

The doctor nodded. “Of course. He’s heavily sedated, but...” She stood. “Take all the time you need.”

Tubes and wires snaked from Billy’s still form, making him look smaller somehow.

Diminished. The steady beep of monitors filled the sterile air as I sank into the chair beside his bed.

His face was slack, peaceful in a way it hadn’t been in years—no confusion, no anger, no desperate searching for memories just out of reach .

A bandage wrapped around his skull, stark white against his bald head. His chest rose and fell in shallow breaths, each one a reminder that we were counting down now. Days. Maybe hours.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure what for. For not being there? For failing to protect him like I’d failed to protect his daughter? For all the times I’d resented taking care of him when he couldn’t even remember who I was?

I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, and watched Billy breathe. In two years, I’d never seen him this still. Even in his worst moments of confusion, there had always been movement—pacing, fidgeting, trying to escape whatever prison his mind had become.

“Your daughter…” My voice cracked on the word. “She loved you. Even though she never knew you. She used to make up stories about who you might be, what you’d be like.”

The words felt hollow in the antiseptic air, but I couldn’t stop them.

“She always hoped you’d be kind.”

“And you were kind, Billy. Even when you didn’t know who I was, even when you were confused and scared.

.. you were kind.” My voice was rough, barely a whisper.

“You’d offer me coffee every morning like it was the first time we’d met.

Tell me stories about the bar when you were young, before everything went wrong.

Same stories, over and over, but you told them like they were new every time. ”

The machines kept their steady rhythm as tears burned behind my eyes.

“I wanted to hate you, you know? When she died. Wanted someone to blame.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “But you were just as lost as she was. Just as broken. And somehow... somehow you became the closest thing to family I had left.”

A nurse appeared in the doorway, moving through the room to check monitors, adjust tubes. I sat silently until she left, the words I couldn’t say in front of others crowding my throat.

“I pushed someone away today,” I admitted to Billy’s unconscious form.

“Someone good. Pure. Everything Kelsey wasn’t.

” A bitter laugh escaped me. “Everything I’m not.

And you know what’s fucked up? I did it because I thought I was protecting her.

But really... really, I was just scared.

Scared of letting someone else in. Scared of losing them like I lost Kels.

“She writes books, Billy. Romance novels. Dragons and magic and happy endings.” My voice cracked. “She makes me want to believe in that stuff. Makes me think maybe I deserve...”

I couldn’t finish the sentence. Didn’t know how.

The steady beeping of the heart monitor skipped, then settled back into rhythm. Like Billy was trying to tell me something.

“She’s quiet, but not in a weak way. More like... like she sees everything, understands more than she lets on. And when she does speak...” I smiled despite myself. “She makes these little observations that cut right through all my bullshit.”

A memory flashed—Charlie curled up in my bed, laptop balanced on her knees, looking up at me with those stormy eyes. “You’re not as complicated as you think you are,” she’d said. “You just hide behind complications because feeling things scares you.”

“Fuck.” I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. “I really fucked up, didn’t I? Pushing her away when she just wanted to help? ”

The machines beeped their steady rhythm, like a metronome counting down the moments I had left with the closest thing to a father I’d known in years.

“She makes me want to be better,” I whispered. “Makes me think maybe I could be. But now...” I gestured at the hospital room, the tubes, the monitors. “Now everything’s falling apart again, and I don’t know how to?—”

My voice broke. Billy’s chest rose and fell, each breath a little shallower than the last.

“I don’t know how to do any of this without fucking it up.”

The fluorescent lights hummed as my thoughts spiraled darker. Maybe this was a sign. Maybe when Billy was gone, I should just... go too. Sell the bar, leave Sable Point. Let Charlie find someone her age, someone uncomplicated, someone who deserved her gentle heart and quiet strength.

Trevor’s face flashed through my mind—young, hopeful, everything I wasn’t. The thought of him touching her made my jaw clench, but wasn’t that exactly what she needed? Someone who could hold her hand in public, take her on real dates, give her the kind of love story she wrote about?

The bar had been Billy’s life, not mine. I’d only stayed because... because what? Guilt? Obligation? Some twisted need to atone for not saving his daughter?

“Maybe it’s time,” I said to Billy’s silent form. “Time to let it all go. The bar. The town.” My voice dropped to barely a whisper. “Her.”

My phone felt heavy in my pocket. One call to a realtor. That’s all it would take to start the process. Someone else could run Callaghan’s. Someone else could serve the regulars their drinks, listen to their stories, be part of this town’s tapestry .

And Charlie... Charlie could write her books, chase her dreams, find love with someone who wouldn’t taint her light with their darkness.

“What do you think, old man?” I asked the quiet room. “One last cowardly act before I go?”