CHAPTER 1. Carter #3
“Yeah, maybe,” Thomas says, clearly not all that invested in car diagnostics.
“You gonna leave it here for the night?” I ask, mostly to fill the silence.
“Yeah, I’ll call the tow tomorrow,” he says, nodding—and I can feel him looking at me, studying my face like he’s trying to figure out if I’ve changed. “You look good, Carter.”
My traitorous heart skips a beat. And great—now my cheeks are burning.
I snort awkwardly, trying to cover how flustered I suddenly am. It was just a comment. A simple, stupid comment.
“Thanks,” I say, eyes on the road.
But he’s still looking at me.
“It’s good to see you,” he says.
My heart stutters again. God. What does he want from me? Is he waiting for me to wag my tail just because he said something nice?
“Yeah, you too,” I say, though the words feel foreign in my mouth—clunky and off.
Silence hits right after. Guess that didn’t come off as chill as I thought it would.
I keep my eyes on the road, on the snow piling up around us, on anything but Thomas.
Well. Almost. I still catch everything he’s doing out of the corner of my eye.
He shifts, adjusts his seatbelt, checks his phone—classic moves from someone who doesn’t know what to say. Which is wild, because this is Thomas Moore. The guy who once talked for forty-five minutes about the structural integrity of waffle cones.
I grip the steering wheel tighter, my brain refusing to come up with anything useful to say.
I’m not about to start inventing small talk just to make this less awkward.
The quiet makes every sound in the car feel loud—the wet swipe of the wipers, the low hum of the heater, the tick of the blinker as I signal for the main road.
“Oh, I, uh, called the restaurant,” Thomas says after a second. “Asked them to send the photos of the decorations.”
“Yeah? Does it look good?” I ask, just to keep him talking.
“Yeah, looks great,” he says. Then, “Here,” and tilts his phone toward me.
I glance at the screen, but I barely catch a glimpse before turning back to the road. Visibility’s garbage right now—I don’t need to end our reunion by crashing into a mailbox.
“Great,” I say, even though I barely saw anything. “Perfect.”
Wonderful. Amazing. All the adjectives.
“So we should be fine if we’re a little late,” Thomas says.
“That’s good,” I say.
And just like that, we’re back to silence.
I don't remember it ever being this hard to talk to him. Even during those first few awkward teenage years—when I was stumbling through puberty and nursing a massive crush—conversations always came easily between us. Now it’s as if we’re strangers who just happened to get stuck in a car.
Which would be easier, maybe, if my body believed it.
But it doesn't. It’s on high alert just because he’s breathing near me. I’m sitting here trying to act normal while it runs low-level diagnostics on every inch of space between us.
And the most annoying part? We didn’t hug.
Which—okay. Fine. Not that I care that much.
It’s just…that’s always been our thing. That’s how we say hi. Big, warm, borderline-too-long hugs. The kind where his arms wrap around my shoulders and stay there just long enough to mess with my head.
Today, after not seeing each other for a year, he just skipped right past it. Now there’s this polite buffer zone between us—like I’ve got something contagious and he’s trying to be nice about it.
I’m not going to say anything, though—I’ve got my dignity, even if it’s just a tiny, shriveled thing hiding in the corner of my heart.
“How’s the café?” Thomas asks, and I can tell he’s making an effort. Trying to steer us back toward something that feels normal.
“It’s good,” I say. “Busy today, obviously.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot it was Valentine’s.”
I almost snort. Sure you did. You stayed over at your new girlfriend’s place last night. What, trying to make up for the fact that you’re not spending today together?
But fine. If pretending makes it easier for you, I’ll play along.
“Yeah,” I say, trying to dull my anger and distract myself by thinking about the chaos at Drip today—the line out the door, Logan steaming milk, me baking desserts on autopilot while trying not to think about seeing Thomas later.
“We were slammed this morning. Everybody wanted heart-shaped latte art and those red velvet cupcakes we do.”
“Oh yeah, I love those,” Thomas says, smiling.
I know that, obviously. But I don’t say anything.
He clears his throat.
“It’s cool that the business is doing well.”
“Yeah. Very exciting,” I say, suddenly hyper-aware of how flat it all sounds. Like we’re clumsily filling space instead of talking about anything real.
Each word feels loaded with everything I’m holding back—all the why did you disappear and did I mean anything to you and where did you spend last night.
God, I hate this. Hate myself for feeling it. For still caring this much when I know I’m not supposed to.
The car jumps a little as we hit a patch of ice, and I tense, correcting our course. Thomas grabs the door handle instinctively, and for a second, we’re perfectly aligned in the same quiet oh-shit moment.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
“Not your fault,” he says quickly. “Roads are getting worse.”
I nod, and we settle back into silence.
After a few seconds, I ask, “How’s work?”
Because okay, even if I’m still pissed about everything, he’s clearly trying—and I can meet him halfway. “Still at Nook?”
Thomas perks up a bit, then shakes his head. “No, actually. I left about four months ago.”
I blink.
He left? That’s…news. I mean, he loved that job. I figured he’d stick around for years. I want to ask what happened, but that feels a little too personal for how things are between us right now.
So I just say, “Oh. Where’d you end up?”
“Lone Star,” he says. “It’s another start-up. They pay better, and I can work remotely, which is nice.”
“That’s great,” I say—and I mean it, even though the fact that I didn’t know something this big about his life stings.
Thomas always hated the commute to Nook’s offices in Chicago.
Back when he used to drop by Drip all the time, he’d wake up two hours early just to swing through before catching the train.
