Chapter Eighteen #2
That had a puff of a laugh coming from her nose. “We’ve been dancing around this all day, haven’t we?” she asked softly.
“Maybe.” I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Maybe I wanted to see how long it would take you to bring him up.”
Her lips curled and fell again. “We’re… fine. Great. I mean, he’s busy with the team and his new position, but I’m busy with getting the house in order, and now with Sweet Dreams, so… yeah. We’re good.”
“Are you answering the question or trying to convince me?”
Her gaze cut to mine, sharp and wounded. “Shane…”
I held her stare. “Are you happy?”
I watched the answer ripple across her face — the real one — before she shoved it down so quickly I almost doubted I’d seen it.
“Of course I’m happy,” she said, a smile sliding into place like a mask she’d worn a thousand times. “How could I not be?”
It landed wrong in my chest, heavy as wet sand.
I told myself to move on, but I couldn’t.
“How did you two…” I waved my hands in the air, unable to even say the words.
Ariana exhaled, slow and steady, like she was bracing herself before diving into cold water.
“We met at a nonprofit fundraiser,” she said finally. “One of the youth outreach programs I was running. He came as a representative for the financial organization he worked for at the time. He gave a speech, shook hands, made everyone laugh. You know how he is.”
Her voice tilted fondly, but there was something else underneath that seemingly affectionate sentence.
“I remember thinking he was… steady,” she continued.
“Everything in my life back then felt like it was one loose thread away from unraveling. Georgie was in middle school, he was struggling with some stuff from the trial, and I had him in therapy, but it was still a rough patch, and I was working two jobs and going to school full time. I barely slept.”
She laughed quietly to herself.
“And then Nathan walked in,” she said. “He was so… confident. So sure. He listened to me in a way no one had for years.” Her eyes darted to me quickly before they were on her shoes again. “He told me I was extraordinary, that I’d done what most people couldn’t do.”
I could hear it in her voice, how much she’d needed that then.
And it killed me.
Because he gave her what I couldn’t.
I took away her safety and her comfort, her trust.
He brought it all back in.
My ribs tightened like a fist around my lungs.
“He asked me to dinner that night,” she said, smiling a little at the memory.
“And we ended up in this awful little diner at midnight, eating greasy eggs and talking about books and kids and life. It was easy. Easier than anything had been in a long time. He… took care of me.” She swallowed, shrugging. “And I let him.”
The wind pushed her hair across her cheek, and she tucked it back again with trembling fingers.
“For the first time in years, I didn’t feel like I was drowning,” she said.
“He came over, had my apartment cleaned, cooked dinner, helped Georgie with his science fair project. He was older, settled, established. Georgie relaxed around him, finally acting like the kid he was. I relaxed, too. He made everything feel… safe.”
Safe.
That word split me open. Because that was what I’d stolen from her. The very thing she’d craved since childhood, the thing I’d sworn to give her and then robbed her of by leaving.
“You deserve all of that,” I said quietly.
She looked up at me with her brows pulled tight, like she wasn’t expecting kindness from me right then. Her eyes softened for a breath, then shuttered.
“He was good to me,” she said. “Really good. For a long time.” A pause. “Long enough for me to believe it was everything I’d ever wanted.”
And there it was, the reason my stomach never quite settled around Nathan, the reason I couldn’t stop picking at why Ariana was with him.
It was small, almost enough not to notice, but I caught it — a hint of truth slipping between the seams.
A hint she didn’t mean to share.
“And he still is?” I asked carefully. “Good to you?”
Ariana blinked at me. I swore I saw fear in her eyes before she smoothed it away with a practiced ease that made my stomach drop.
“Yes,” she said brightly. “Of course. He still is.”
But she didn’t look at me when she said it.
Lightning flashed in the distance, silent at first before a distant roll of thunder found us. Tourists and locals alike reacted with hurried movement, gathering their belongings, everyone ready to head inside a restaurant or shop or back to their cars.
But I was frozen, my breath stalled in my chest.
She’d married the idea of safety.
But maybe she didn’t feel safe at all.
“I followed the trial.”
My words had Ariana frozen now, her gaze stuck somewhere around my chest like she couldn’t look me in the eye.
“I was so proud of you,” I said, throat tight with the honesty. “The day of Jay’s conviction, I tried texting you.”
I could see it in real time, how Ariana was shutting down more and more with each word I said, but I couldn’t stop.
“It bounced. The text never went through. I tried calling, and it said the number was no longer in service.”
Another crack of lightning, and this time, close enough that the thunder rolled immediately. The wind picked up, blowing Ariana’s hair wildly.
