Chapter 40
The hallway feels too narrow.
Too quiet.
My boots too loud against the floor as I walk away from John’s office, the door clicking shut behind me like a final judgement. My chest aches. Not sharp or sudden, but deep, like something has been hollowed out and left exposed.
I don’t cry.
I can’t.
I learned a long time ago that crying doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t make people kinder. It doesn’t make answers appear. It makes you feel small. And I already feel small enough.
God, I hate that.
I curl my fingers into fists nails biting into my palms as I force myself to keep moving past the living room with photos on the wall of smiling faces and family moments I don’t belong to. Every frame is proof of life that never knew I existed.
A life my mother burned to the ground.
Something happened between her and my father.
Something bad enough that no one wants to talk about.
They tell me it isn’t my business. That the past is better left buried, but they don’t understand.
How can they? They know what happened. They know who she was, while I am still struggling to figure it out.
Something caused her to change.
I push into the bedroom. It still doesn’t feel like mine. Too neat. Too intentional. But it’s quiet. Safe. Or at least the closest thing to it.
The door closes behind me, and my breath finally stutters.
I press my forehead against the wood and let it out slowly.
In. out. Again.
They hate her. Not dislike. Not disapprove.
Hate.
The things the Masterson’s said about their own daughter circle my thoughts like vultures. Not because I believe them completely, but because part of me recognized the pattern.
My mother always ran hot and cold. Always “loved” too hard. Always burned bridges and called it survival.
And suddenly I don’t know where she ends and I begin.
I move to the bed and sit, staring at my hands like they belong to someone else. These hands have packed up entire lives in trash bags. Have counted change for grocieries. Have held my mother upright when she couldn’t stand on her own.
They’re steady now.
But they don’t feel strong.
A knock sounds on the door. I stiffen.
“Peyton,” Colter calls from the other side, voice low. Not angry. Not gentle either. Just…there.
I don’t answer. The door opens anyway.
He doesn’t crowd me. Doesn’t go to touch me. He leans against the doorframe like he’s holding himself back from crossing a line he already crossed once today.
“You aren’t packed.”
I look up at him sharply. “I’m not some puppet you can order about.”
“No,” he agrees. “You’re not.”
The pause stretches.
“But you are mine.”
My throat tightens. “And what if I don’t want to be yours.”
His jaw flexes. “You still won’t be staying here. It puts you in the middle of things you don’t understand yet.”
I’m coming to hate that word.
Yet.
I stand abruptly, anger flaring hot and sharp. “Everyone keeps saying that. Like I’m some kind of child. Like I didn’t survive everything she put me through.”
His gaze darkens. “You survived because you’re stubborn as hell. Not because the world was kind to you.”
The words land harder than I expect.
I turn away, shoving open the dresser drawer. My hands move automatically. Jeans, a shirt, socks. Muscle memory honed from years of leaving places I wasn’t welcome anymore.
“You don’t get to talk about my life like you know it,” I mutter.
“I know enough,” he says quietly.
I laugh once. It’s brittle. “You know what? Everyone here thinks they know me. Know my mother. But none of you were there at night when she cried herself to sleep. None of you watched her scrape together rent money or go hungry so I didn’t have to.”
Colter doesn’t interrupt. That somehow makes it worse.
“She wasn’t perfect,” I continue, voice shaking. “But she was mine.”
He nods once. “Did you ever bother to think that is why we don’t want you digging up the past? We don’t want to take that away from you.”
“Then stop acting like I walked into Blue Skye looking to hurt people.”
I turn to face him. He’s closer now. Not looming, but present. Solid. Like a wall that won’t budge no matter how hard I shove.
“You walked in looking for answers,” he says. “And you found pieces sharp enough to cut you.”
I swallow. “I can handle it.”
His eyes soften a fraction. “I know you think that.”
That’s not agreement.
That’s fear.
I shove the rest of my clothes into the bag and zip it hard. “I’m not hiding or giving up.”
“You’re not,” he agrees, slightly patronizing. “You’re regrouping.”
I scoff. “Regrouping sounds like hiding.”
“Sounds like surviving,” he counters. “Which is something you know how to do very well.”
Silence settles between us, heavy but not hostile.
I sling the bag over my shoulder. “I’m not going with you because you ordered me to.”
His mouth curves slightly. “I wouldn’t expect anything else.”
“And this isn’t over.”
Now he smiles. “Of course not.”
He helps me into his truck, buckling me in before closing the door softly behind him. Colter comes around to the other side, hopping in and then starting the truck.
The ride back to his place is quiet, but it isn’t tense like I am expecting. He doesn’t seem to be holding on to any of the emotions he showed me in my John’s office. He is peaceful and relaxed, his hand on my thigh comfortingly as the truck bobs along the bumpy road.
“I’m not angry, darling,” he breaks the silence as the truck pulls into the driveway. “Even if I was, that shit stays locked.” He puts the truck in park and turns to me. When I don’t look at him right away, he nudges my chin toward him with his knuckle, forcing me to meet his soft gaze.
“You sounded angry,” I admit with a shrug.
“I was frustrated,” he admits himself. “But not angry. I’m frustrated that you keep running headlong into something you don’t understand while also at my wits end with John, because I do believe you deserve to know the truth about what happened.”
“Then why don’t you tell me?”
He sighs. “Because it isn’t my story to tell, Peyton.”
I know he’s right and trying to do the proper thing, but it still stings.
There is this weird sense that, even if he wasn’t holding back about my mother and John, there is still something none of them are telling me.
It’s like I am being held at arms-length or looking into a pond but all I can see are the ripples on the surface.
“I know,” I huff, attempting to keep the childlike petulance from my voice. “It feels like—everyone is on a secret and I’m standing on the outside looking in.”
Colter reaches over and clicks my seatbelt off. I barely have time to figure out what he is doing before he has me straddling him on the middle seat of his truck. He’s hard beneath me, but nothing about his touch at the moment is sexual.
“I know it’s hard to understand,” he tells me, his voice heavy.
His eyes are set on mine, begging me to understand.
“You feel like an outsider and that hurts. But there are some things, outside of John, that I can’t tell you.
Not yet. But I will. You are mine, Peyton Masterson, and everything that I have will be yours as well. You need to give me time.”
“You say I’m yours,” I breathe. “But we barely know one another. Hell, barely is a stretch. We are strangers, Colter and yet you act as if we’ve been together our whole lives.”
“Come on now, little star,” he smirks at me.
“We’re the stars. Meant to be. Giant balls of gas that blink out of existence only to blink right back in under a new sky.
We’re eternal, Peyton Masterson. I know it, because every time I look at your beautiful face, I feel it.
That we’ve done this a thousand times over the years.
Brought together by fate time after time. Coming right back to one another.”
Well shit.
What does a girl say to that?
Nothing. You can’t.
So, I don’t. instead, I cup one side of his cheek and lean in, pressing my lips gently against his.
Colter doesn’t take it further. He’s content, pulling me closer into him, one hand running down my back. I gently lay my head on his shoulder as we listen to the soft hum of the radio that filters around us.
And for a peaceful moment, I feel like he described.
Content.
Eternal.
A star, blinking into existence.