Chapter 7 #3
Suddenly all the emotions she’d been holding in check rose within her, and she started to retch.
The taste of metal and bile burned her throat, mixing with rain on her tongue.
She made it as far as opening the car door before throwing up what little she had in her stomach, and then the first sob tore through her.
It was raw, urgent—a wounded animal’s cry.
Cold rain struck her face as she stumbled out beneath the canopy, one hand gripping the edge of the roof while her body folded around the pain.
She could feel her ribs pressing inward, hear her own heart hammering against her chest.
Evan came around the front of the car, but he stopped several feet away.
His boots crunched on gravel, and he paused, uncertainty etched into his posture.
“Abby,” he said carefully, giving her the choice Hudson had tried to take from her.
The single word was heavy with regret and fear. “Can I come closer?”
She crossed the distance herself. Each step was a battle against the weight in her chest, but she moved toward him with a quiet resolve.
Her hands closed in the front of his wet jacket, knuckles trembling, and then his arms were around her, one across her back and the other cradling the base of her skull as she pressed her face against his chest. His jacket was damp and cool against her tears.
The grief came without order or dignity.
Abby cried for the wedding invitations on her coffee table, for Makayla fastening her necklace before college dances, and for nine years of memories that would never again mean only what she had believed they meant.
She remembered sleepovers, and bedroom laughter, shared coffees, late-night confessions—each one twisting into a blade of betrayal.
She cried until her throat hurt and her knees weakened, while Evan held her beneath the gas-station lights with rain blowing cold against their shoes.
The world beyond them blurred into streaks of light and shadow.
“I trusted them,” she said against his coat, the words broken by her breathing. “I trusted both of them with everything.” Each syllable was a release, a confession that tasted like ash.
Evan’s hand moved once over her hair and then went still. His fingertips trembled against her scalp. “I know.”
“She knew how afraid I was before he proposed.” Abby tightened her grip on his jacket as another wave of grief rose, fierce and relentless. “She sat on my bathroom floor and told me I was safe with him. She looked me in the face and told me that.”
Evan drew a rough breath above her. His chest rose and fell in uneven rhythms. “She told me you were the only person who understood her.”
Abby heard something unfamiliar in his voice and lifted her head. Evan turned his face toward the dark highway, but the canopy light caught the wetness along his lower lashes and the single tear moving beside his nose. The tear hung there stubbornly, refusing to fall.
Until then, she had experienced his grief as quiet competence: the iPad placed carefully in her hands, the cautious drive through the storm, the space he gave her whenever she pulled away.
She had forgotten that he had walked into the same hotel and watched the woman he planned to marry emerge from another man’s room.
She had forgotten how deeply it had cut him too.
“Evan.” Abby released his jacket with one hand and touched his cheek. Her fingers were cool, trembling as they pressed against his skin. He closed his eyes when her thumb caught the tear, his face tightening as if the small kindness demanded more control than anger had.
“I’m all right,” he said, but his voice failed on the final word. The confession cracked like ice beneath pressure. He lowered his forehead until it rested against her hair. “I just don’t know which parts were real.”
“Neither do I.” Abby wrapped both arms around him again, holding him now as much as he held her. “I don’t know how to tell.” Her voice was a whisper swallowed by the rain.
His shoulders shook once beneath her hands.
He did not make a sound, and Abby clung to him while the rain hissed across the empty pavement and trucks passed beyond the station in long smears of light.
Each roar of an eighteen-wheeler felt like a distant thunder, reminding them of the world rushing by.
They stayed beneath the canopy until the cold began to reach through their clothes. Shivers ran up Abby’s spine. When Evan finally loosened his arms, Abby did not step far away. She stood rooted to him, afraid to let go.
The ring remained on the pavement beside the car, where it had fallen from her hand. Abby looked at it shining beneath the fluorescent lights but made no move to pick it up. It lay there like a promise betrayed, cold and distant.
Evan followed her gaze and waited. His eyes were red, and his injured hand had swollen across the knuckles, but he did not ask whether she wanted the ring or offer to decide for her. He simply watched, vulnerable in his silence.
Abby looked back toward the highway, where every direction seemed to lead into darkness. The road stretched away like an unbroken promise of uncertainty. She took Evan’s uninjured hand and held it between both of hers, fingers entwining.
“Now what do we do?” she asked. Her voice was raw, and this time she did not expect either of them to have an answer. The only sound was the rain, relentless and indifferent, washing over two souls stranded at the edge of everything they once believed.