I swallowed hard. “Ari… I hate how everything went down. I know you say it’s in the past, but I—” I paused, searching for breath that suddenly felt scarce. “I think about it. All the time. That day. Don’t you?”
A cloud passed over her expression just like the ones darkening the sky. She finally lifted her eyes to mine, and they might as well have been a knife to my kidney. “The day you left? There. I finished the thought for you. And no, I don’t think about it. I haven’t thought about it in years.”
Lie.
It was there in the way she tore her gaze from mine, in how she crossed her arms hard over her chest.
“I didn’t have a choice,” I tried.
“You always have a choice,” she shot back.
“I was trying to do what was best for you.”
“Yeah, well, thanks for letting me have a say in what that was.”
Thunder rumbled, and the sky opened.
“Great,” Ariana muttered, and then she was off.
“Ariana,” I started, but she was already walking again, steps furious and quick.
Rain fell in brutal, heavy sheets, so sudden it was like someone tipped the entire goddamn bay on top of us. Ariana broke into a run, sprinting for the nearest bridge, the paper bag in her hand quickly becoming soggy. I chased her, soaked instantly, water plastering my shirt to my chest.
We ducked under the arch just as the downpour intensified, and there we were — alone, breathless, dripping.
The river churned beside us. Lightning flashed again, closer this time.
She had one hand braced on her hips, chest heaving. I was a safe arm’s length away, though every nerve in my body begged me to close it.
“Ariana…” I tried again, softer now. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”
She didn’t look up, but her voice broke. She shook her head. “This day was so good. It was nice. And then you—” She stopped, breath sharp. “You ruined it.”
“I ruined it by asking if you’re happy?”
She scoffed, glaring at me before she whipped out her phone and started thumbing away at something.
“I’m serious, what did I do but ask how your marriage is? I didn’t realize that was an off-limits topic.”
“You didn’t ask because you actually care,” she said, closing her phone screen. “You say you want my happiness, but admit it — you were hoping I would say I wasn’t happy. You were hoping for my misery.”
“Fine!” I snapped.
I dropped the paper bag with my candles in it, not caring if they broke. I needed my hands for more important things.
I invaded her space with my breath hammering in my chest, tilting her jaw with my knuckles as she gasped.
“You’re right, okay? I want you happy, Ariana, I do, but not with him.
And I can see right through the lies you tell me.
There’s something wrong between you two. There’s something you’re not saying.”
Her eyes darted between mine, wide and almost… hopeful. Like she was relieved someone saw it.
But in the next instant, her face was blank.
“You don’t know me anymore,” she said, swatting my hand away and taking a step back. “You think you do, but you don’t.”
“I know you better than anyone.”
“No.” She backed up another step. “You knew who I was. Past tense. You don’t know who I am now. You don’t know my life. My marriage. You don’t know anything!”
“Ari, please.” The word cracked out of me. “Don’t shut me out again.”
She barked a laugh, but it broke in the middle. “Again? Shane, you—”
Her phone buzzed in her hand. She looked down.
Uber arriving: 1 minute.
My chest caved.
“I can take you home,” I said quickly, stepping forward. “You don’t need—”
“It’s fine. I called a car,” she cut in.
“It’s pouring,” I argued desperately. “Let me—”
“Let you what? Take me on another cute little trolley ride back to Ybor where your Jeep is parked? Don’t you think we’ve played pretend enough today?”
The rain drummed harder, echoing off the concrete. Her phone buzzed again, and she looked down at the screen showing her approaching ride.
“Ari,” I tried again, reaching out. “I don’t want today to end like this. Please—”
She jerked back like my touch burned. “This day shouldn’t have begun at all. The whole thing was a mistake.”
That gutted me.
Before I could react, before I could grab the thread slipping between us, she turned and jogged out from under the bridge, straight into the downpour. Her silhouette blurred into the sheets of rain as a car pulled up beside the walkway.
The driver hopped out with an umbrella popping up, holding her door open so she could dive inside.
She didn’t look back.
I stood there beneath the bridge, rainwater dripping from my hair, my chest heaving as I dragged a hand back through it, water slicking down my neck. My jaw locked. My fists curled at my sides, knuckles aching with the effort not to chase after her.
The rain hammered the pavement, loud enough to drown out the city — but not the truth crashing through me.
She wasn’t fine.
She hadn’t been for a long time.
And whatever cracks she tried to hide behind that bright smile… I saw them.
I saw her.
I didn’t know what she was walking back into, or what waited for her behind the door of that house, but I knew the look in her eyes. I’d seen it once before on a girl who had learned too young that safety could be taken from you in an instant.
I’d failed her back then.
I wouldn’t fail her again.
That girl was still everything to me.
And I’d be damned if I’d be the man who walked away from her twice.