Chapter 59
fifty-nine
. . .
WHITNEY
When I found Winnie, she took one look at my face and opened her arms.
I’d let myself fall into them, as she wrapped me up, and let the emotional breakdown commence.
After my tears were dry, she asked if I wanted to stay with her tonight.
I almost said yes. Maybe I should have. But after Charlie’s injury Winnie’s phone hadn’t stopped buzzing, and the last thing I wanted was to become one more crisis she had to manage.
So, I told her I just needed some time. Some air. A quiet place to sit to get my head on straight.
That turned into two hours on the beach, which in hindsight feels like a silly choice.
The salt air, the dark water, the steady hush of the waves folding into shore—it reminded me of every stop along the Rising Tides tour.
Of Connor. Of hotel balconies and late-night shenanigans and the strange, soft bubble we built around ourselves without meaning to.
Of everything that happened in Wilmington.
The game controller cord. The shower. His tattoo beneath my fingertips and the look on his face when I realized what the letters meant.
It reminded me of the relay tonight, his eyes on me after and touching the sailboat on his ribs like we had somehow become the kind of people who could say everything that mattered without saying anything at all.
So no, the beach didn’t clear my head.
It just gave me two straight hours to miss the exact person I’m still hurting from.
At some point, I finally check my phone. It’s still brimming with unanswered calls and texts, but I can’t find it in me to address any of them.
Except a group chat from Ren and Dani.
Ren
Are you okay?
Dani
And you can’t say fine. That doesn’t apply to anything that happened tonight.
I type out a response.
I’m still processing.
Dani
That’s vague, but understandable.
Ren
Do you want us to come to your room?
Ren
We can bring ice cream.
Dani
And snacks.
Ren
And emotional stability.
Dani
Speak for yourself. I’m bringing snacks and rage.
A light chuckle escapes me because this is so us. But right now, it’s not what I need.
Not right now, but I’ll let you know.
Dani
Then we’re on standby.
Ren
We love you, Whit.
Love you guys, too.
I scroll through the rest of my messages, but there’s nothing from Connor.
That should make things easier.
Instead, it leaves me with the stubborn aching thought that even though I told him I need space, the real thing I need is to know that he’s still here.
I make my way back to the hotel and take the elevator to my floor. When I step off the elevator and turn the corner toward my room, I stop so abruptly my keycard nearly slips out of my hand.
There, sitting on the floor next to my room, is Connor.
His back is against the wall, one knee bent, his forearms resting over it, his head tipped back like at some point waiting became the only thing he trusted himself to do.
Like he senses me, he looks up and turns his head in my direction.
God, he looks wrecked.
So tired and scraped raw that something in my chest twists before I can stop it.
For a second, neither of us moves.
Then, as I start to approach, Connor stands and pushes off the wall a little, like every part of him wants to come to me, ask something, fix something. But instead, he waits.
That, more than anything, makes my chest squeeze.
Because Connor has disappeared on me before.
Once, I waited for him and got silence. This time, he’s the one waiting.
I should go into my room, close the door, and deal with him tomorrow when I’m less tired and less bruised and less likely to make an emotionally catastrophic decision.
Instead, I stop in front of him.
His gaze tracks over my face carefully, like he’s checking for damage, but he already knows it’s there and he helped cause it.
“You’re back,” he says quietly.
“Yeah,” I say.
Because Winnie offered me somewhere soft to land and the ocean gave me two hours to think and somehow, I still ended up here, staring at the man who just broke me open in about six different directions and somehow he’s still the only person I want when all the pieces are scattered.
I glance at my door, then back at him. “You could’ve gone to your room.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.” He says it so simply that my throat tightens. “I wanted to be here. Not to overwhelm you, but I needed to know you were safe.”
A silence settles between us, quieter now than the one from earlier. Less explosive. More tired. More honest.
“I’m still mad at you,” I say.
Connor nods immediately. “I know.”
“I’m still hurt.”
“I know.”
I swallow hard. “And I still don’t know what to do with the fact that I believe you.”
