Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
Carson’s truck rumbles over uneven ground as we turn onto a dirt path.
I want to ask where he’s taking me, but the wind through the open window tangles in my hair, and the hum of the radio presses the silence into place.
We haven’t spoken since dropping Hannah off. Something about that estate still lingers… the way it sprawled behind towering gates.
Less like a house, and even less like a home.
His grip on the wheel was iron then. Now, with each turn of this path, I feel him exhale it out. The truck slows to a stop at the mouth of a narrow trail. He cuts the engine, tips his head back, and a contented breath slips free.
That’s when it clicks.
“This is the off-beaten path, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He unbuckles his seatbelt. “Come on. I’ve been meaning to bring you here.”
Something flutters through me, but I clip its wings as gravel crunches beneath my feet. He circles to meet me at the back, pulling a hoodie from the trunk.
“You should wear this.” Dark blue, edges worn thin. “Trust me.”
I take it, lifting inquisitive eyes to his.
“So your dress doesn’t get dirty,” he murmurs, looking to where the fabric clings at my waist. A shadow flickers through his irises. “It’s real nice.”
I want to blame the heat for the warmth rising in my cheeks.
But I know better. I’m blushing. Me. Blushing.
Plenty of guys have said more—louder, cockier, dirtier—and never pulled so much as a blink from me. But three words from Carson?
Yeah. I’m in trouble.
He notices. Of course he does. The drag of his thumb across his lip gives him away. But he only turns toward the trail, moving with the ease of someone who knows every bend and root.
I steady myself as I tug on his hoodie, the sleeves swallowing me whole. His scent surrounds me like a hug, and I almost give in to the ridiculous urge to bury my face in the material, but his hand catches mine before I can. Solid. Intentional.
No one’s ever held my hand as often as he does. I like it, but I like it too much. Still, instead of pulling away, I lace my fingers through his.
“You’re not leading me to some secluded spot to finally get rid of me, are you?”
His chuckle is dry. “I could never get rid of you.”
“You could try,” I volley back, slipping into the safety of banter. “But I’d still show up in your kitchen the next morning, making breakfast like nothing happened.”
“You say that like it’s a threat, Jameson.”
He switches sides with me so I’m on the smoother side of the trail. “I like seeing you in my space,” he adds, gruffer now. His eyes flick to mine. “A lot. Don’t stay away again.”
“I wasn’t.” The lie sounds flimsy even to me.
His gaze is smoke and silver, and far too perceptive.
“You went to the museum. Sight-seeing. A few other spots. All with Aspen, but I saw her plenty these past four days.” Bitterness flickers, then dissolves into something barer.
“You were avoiding me, Brielle. I don’t like it.
I know I hurt your feelings, but next time call me out. Don’t avoid me. Please.”
Anything but quiet agreement should leave my mouth, yet it doesn’t. “I won’t.”
I’m unstable. Prone to spirals and shutting down. Promises don’t come easy anymore. But the look he’s wearing, the crack in all that control, locks something inside me into place.
This time, I’ll fight to mean it.
Eventually the path opens onto a jagged cliffside, and the world stretches wide before us—Atlantic blue, vast and heaving beneath a sky set ablaze with colour.
Sunlight pours over the waves, casting vibrant streaks.
Flamboyant pinks, sharp oranges. And as we move forward, side by side, it feels like we’re walking straight into the heart of the sky itself.
“Insane,” I say, breath knocked clean from my lungs.
I’ve watched the sky perform its daily ritual countless times from my balcony, sunrises and sunsets both beautiful in their own way, but this is different. This is picturesque.
Melded yellows skim like the stroke of a paintbrush, filling the hollow parts of me with warmth. But I know it isn’t only the view. It’s the surety of Carson’s hand in mine. The weight of his gaze on my profile.
“You like?” It’s edged with something bated… like he wants to please me.
The smile I give him might tremble but it is, honest-to-God, the most real one I’ve offered in months. “I love,” I confess, thumb brushing his knuckles. “Thank you for bringing me here, Carson.”
