Chapter 4 #2
“Nate.” She takes a breath. Squares her shoulders like she’s bracing for impact. “Can we—”
“Deputy Thorn.” I cut her off before she can finish. “And I was just leaving.”
I walk past her. Close enough that her scent wraps around me. Close enough that I have to clench my jaw to keep from stopping, from turning, from doing something stupid like asking what she was going to say.
Her scent shifts as I pass. Goes sad. Hurt.
Not my problem.
The bell chimes. Cold air hits my face. I take a breath. Then another. Let the winter air burn away the honey and citrus still clinging to my senses.
Liam’s leaning against the cruiser, eyebrows raised.
“That was fast.”
“Let’s go.” I round the car to the passenger side. “I’ll drive.”
He doesn’t argue. Just tosses me the keys and climbs in.
I pull out of the parking spot too fast. Ease off the gas. Getting a speeding ticket in my own cruiser would be a new low, even for today.
We drive in silence for three blocks. I can feel Liam looking at me.
“You want to talk about it?” he asks.
“No.”
“Okay.” He settles back in his seat. “So. Ms. Donovan.”
“What about it?”
“That’s cold, Nate. Even for you.”
I take a turn. Check my mirrors. Focus on the road.
“It’s necessary.”
“Is it?”
“If I call her Cara, I start forgetting why I’m supposed to be angry.” I stop at a stop sign. Look both ways. Pull forward. “I’m not doing that.”
“It’s been ten years, Nate. Maybe—”
“She left once. She’ll leave again.” I pull into the parking lot of Millie’s. Kill the engine. “End of story.”
He doesn’t argue. Just nods once.
“Fair enough,” he says finally. “Lunch?”
“Yeah.”
We get out. Go inside. Slide into our usual booth. Millie comes over without asking, already writing down our orders.
“Two burgers, extra pickles on his, no onions on yours, and two coffees.” She looks up with those kind eyes. “That right?”
“That’s right,” Liam says.
“You boys are too predictable.” She tucks the notepad away, but she’s smiling. “Food’ll be up in ten.”
She starts to turn, then pauses. Looks at me a beat too long.
“You doing okay, honey? You look like you’ve had a day.”
“I’m fine, Millie.”
“Mmhm.” She doesn’t push, but I can tell she’s already heard. Everyone’s heard. “Well, you know where to find me if you need anything.”
She heads off to put in our order. Liam waits until she’s gone to look at me.
“That woman knows everything that happens in this town.”
“Everyone knows everything in this town.” I stare out the window. “That’s the problem.”
The food comes. I eat my burger without tasting it, staring out the window at the snow.
She’s out there somewhere. In this town. Maybe still at the bakery. Maybe walking down Main Street. Maybe back at Eileen’s, telling her grandmother what an ass I was.
I don’t care.
I don’t.
The house is dark when I get home.
Theo’s truck isn’t in the driveway. Lucas’s car is gone too. Good. I’m not in the mood for company. Not in the mood to explain why I’m in a worse mood than usual. Not in the mood to see the questions in their eyes.
I let myself in. Toss my keys on the table by the door. Stand there in the dark for a moment, just breathing.
The house still smells like the three of us. Pine from Theo’s landscaping stuff. The clean, clinical scent Lucas brings home from the clinic. And underneath it, the faded ghost of something sweeter. Something that hasn’t been here in ten years.
I’m imagining it. I know I’m imagining it. She was never in this house. We moved here after.
Doesn’t matter. My brain is determined to torture me tonight.
I flip on the lights. Go to the kitchen. Open the fridge. Stare at the contents without really seeing them. Close it again.
Not hungry.
I should shower. Change out of this uniform that still smells faintly of her despite the cold and the coffee and the hours in between.
Instead, I end up in front of my closet. Staring at the top shelf. At the box shoved in the back corner, behind old sweatshirts and gear I never use.
I haven’t touched that box in years. Haven’t let myself.
I pull it down anyway.
It’s lighter than I remember. Or maybe I’m just stronger. Or maybe it’s just that the weight of it isn’t physical.
I sit on the edge of my bed. Open the lid.
Photos. A dried flower from prom. Ticket stubs from the first movie we all saw together. A folded piece of paper that I know without looking is the letter I never sent.
And underneath all of it, a picture.
Senior year. The four of us at the lake. Theo’s got his arm around Cara’s shoulders, grinning like an idiot. Lucas is mid-laugh, caught off guard by whoever was taking the picture. And me. Standing slightly apart, the way I always did.
But Cara’s reaching back to hold my hand. Her fingers laced through mine. Anchoring me to them.
To her.
We were so young. Eighteen and stupid and sure that nothing could touch us. Pack bonds forming, future wide open, everything we wanted right there within reach.
She left three months after this picture was taken.
I set the photo aside. Pick up the letter.
The paper’s soft now. Worn at the creases from all the times I folded and unfolded it that first year. I know every word by heart. Wrote them at two in the morning after the forty-seventh unanswered voicemail.
Forty-seven. Lucas kept count. Sat me down one night and said it wasn’t healthy. Said I was hurting myself.
He wasn’t wrong.
I unfold it anyway.
Cara,
I don’t know if you’ll ever read this. Probably not. But I can’t keep calling a phone you won’t answer, so I’m writing this down instead. Getting it out of my head.
I need to know why.
That’s it. That’s all. Just tell me why. Was it something I did? Was it too much, the four of us? Was I too intense? Too protective? Too much of everything you didn’t want?
I’ve gone over every conversation from that last month. Every text. Every moment. I can’t find where it broke. I can’t find the thing I did wrong. And it’s driving me insane.