That one hits him harder. I see it in the way his face shifts, something in him going softer and rougher all at once.
“I know,” he says again, but this time it comes out quieter. “And I’m not asking you to figure any of that out tonight.”
I look down at my phone in my hand, then back at him. “Rory came in at a really inconvenient time.”
Connor lets out the smallest huff of laughter, dead tired and a little wrecked. “Yeah. I noticed.”
That drags a tired, reluctant half-laugh out of me before I can stop it, which feels wildly disloyal to my own emotional devastation, but there it is.
His eyes stay on me, careful and open.
I hate that I can still see how much he means every word. I hate that I still want comfort from him. And most of all, I hate that the wanting is winning.
“I walked the beach for two hours trying to get my head on straight,” I tell him.
Connor’s gaze flickers. “Did it help?”
“No.” I shake my head. “The ocean is annoyingly full of you now.”
That pulls something almost like a smile from him, brief and tender, then it’s gone.
Because the video is still here. His I love you is still sitting between us, too, breathing quietly in the room like something fragile neither of us knows how to touch yet.
I cross my arms, more to hold onto myself than to shut him out. “I hate that you said those things.”
His face tightens immediately. “I know.”
“I hate that some part of me heard them and went exactly where you’d expect.”
“You should hate it,” he says. “It was awful.”
“And I hate,” I add, my voice thinning in spite of me, “that after all of that, you’re still the person I wanted waiting here.”
He looks down for a second, drags a hand over his face, then back up at me. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I wanted to be.”
A laugh slips out of me then, frayed at the edges and not very stable. “See? That’s the problem. You keep saying exactly the right thing at exactly the worst possible time.”
That one actually gets a full smile out of him. Then it fades, and we’re right back in it.
I look at my door again, then at him.
At the ugly, impossible mess of tonight still spread out between us.
Then I swipe my keycard and push the door open.
It’s not wide, but enough to be an invitation.
Connor’s eyes drop to the movement, then lift back to my face.
“I’m not saying everything’s okay,” I tell him. “I’m not saying I’m over it.”
He nods. “I know.”
“And I’m definitely not saying I’m ready to deal with the fact that you told me you love me in the middle of a crisis like some kind of emotionally deranged lunatic.”
He presses his lips together, his eyes lighting with reverence, like he’s ready to say it again and barely holding back.
“But,” I say, and stop there, because apparently that’s all I’ve got the emotional bandwidth for right now. “I don’t want to do the rest of tonight without you.”
The words barely make it out.
For a second, he just looks at me, like maybe he’s not sure he heard me right.
Then he nods once. “Okay.”
He leaves it at that, giving me the only answer I can survive right now, then he follows me inside, and the door softly closes behind us.
I set my phone on the dresser, kick off my shoes, and stand there for a second with my back to him, trying to decide if I’m about to completely lose it or hold it together for another ten minutes.
He’s standing a few feet away, hands in his pockets like he doesn’t trust them. He looks like hell.
Beautiful hell, unfortunately, but still hell.
And all the fight goes out of me at once.
Not the hurt or the anger, but the part of me that was trying very hard not to want this.
I take one step toward him, then another.
Now we’re close enough that I can see the exhaustion in his eyes, the strain in his mouth, the way he looks like he hasn’t let himself breathe properly since I left.
For one second, something on his face goes almost unbearably soft.
Then, carefully—carefully enough that it feels like he’s giving me every chance in the world to change my mind—he lifts his arms.
Before I can overthink it, I close the space between us, and his arms come around me.
I breathe him in and close my eyes.
His chin rests lightly against my hair. One of his hands settles at the back of my neck with a quiet steadiness that grounds me. Neither of us says anything because we don’t need to.
Because this is not the end of the conversation. It’s not the answer to the video or the hurt it caused or the I love you he dropped in my lap like a live grenade.
It’s just this.
Me, tired enough to stop fighting what I want for one minute.
Him, holding me like he knows better than to ask for more.
And for tonight, somehow, that’s enough.