Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
TUCKER
I got Hank buckled into my truck, then slid behind the wheel. Instead of starting the engine, I called Hazel.
She didn’t pick up. Probably working.
I’d heard what Kiera said about why Hazel hadn’t told me about the job offer, but still, doubts crept in.
Maybe she hadn’t told me because she was far less invested in us than I was.
Which sucked.
I dropped my forehead to the steering wheel, barely resisted hitting it a few times.
“Ah?” Hank. Worried.
I sighed. “I’m fine.”
“Ah.”
Classic Colburn. Calling bullshit with one sound. “Look, this has to do with crap I’m not great at. Emotions,” I clarified at his confused look. “And that’s not exactly your forte either, so don’t start.”
Something flickered across his face—quick and hard to catch. I wanted it to be regret.
Which was a shitty thing to want, but hey, apparently I was in a mood.
Hank turned his head to look out the window, and I felt like a world-class dick. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”
I think he tried to shrug, because his shoulder twitched.
Separating the man in the passenger seat from the one who’d raised me felt a whole lot like recovering from food poisoning—grateful to be up off the bathroom floor, but also? You’d never trust sushi again.
I was glad he’d survived his strokes, glad we could care for him, even glad he seemed to be enjoying his life far more than he ever did pre-strokes. But having him actually showing up emotionally and giving a shit? That was a mind fuck I hadn’t finished untangling.
And still… “You happy?”
He blinked, confused.
“I mean, your mobility is limited, you can’t talk, and that has to suck, but…” Unable to look into the eyes of the man who’d once been the monster in the closet, I stared out the windshield. “I need to know if you’re angry at the world. Or if you’ve let it all go.”
A long beat passed before he looked over and gave me a crooked half smile. Mostly because of the stroke. But his eyes were calm. Maybe even kind.
“Ah,” he said.
I didn’t know what that meant, but he didn’t look bitter, so I took it.
“I wanted to stay mad at you,” I admitted out loud, no idea what he remembered of the past. “But life’s too fucking short. I’m leaving it in the rearview. For all of us.”
Still watching me, he nodded slowly.
Screw it. If he could try something new, so could I. I reached over and took his hand. “I did something I told myself I wouldn’t,” I said. “I let myself fall for her again. And I’m pretty sure she’s going to stomp on my heart and destroy me.”
He nodded again. Like he’d heard every word Kiera and I had traded in the kitchen.
Then he pointed at me.
Like it was on me to fix this.
“I can’t fix this. She didn’t even tell me about it.”
He shook his head. He even tried rolling his eyes, but his face twitched, and his mouth fell open instead.
Apparently, he thought I was spouting bullshit.
Fine. I started the engine and pulled away from the curb. Five minutes later, we pulled down our street.
Hazel’s van wasn’t out front.
Hank gestured like I should keep driving.
I stared at him. “What?”
“Ah!”
Oh hell. “You want me to go find her.”
His satisfied smile said, Finally caught up, genius.
“Okay. Do you want me to drop you at Caleb’s or Ryder’s? Or Bill’s?”
Hank clutched the seat belt over his chest like a man refusing to evacuate a flood zone. “Ah.”
“Dad, no, you can’t come with. I might be out for a while, and it’s close to your bedtime—”
“Ah.”
Shit. He wasn’t going to get out of the truck, and there was no point arguing with a Colburn once they’d dug in. I put the truck back in Drive.
Hazel wasn’t at either of the two Colburn jobs she worked on. Not at the tree house. Not with Emma or Penny.
By midnight, I’d gotten Hank to agree to stay with Ryder, and I was officially unraveling. My phone screen had memorized my face. Still no call. No text.
And it wasn’t like she owed me anything.
Once again, I cruised slowly through town. Twenty minutes later, I spotted her truck in the park’s lot. As I pulled in, my headlights caught a flicker of movement at the far end, thirty feet away.
I couldn’t see clearly, but I knew by the way every part of me suddenly felt alive that it was Hazel.
She had a paint roller in one hand, a headlamp on her forehead, and a flashlight clipped to her tool belt. She was mid-stroke over graffiti along the back of the bathroom building—a cartoon squirrel flipping off the mayor’s dedication.
“You got a thing against angry woodland creatures with boundary issues?” I asked. “Or—”
She startled, spinning toward me with eyes wide, the roller splashing paint across her boot. “Ohmigod, you scared the hell out of me.”
I wasn’t even a little bit sorry. She was out here in the middle of the night, alone, her back to the lot. Any-fucking-thing could happen to her. “Wait…” I squinted at the original graffiti. “Is that—”
“My own work from over a decade ago?” She rubbed her face, leaving a streak of paint across her nose as she worked carefully to not maintain eye contact. “Yeah. Could do a lot better now, but I think the mayor will appreciate this more.”