Lucas thinks I should let it go. Theo cries when he thinks we’re not listening. And I keep calling like an idiot, like maybe if I try one more time, you’ll pick up. You’ll explain. You’ll tell me it was all a mistake and you’re coming home.
But you’re not coming home, are you?
I loved you. I still love you. I hate that I still love you. I hate that you have that kind of power over me. I hate that you left and took everything good with you and I’m still here, waiting for a call that’s never going to come.
So this is me stopping. This is me letting go. This is me accepting that you made your choice and it wasn’t us.
I hope you’re happy, wherever you are. I hope whatever you left us for was worth it.
I hope someday I stop caring whether it was.
Nate
I never sent it.
Stood outside the post office at two in the morning. Envelope in my hand. Stared at the mail slot for twenty minutes.
Couldn’t drop it in.
What was the point? She wasn’t answering calls. Wasn’t responding to texts. A letter wasn’t going to change anything.
So I kept it. Shoved it in this box with everything else I couldn’t throw away.
Ten years. And I still can’t throw it away.
I refold the letter. Put it back. Close the lid.
Eighteen-year-old me was pathetic. Writing letters at two in the morning. Calling forty-seven times. Waiting and hoping and believing she’d come back.
I’m not that kid anymore. I won’t be that kid again. I refuse to be the guy who falls apart because some omega decided he wasn’t worth staying for.
I shove the box back on the shelf. Bury it under the sweatshirts. Go take a shower.
The hot water helps. Washes away the last traces of her scent. Clears my head.
By the time I get out, I almost feel like a functional human being.
Almost.
Three in the morning.
I’m lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. Haven’t slept. Probably won’t.
Every time I close my eyes, I see her. Standing in the bakery. Looking at me with those eyes. Starting to ask a question she never got to finish.
Can we—
Can we what? Talk? There’s nothing to say. Catch up? I don’t want to catch up. Pretend the last ten years didn’t happen? Not possible.
That’s supposed to be the end of it.
A knock on my door. Soft, but I hear it.
“Go away, Theo.”
The door opens anyway. Because of course it does.
“How’d you know it was me?” Theo’s silhouette appears in the doorway, backlit by the hall light.
“Lucas sleeps like the dead. And he wouldn’t barge in without knocking.”
“Fair.” Theo leans against the doorframe. He’s in sweatpants and a t-shirt, hair sticking up on one side. “Can’t sleep?”
“What gave it away?”
“The fact that you’ve been stomping around for the last hour.” He crosses his arms. “Also, I heard about the bakery.”
“Of course you did.”
“Mrs. Patterson called Lucas. Lucas called me.” He shrugs. “You know how it works.”
I sit up, rubbing a hand over my face. “What do you want, Theo?”
“To check on you.” He says it simply. Like it’s obvious. “You called her Ms. Donovan in front of half the town.”
“So?”
“So that’s...” He searches for the word. “A lot.”
“It’s her name.”
“It’s a slap in the face and you know it.”
I don’t respond. He’s not wrong.
Theo sighs and pushes off the doorframe, crossing to sit on the end of my bed. I shift my feet to make room. Old habit.
“You can’t avoid her forever,” he says.
“Watch me.”
“Nate.”
“What?” I look at him. “What do you want me to do? Forgive her? Pretend it didn’t happen? Act like she didn’t ghost us for ten years?”
“No. I don’t know.” He runs a hand through his already-messy hair. “I just... I saw her today too.”
I go still. “Where?”
“Hardware store. She was buying salt for Eileen’s walkway.” He stares at his hands. “She smiled at me. That same smile, you know? And I just... I panicked. Hid behind a display of paint cans until she left.”
Salt. For the walkway I already cleared.
Despite everything, I snort. “Paint cans?”
“It was the closest aisle.” He grins, sheepish. “Not my proudest moment.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“I’m coping.” He stretches out his legs, getting comfortable like he’s planning to stay a while. “At least I didn’t call her Ms. Donovan.”
“At least I didn’t hide behind paint cans like a coward.”
He throws a pillow at my head. I catch it.
For a moment, it almost feels normal. Just two idiots giving each other shit at three in the morning, like we’ve done a hundred times before.
Then Theo’s smile fades.
“What are we going to do?” he asks. “She’s staying at Eileen’s. We can’t avoid Eileen. We can’t avoid town. We can’t avoid...” He gestures vaguely. “Everything.”
“We keep doing what we’re doing. She’ll leave eventually. She always leaves.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know her.”
“You knew her.” Theo’s voice is quiet. “Ten years ago. People change.”
“And what if she hasn’t? What if we let her back in and she does it again?” I stare at the ceiling. “I barely survived the first time, Theo. I’m not doing it twice.”
He’s quiet for a long moment.
“Maybe she—”
“Go to sleep, Theo.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Go. To. Sleep.”
He holds up his hands in surrender. “Fine. But we’re talking about this eventually. All three of us.”
“Looking forward to it.”
“Liar.” He stands, heading for the door. Pauses with his hand on the frame. “Hey, Nate?”
“What?”
“For what it’s worth? I think she wanted to say something today. At the bakery. Before you shut her down.”
“I know.”
“Maybe next time... let her say it?”
I don’t answer. He doesn’t push. Just gives me a small nod and disappears into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind him.
I stare at the ceiling.
Can we—
Can we what?
I don’t want to know. I do want to know. Both things are true and I hate it.
She broke me once. Took ten years to put the pieces back together into something that functions. Something that gets up in the morning, does the job, goes through the motions.
I’m not letting her shatter me again.
I’m not.