Page 213 of Rising Heat

“Thank you for dinner,” I manage, already taking a step backward. “I’m really tired. I think I’m just gonna get some rest.”

Even to me, it sounds like a lie.

I turn before either of them can stop me and make my way up the stoop, legs heavier than they were thirty seconds ago.

“Goodnight,” I say, not trusting myself to look back.

The apartment’s dark when I lock the door behind me. I leave my hand wrapped around the deadbolt for a moment too long, listening to my breathing while the night closes in around me from every direction.

I kick off my sneakers near the couch and walk toward the bedroom without bothering to turn on a light. The city glows faintly through the windows, streetlight bleeding soft gold across the floorboards in long, familiar rectangles, and I see Gerald’s silhouette sitting in the corner of the living room, completely unbothered by any of this.

Love that for him.

I sit down on the edge of the bed still wearing Tyler’s jacket, and the second I catch the smell of it, all the air leaves my lungs.

Three months.

Three months since I left Philly with half my clothes shoved into trash bags and Bex talking to me through the drive on speakerphone because every state line made the whole thing feel a little less reversible.

Three months since I stood in my old apartment staring at my engagement ring in my palm trying to understand why being loved by Brett felt so lonely.

Three months isn’t very long on paper.

And still somehow it feels longer than the three years before them. Maybe that’s why tonight stings the way it does.

I fall backward onto the bed and stare up at the ceiling while the sentence keeps circling, wearing the same groove deeper every time it comes back around.

We’re not trying to keep you.

By the time the first tear slips sideways into my hair, I’m still trying to convince myself I’m not crying. I pull Tyler’s jacket tighter around me and curl onto my side and close my eyes while both Brett’s voice and Mack’s keep bleeding into each other until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

tyler

I’m still awake at five-thirty, turning my head toward every sound without meaning to, half-expecting to hear Darcy moving around upstairs.

Instead, I’m met with cold stillness—no Taylor Swift bleeding through the ceiling while she cleans, no water swishing through the pipes overhead, no waking up with Darcy tucked between us with her hair swept across her face.

It’s been four days since she stood on the stoop trying to hold it together while Brett talked to her like she was a kid who couldn’t be trusted to make her own decisions. Four days since my idiot brother somehow picked the worst possible thing to say at the worst possible moment.

Four days since Darcy texted us that she was staying with her parents, and I’ve replayed Saturday enough times that I don’t even have to think about what everybody said anymore. My brain’s got the whole damn conversation memorized.

Thing is, I know exactly what Mack meant. And that just pisses me off even more.

Mack’s never been the kind of person to let the first thing that pops into his head come out of his mouth. He’ll bite his tongue if he needs to, wait people out, pick his moment until everybody else has run out of things to say.

Hell, half the reason we’ve made it thirty-two years without killing each other is because he’s always known when an argument needs a last word and when it doesn’t.

So of everybody standing on that stoop Saturday night, he was the last person I expected to hand Darcy the one sentence she was guaranteed to hear the wrong way.

I’ve spent every minute ever since trying not to choke him out.

Then, because apparently there’s enough self-loathing to go around for everyone in this house, my memory helpfully reminds me that I was standing right there watching Darcy’s face fall. I watched her look between us like she was waiting for somebody—either one of us—to stop her before she disappeared into her own head. And I just stood there.

Which is pretty fucking impressive in retrospect.

Two trained emergency responders…zero successful emotional interventions.