Scrubbing the sins from her past. One square foot at a time…
My frustration thawed a bit. “Did you know that when you’re alive, you answer your phone so people who care about you won’t lose their goddamn minds wondering where the hell you are and if you’re safe?”
“I dropped my phone into the paint bucket hours ago.”
“Oh.” Well, okay, that took some of the wind out of my sails. “When were you going to tell me?”
She froze.
I took a step toward her. “Were you going to tell me?”
“About…?”
“Seattle.”
She blinked in shock. Then bent and set the roller in the paint tray with exaggerated care, like the fate of the world depended on getting it just right. She straightened again and wiped her hands on a rag, the motion too fast, too focused.
“How did you find out?” she asked, like we were making small talk and not standing on a powder keg.
“Does it matter?”
Her expression shifted. “Tucker—”
“You taking the job?” I asked quietly, unable to keep the hurt from my voice.
Carefully, she turned to face me. “It’s not as easy for me as it is for you to be here.” She waved a hand around us. “You’ve got your whole life. It’s…perfect.”
I huffed a bitter laugh. “If you think my life’s perfect, you haven’t been paying attention.”
Again, she looked away. “The Seattle thing…it was a great opportunity.”
“Agreed,” I said. “But this isn’t about Seattle, is it?”
She shook her head.
“It’s about what you, Hazel Pierce, do when something real shows up: You don’t trust it, so you push it away.”
Her gaze jumped to mine, narrowed.
“You think I don’t want the best for you, always?” I asked.
“We said no promises. No strings.”
I knew those words would come back to haunt us. Me. “That was way before we started acting like this was something.” I shook my head. “But if you need that as an excuse to leave and feel less guilty, go for it.”
“I didn’t plan this,” she whispered. “Any of this.”
“No, but you sure planned your exit strategy.”
She folded her arms. “I don’t want to do this now.”
“You never did.”
Her eyes sparked. “Really? We’re going to bring up my stupid teenage self again?” She threw up her hands. “I was scared! I didn’t know what I wanted.”
“Do you know now?”
She stared right at me. “I thought I did.”
A gut punch, but at least it was honest. And one I couldn’t fault her for. “Look, whatever you decide, I’m happy for you. Proud of you. But it’s not just the job, is it? You’re deciding on me too. On us.”
“You think you know everything, so I don’t see why I should bother to answer.”
My stomach twisted. “If you wanted out, all you had to do was say so.”
Her eyes hardened and she turned away. “This wasn’t supposed to feel like forever,” she said. “Not this soon. Not like this.”
“Then you say that. Say that you need space. Time,” I said to her back. “We aren’t eighteen anymore, Hazel. If you have a problem, or if this isn’t for you, you tell me. We talk about it. And then I back off.”
“The job offer was a surprise,” she said softly. “I didn’t ask for it. And believe it or not, I was going to tell you.”
“But you didn’t.” I shook my head. “I can’t decide if you thought I’d hold you back or that I couldn’t handle it.”
She looked at me then, and her voice cracked. “I didn’t think I could handle it.”
I paused. This hadn’t even occurred to me. “Why?”
“Because if you had looked at me like that while I told you I was leaving, I wouldn’t be able to go.”
My armor splintered.
“And if I stay,” she went on, “and this ends like it did before—if you stop showing up, if you change your mind…” Her voice cracked. “I won’t survive it, Tucker.”
I felt gutted. “I’m not that same guy. You know that’d play out differently now. I’d do whatever it took to stay in your life.”
“I know, and I’m not that same girl either.”
We stood chest to chest, a million unsaid things in the air.
“This is just a misunderstanding,” she whispered.
“It’s way more than that. You still don’t trust me. Not enough.”
She shook her head. “That’s not fair.”
“Maybe not. But you’ve said you want to be seen. To be taken seriously. And yet you don’t let me see all of you. You hold back pieces. The scared pieces. The messy pieces. Even after I’ve shown you mine.”
Tears welled in her eyes “Don’t you get it? It’s not you I don’t trust!”
My chest ached. “I know.” And I really did. “Because at the end of the day, you still don’t believe in no-holds-barred, unconditional love.” I backed up. “And until you do, nothing I say will matter.”
Her arms wrapped tight across her stomach, and guilt twisted through me that I’d called her out. But I’d needed to say it. I’d needed her to hear it.
“I just don’t want to make the wrong call,” she said quietly. “I thought if I gave myself some time—”
“This isn’t about the job. And if you have to think about whether you want me in your life…you’ve already decided.”
A tear fell. And it took everything in me not to reach for her.
I would’ve waited forever if she’d taken just one step for me.
But she didn’t.
So I walked away.
And just like that, the woman I loved let me go.