Page 225 of Wild Card 13

Through the narrow window beside the door, I watched Ty walk back to his truck.

He moved slowly, like every step cost something. At Betsy, he stopped with one hand on the driver’s door. His head bowed. His shoulders rose once, then fell.

I pressed my palm flat against the wall.

Open the door, some terrible part of me begged.Call him back.Make him explain.

But I had already asked him to fight. He had already answered.

Ty climbed into Betsy and shut the door. The truck sat at the curb for a long time. Long enough for the sprinkler down the street to complete another slow arc. Long enough for sunlight to slide across the hood. Long enough for me to memorize the shape of him through the windshield, both hands gripping the steering wheel, head bent, unmoving.

Then the engine turned over. Betsy pulled away from the curb and rolled down our street, smaller and smaller beneath the bright summer morning, until the truck turned the corner and disappeared.

I stayed by the window after he was gone.

Upstairs, my Aldenmere acceptance letter sat in a folder on my desk, waiting for the life I had wanted before I understood what wanting could cost.

I did not cry again.

That came later.

For now, I stood in the quiet house and let the silence teach me what Ty had not been able to say.

People promised.

People loved you.

And sometimes, when it mattered most, they still chose the door.

CHAPTER 29

BUZZ

NOW

“How do I ever trust you again?”

The question filled the room like smoke, taking the oxygen with it. It moved through the quiet with nowhere soft to land. Not on the couch where I had just kissed her until my whole body forgot the last eight years. Not against the windows, where the frozen lake sat black and still beneath the snow. Not in the firelight, or the old championship photo on the mantel, or the two abandoned glasses of bourbon sweating slowly on the low table.

It settled over me instead.

On my skin.

In my clothes.

In my lungs.

Lucy sat two feet away from me with her glasses back on and her mouth still swollen from mine, looking at me like she had finally run out of places to hide the hurt. One tear clung to her lower lashes. Her hands were folded tightly in her lap, fingers locked together so hard the knuckles had gone pale.

I wanted to reach for her. That was the first thing my body wanted. The stupidest thing. The easiest thing. Put my hands on her face. Pull her close. Tell her I would never hurt her again like wanting something badly enough could become proof.

But the whole reason we were sitting there broken open at twoin the morning was because I had spent too much of my life trusting instinct when I should have learned how to stay still and listen.

So I moved away. I shifted back on the couch until my shoulder no longer angled toward hers. Until there was clear space between us. Until my hands were on my own knees, empty and visible and not asking for anything.

Lucy’s eyes flicked down to the space I had made, then back to my face. The tear fell then, quiet and clean, sliding beneath the edge of her glasses and down her cheek.

It nearly killed me. “I don’t know,” I said.