His gaze dips to my smile, stuttering there, before sliding back up darker. “Anytime.”
“You found this place with your family?”
He releases me from his bottomless stare and looks ahead.
“Yeah. It was all my dad, really. I couldn’t tell you how many times we ended up on dirt paths after driving around aimlessly.
” His voice drops, touched with memory. “My mom and I got sick of treks that never led anywhere worthwhile, but my dad—” He shakes his head, a smile twitching.
“He was too optimistic. Made us push through every time, and this place was one of the rewards.”
We stop a safe distance from the edge. Moss spreads across the rocks in patches, but Carson’s hoodie hangs long enough to guard my dress when we sit.
“Finding this place must have been so much sweeter then.” I imagine a younger him, family by his side, stumbling onto this hidden slice of coast.
“It was. We came back every day that week.” He drops my hand to muss through the hair that’s grown some inches over the weeks. The action is jerky. “My dad loved it here.”
I recall the reverence he spoke of this place with. “Like father, like son, huh?”
He doesn’t say anything. Not for a long minute. But then, so quietly that the pulsing tide almost drowns the words out, “It’s five years today.”
Five years… It doesn’t take long for the puzzle piece to fit. “Your dad?” I rasp, matching his susurration.
A single, aching nod.
It feels like swallowing iron. My insides clench around the words I don’t have, the only thing coming out a thin, “I’m sorry,” too fragile, too rehearsed. I want to offer more, to bleed out something real, but I’m not good with grief. Not when I’m still reeling from my own loss.
His shoulders are drawn in like a dark cloud. When vivid blue eyes flash behind my lids, my own bunch.. Did she…
As if catching the thought, he mutters, “He never saw Hannah. Didn’t even know Mom was pregnant.”
“Does she ask about him?”
“All the time.” He squints into the sun, but I don’t need to see his eyes to know what’s there. “She didn’t get what I did. That’s what kills me. She’s getting older, asking more, wondering more, losing—” more.
The word crumbles before it leaves him, but it doesn’t disappear. It seeps into moss and stone and every fragile crack in my heart.
I don’t have answers, only truth.
“She’s not alone, Carson. Never, not when she has you.” I see the way he pulls inward, so I ease the current. “Was it your father who got you into swimming?”
“Yeah.” His forearms flex as he leans back. “Yeah. He loved the water. We grew up here, so it was beaches and pools every day.”
“He’d be proud of you,” I say. “D1 is… insane.”
Silence stretches, and my neck prickles. He disagrees, but with which part?
“You know…” His exhale scrapes rough. “He was on his way to pick me up from practice. When the accident happened.”
Accident. A chill ripples through me.
“A drunk driver hit his truck, head-on. He died on impact.” It’s delivered so clinically, so calmly, I almost don’t see past his front through the mist blurring my vision. But I do, and I know—and feel—exactly what he’s feeling.
That grating, skin-too-tight feeling. Like being shredded from the inside out.
Now I understand the real reason he soured on the sport. Swimming didn’t betray him. His love for it didn’t vanish. It’s been buried all these years under guilt he never named. Grief he never let go of.
The crash of waves fade. All that remains is the ache, his and mine, fractured mirror images scattered on opposite ends of the same spectrum.
I want to say something that matters but my throat is barricaded by barbed wire and dark memory.
So I move. In the milliseconds between one heartbeat and the next, I close the gap. He’s all I breathe as I fasten myself to him and my arms pull him in, tight, like I can keep the world out.
An unnatural stillness holds him rigid beneath me. If I didn’t know him, the fists clenched beside my thighs would send me scrambling off. But I do know him now. That tension isn’t danger. It’s unworthiness, sharp and misplaced.
So I stay, moulding myself to him completely.
“Carson,” I plead.
It’s like flipping a switch. His arms snap around me, a tremor rippling through his frame as he sinks into the hold.