I’d make him coffee, we’d talk, and later he’d text me updates—about delays, or some guy eating tuna straight out of a can across from him.
It used to feel like I had a front-row seat to his mornings.
Back then, I would’ve asked for details—wanted to know everything: his coworkers, his projects, whether his new boss micromanaged like the last one.
Now I just...don’t. Because it doesn’t feel like I have the right to anymore.
“Yeah, it’s been good,” he says. “More workload, though. Still getting used to it.”
I nod, not sure what else to say.
We approach a traffic light, and I ease into the brake, testing it on the slick pavement. The silence creeps back in.
“So,” I say, unable to help myself, “what were you doing all the way out here, anyway? Did you move?”
Thomas shifts in his seat again, clearly uncomfortable.
“No, I’m still at the loft,” he says. “I was just, uh…staying over at a friend’s place.”
My heart drops so fast I’m shocked it doesn’t crash through the floor and get left behind on Route 59.
A friend’s place. Right.
I nod again, eyes on the road, jaw tight enough to crack walnuts.
The light turns green. I press the gas—maybe a little too hard—and the wheels spin for half a second before catching.
“Her name’s Gigi,” Thomas says, either oblivious to or deliberately ignoring my reaction. “She works at Lone Star too—lives here in Naperville. She’s in product management.”
“Cool,” I say, the word tasting like ash in my mouth.
Gigi. Of course her name is Gigi. She probably has glossy hair, a laugh like wind chimes, and no idea what it’s like to spend years wanting someone who’ll never want you back.
“She’s just a good friend,” Thomas adds after a beat, suddenly awkward, and there’s something weird in his voice I can’t quite place. “We were working on a…thing.”
A thing. Jesus. He’s so flustered at his own inability to come up with a lie, I start feeling second-hand embarrassment.
“You don’t need to explain,” I say quickly—because I really, really don’t want to hear any more about Gigi from product management. “It’s none of my business.”
“I know, but—”
“It’s fine,” I cut him off, my voice sharper than I meant. “Seriously. Relax, man.”
Man.
I cringe. That didn’t sound like me at all. Might as well have called him bro and told him not to sweat it.
Thomas goes quiet, clearly thrown by how I just steamrolled the conversation.
I feel a flicker of guilt—but it’s buried under the hot, ugly jealousy burning through me. I know, I have no right to feel this way, but that doesn’t stop it from eating through my chest like acid.
The snow’s coming down harder now, thick and blinding, and I lean forward, squinting through the windshield—grateful for the excuse to focus on anything other than the man sitting next to me.
“Carter,” Thomas says after a beat—and just from the tension in his voice, I already know I’m not going to like what comes next. “Can we talk?”
My whole body tightens, panic scraping cold claws down my spine.
Shit.
I think I might’ve gone too far with the passive-aggressive replies, because it’s obvious now: he wants to set the record straight. Literally.
“We are talking,” I say, flat, my heart pounding somewhere in my throat.
“I want to talk about last year,” Thomas says. “What happened at Jason’s birthday. At Drip.”
My body goes still, panic crawling up my spine and settling in my throat.
I thought I wanted this—to finally clear the air. But now that he’s saying it out loud, I know I don’t. Because I already know exactly how this ends.
He’s going to say he got drunk, said some things he didn’t mean, and I read too much into it. That I made it weird. That I messed everything up.
And I don’t want to hear it. I really, really don’t.
“Yeah, let’s not,” I mumble quickly, eyes locked on the windshield. “Whatever happened—happened. It doesn’t matter now.”
“Carter,” Thomas says again, and there’s a tight edge to it—frustration, maybe, or something closer to hurt. “Please don’t do that.”
Jesus Christ.
“Do what?” I ask, aiming for casual, but my voice cracks.
“I’m sorry about what happened,” Thomas says.
And just like that, my eyes start to sting.
Of course he’s sorry.
He’s sorry he got drunk and handsy, said a bunch of things he didn’t actually mean—and I, hopeless, desperate idiot that I am, took it the wrong way. Thought my years-long crush, which he clearly knew about, meant something more. Thought maybe it finally mattered.
“Don’t be, okay?” I say, angry now. “It doesn’t matter. Just—let it go.”
He doesn’t say anything. But I can feel him watching me—confused, maybe a little stunned, probably wondering why I’m reacting like this.
And I hate that I’m crying in front of him. Hate that the tears are actually falling, running down my face, making it obvious I still give a shit.
Because I don’t.
Jesus, I don’t.
“Carter,” he says again.
And then his hand is on my shoulder, rubbing gently, like he’s trying to calm me down—and now my face is wet and blurry and I’m wiping at it, trying to get it together—
The car lurches, the steering wheel kicking under my hands.
Shit. What the hell is going on?
Thomas pulls his hand away from my shoulder, like he thinks he somehow caused it.
A low grinding sound starts up—metallic and wrong—and both of us instinctively look toward the side of the road. There’s no real shoulder, just a snow-covered curb and a row of half-buried trees, but I ease the car over anyway and bring us to a stop.
That’s when the dashboard lights up all at once—check engine, battery, oil pressure, ABS, and at least three warning symbols I don’t even recognize, all blurring together in front of my eyes.
“Uh, Carter—” Thomas starts.
“I see it,” I snap, panic already rising in my throat.
And then everything goes dark and still. No hum, no fan, no heater—just a heavy silence pressing in around us.
“No,” I whisper. “No, no, no, no.”
But the car’s dead.