Chapter 40
Autumn
He doesn’t want to stay with me.
He can’t love me.
I knew the fact that I’d been in danger had opened an old wound. I’d taken his words—I can’t do this—as an expression of an emotional state: I feel like I can’t do this.
All of a sudden, everything crashes in on me. I could have died. My sister hates me. Her wedding is ruined.
Tucker can’t do this.
I won’t cry. I won’t. I stand up a little straighter, toss my hair back, feel my feet on the earth, grounding down. Every time a door closes, a window opens. Every challenge is an opportunity. You can find the positive in every situation.
You can always find a way to be happy.
Even if you lose the thing you didn’t know, a week ago, you wanted more than anything in the world.
The air is cool and smells of butterscotch pine and juniper and wood smoke.
The sky is a dark midnight blue, speckled with stars.
Tucker feels like an absence beside me. He’s right there, and I already miss him.
I know what he’s going to say, or some version of it.
I could practically write the speech for him.
And maybe it would have ended this way no matter what, but I can’t help thinking that if I’d shaken him awake, if I’d made him come with me to the barn, this would all be different.
How everything in life turns on the tiniest decisions.
That must be how he feels all the time. Like he made the tiniest decision for the best reasons, and life turned to death.
Like at any moment, he could be responsible for the biggest loss there is.
It must be terrifying.
I don’t want him to force himself to do something that’s not in his nature. I don’t want to beg him to be with me if it’s wrong for him.
But I also don’t want to give up without at least telling him what he means to me.
There it is, the truth in the silence, in the not-meeting-my-eyes. I told him I love him, and he told me he doesn’t love me. Can’t love me.
And I can handle that. I’ve handled it before; I can handle it now.
I’m whole and enough; I don’t need a man to complete me. I don’t need anything except what I already have.
All the words I’ve ever written, here for me now.
I nod. Because I’ve already said all the things. I told him I love him. I told him I want to be with him. I told him he can heal while we’re together.
And he said he doesn’t want that.
You can’t change someone else’s mind, only your own.
“I understand,” I say.
His eyes flick to mine. They’re full of so many things, but the biggest is relief. Because I’m letting him go.
For some reason, that’s what finally convinces me that there’s nothing else I can do.
“Give me your AirTag,” I say.
Tucker’s brows draw together in confusion.
“You don’t have to be with me, since I’m actually not in any danger,” I point out. “Give me your AirTag, and you can go home and get some sleep in your own bed.”
He shakes his head again. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re in danger as long as you’re part of this wedding and as long as Blue Iron believes that we’re together. They don’t necessarily know—”
“That I’ve already blown it?” I finish for him.
He closes his eyes. “The point is they might still think that separating you and me, or causing you harm, will nullify the will.”
I know I’m never going to win this argument, which is how it transpires that I sleep in the big, empty king bed and Tucker sleeps on the floor near the door.
It’s the most awkward night we’ve ever spent together between the same four walls, and that’s saying a lot.