Keller and Callahan by Morgan Machado

Author:Morgan Machado [Machado, Morgan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

fourteen

Sam sat at the bar in the lodge’s restaurant and stared down the nose of his beer, his fingers curled into his palm. He had desperately wanted to follow Olivia after their earlier exchange and just blurt out everything, but he couldn’t. He knew that she had to come around to him on her own terms, and forcing it on her would only push her away. He respected her enough to let her make her own decision.

So instead, he told himself he’d go get a drink where she had been working earlier today, and if he happened to run into her, well, that would just be convenient. But he had finished his first beer and there was still no sign of her. And despite the potency of his disappointment - he told himself it was for the best. The time he spent nursing his beer had given him time to think.

Not returning to the lodge after he turned eighteen was the hardest decision he was ever forced to make, but it had ultimately changed his life, no thanks to his father’s intentions. His dark past had threatened to swallow him whole on more than one occasion, but it became what had made him the man he was today. Growing up to be witness to abuse, alcohol, and abandonment, he decided he would do anything in his power to make sure others didn’t experience the type of childhood pain he did. If it weren’t for the Kellers, he would have been cast adrift and left to his own devices, and God only knows where he would have ended up.

He would never fully outrun his past and the memories that went along with them. And despite the fury he held in his heart for his father and all he had taken from him, it was what pushed him to do everything in his power to not let his father win.

Which is what led him to open the foundation for kids with troubled home lives - it had given him a sense of purpose and control. Having the opportunity to give other kids a safe space to go, like he had at Keller Campground, he could only hope he was giving those kids a sense of security he knew they so desperately needed. It also made him come face to face with the demons of his younger years, and helped him cope with the pain. He had wanted to share this accomplishment with Olivia for years, and he was bursting at the seams to tell her about it now, a small way to show her that she was a part of him in those long years of separation.

His mind started to drift back to Olivia, and how her opening herself to him as a kid had allowed him to see there was more to life than the loneliness he felt every day. She was the sole reason he knew there could be happiness after trauma, and damn it, it was time for him to start showing her.

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