The thud-thud-thud of our heartbeats merge, but mine falters—once when his head drops to my shoulder, again when his breath grazes the underside of my jaw.
Light, but scorching all the way through.
I use the burn to pry the words from where they tremble inside. “It’s not your fault.”
Silence.
I draw back slightly, hardly noticing how his hands fly to my back to keep me anchored. My focus is only on him, his pupils blown wide with grief and something tender beneath.
I cup his face, gentle where my words are fierce. “It’s not your fault, Carson.”
The walls fall, and what’s left is ruin. It cuts through me like it’s my own.
“I don’t know why you don’t see yourself the way I do.” Tears blur his edges, but I hold firm. “You’re so, so beautiful. The kindest. The things you’ve done for me, I’ll never forget. You’re helping keep me afloat more than you know.”
Each revelation peels something back inside me. But It doesn’t feel scary like I expect. It feels safe.
“I wish I could take away your hurt, the way you do mine.”
His face? Complete shock. The slight parting of his mouth, the tick of his disbelieving gaze.
I will him with my eyes to believe.
And, slowly, his hands shift, splaying across my side.
Anchors for the lean-in that follows. So close, the space between us thins.
So close, our breaths tangle. A fraction more and there’d be no space at all.
My chin quivers. So close, he will have felt it as he lingers at the other side.
Shivers erupt beneath my skin. I can’t think past it.
This—this almost—is better than any kiss I’ve ever known.
I can drown in this sensation and all I’d feel is freedom.
“Carson…” His name leaves me half-plea, half-question. What is this? Just a thing of comfort for him? Must be, because instead of crossing that red line, his forehead drops to mine. The buzz in my blood goes unanswered.
“Who broke your heart, Brielle?”
I swallow hard. The truth claws at my insides, aching to be known. Maybe I could just tell him. Maybe—no. Fear silences it just as fast. I can’t.
He sees the stonewall and sighs. “You give me nothing, Bri, and yet…”
I wait. And yet what?
The elaboration never comes, just the graze of his fingers over the inside of my wrist, a millimetre away from my bracelet stack.
Suddenly it’s all too much, toeing a line I shouldn’t be anywhere close to. I’m supposed to be keeping my distance. Fighting this thing between us.
Instead, I’m curled in his lap, faces inches apart, hoping. That hope makes me move. Or try to. But his grip tightens on my hips. My eyes snap up.
“Just let me hold you for a bit.”
Just let me hold you… Stupefied, I nod. Barely breathe as he shifts me, my back warmed by his chest, the sunset sliding into view again.
Not that I really see it. I can’t see anything past the note in his voice. The ache.
Did he… Are my feelings not so one-sided?
My stomach flutters like it can’t decide between hope and panic. He can’t. Can he?
His chin hooks onto my shoulder. He might.
A shiver runs through me, caught in the amber haze wrapping us. I try to picture how we’d look to someone watching. A couple? Two friends seeking solace? I’m not vain but I think it’d be a pretty picture.
“I wish I brought my camera with me.”
“Camera?”
“Yeah.” He’s right about me rarely giving him anything of myself. This is my chance. “I used to love photography. The rush of catching something in a single frame, like holding a heartbeat forever.”
“Used to?”
You’ve got this, Brielle.
“I stopped seeing the world in colour. Haven’t picked up my camera in a long time. Or taken a picture.”
He stills. Pulls his phone out. “What about this?”
It isn’t the blank screen I thought I saw the other day. It’s the photo I took on his phone. The North Star, bright against the dark. His lock-screen.
“That was the first time I’d felt the urge to take a picture in weeks.”
“And now? Here?” Bated.
“Yes.” The weight of it settles between us. Each time, the urge has stirred around him. Even at Dugout, I’d felt the itch.
I look away, cowardly. His head shifts against my shoulder, a small shake.
“You’re wrong,” he murmurs.
“Huh?”
“About me being the kindest. I’m selfish. I only do those things because you make me feel the same.”