Chapter Thirty
Chapter
Thirty
Wesley and I sit on the deck and watch Arthur’s SUV crunch its way down the gravel driveway. Shay had insisted on breakfast at the diner in town—something about a tradition—and we’d encouraged them to leave. I’d claimed a stomachache, and Wesley told them he’d keep me company.
And honestly, that’s all I really wanted.
We haven’t yet talked about last night or what it might have meant. But this morning, the look he gave me had been so extraordinarily tender, and I descended the stairway at his side, unconcerned with the implications given that his room is a full floor away from mine.
I’ll do anything to stay in this perfect moment for as long as I can.
My shoulder is pressed against his as we huddle together on the porch swing, steaming mugs of coffee warming our hands while we peer out at the sky. It’s a pale shade of blue. The crisp air surrounding us feels especially still. It’s the kind of sky that warns of snow.
“I got an interesting email this morning,” Wesley says.
I feel a twist of annoyed fondness in my chest. He’s always daring me to bite. And, as always, I do. “Yeah?”
“From Nali.”
He looks at me expectantly.
“What?”
“She told me she sent it to you, too. Did you see it?”
I vaguely remember seeing her name on my phone’s notification screen when I woke up and checked the time. But then I’d set it aside and curled back into Wesley’s chest. I feel a prick of unease at the base of my skull. I remember Nali telling me to look out for something from her.
But why is it something she shared with Wesley, too?
“I haven’t opened it yet; what was it about?”
Wesley’s finger strokes idly at the inside of my wrist. “Actually—why don’t you read it later, and we can talk about it on the way home?” When he looks up at me, his smile seems a little forced. “I don’t want to ruin the vacation vibes with work stuff.”
Work stuff.
I’m immediately on edge.
My laugh is slightly too loud; Wesley’s eyelid twitches at the sound. “Well, now I’m curious,” I insist. “Just tell me.”
His finger taps at the base of my palm. He takes a breath.
“Apparently, her boss at their studio is sick of working with their publisher and told Nali he’s quitting to build something of his own.
He promised to bring her along with him and asked if she knew anyone who might be interested in helping them launch a new studio.
Anyone she’s worked with before, or who has promising game ideas. ”
I break eye contact and pick at my fingernail. It’s fine, I tell myself. This is what I’ve been preparing for. This is why we originally agreed not to think further than the competition.
This is what he’s worked for—what he wants.
I’d just thought that maybe last night had changed things for him. For us.
“Where?” I ask.
“Near Seattle, I think.”
The air leaves my lungs. “So you’re going.
” It’s not even a question. This was the whole reason he entered NEWT, after all.
I try to hold my mask together, even though it feels like everything’s beginning to crumble around me again.
Things had gotten better. I’d found a new group and new friends. But without Wesley—
I should never have let things get this far with him. Now it’s complicated, messy. Just like last time.
But Wesley laughs like I’ve made a joke, until he sees something in my expression that makes his eyebrows slant together. “I mean, I don’t know. I’m thinking about it. But did you hear me? She invited you, too.”
I scoff. “C’mon, Wes. Nali’s my friend, she’s being polite; she sends me shit like this every blue moon. I’ve never worked in the industry. They wouldn’t know what to do with me.”
The way his face has gone slack, I wonder if he needs a hard reset. “What?” The word cracks like a whip. “What are you talking about? What else have we been working on these last couple months? You don’t think that speaks enough for you and what you’re capable of?”
I set my jaw and look away.
“I thought you’d be excited,” he says.
“When have I ever given you the idea that I want to go anywhere? That I’m anything but happy exactly where I am?”
“I thought maybe this was something we could do together! I thought things had…changed.”
It’s a warped echo of my own thought—but his perspective is all wrong.
“That was never the plan, Wesley.”
He seems to realize something then—like he’s let something slip that he didn’t mean to. But then his eyes go hard, and his jaw tightens resolutely. “There was never any plan at all, Reagan. You won’t let me make any.”
“From the very start, we agreed to keep things simple—until the competition.” My tone is as icy as the freezing air around us. “Quitting my job and moving across the country to join some risky studio startup is the opposite of simple.”
Specks of snow begin to drift down from the sky, and everything goes quiet, the way it always does when it snows. Wesley doesn’t even glance away from my face to look at it; his eyes are like twin coals burning into mine.
“Simple.” He laughs once, without humor. “I don’t think you’re being honest with me, saying you still want that. Not after last night.”
We could find out, he’d said. I wonder if this is what he imagined when he whispered those words into my skin.
Things might have been easier if he hadn’t acknowledged it. If he hadn’t said it out loud. But now I feel the need to pick the scab off the wound.
“You said your feelings changed after college. You said you don’t feel the same way.” My voice is small, but it sounds so loud in the silence.
Wesley looks like I’ve speared him through with Brightmorn: shocked, and a touch exasperated. “Of course I don’t feel the same way. The way I felt about you in college can’t even begin to compare to the way I feel about you now.”
My breath freezes in my lungs. I can’t remember how to inhale. My heart beats thunderously against my ribs in a frantic march.
“After finding you again, after all that we’ve battled and built…I l—”
“Stop.”
I won’t let him say it. I can’t hear it, I won’t.
I don’t feel the cold anymore. Even as the snow falls around us, sticking to my hair and drifting into the empty deck chairs, I feel none of it. The heat in my chest makes me sweat.
I can barely look at him. I can’t stand to watch as his expression shutters closed again—as his look of unabashed hope and vulnerability melts in the face of uncertainty.
Very quietly, he asks, “Tell me, then. Have your feelings changed since college? Tell me I haven’t imagined how things have shifted.” He lowers his head to meet my eyes. His voice goes whisper-soft. “Tell me this wasn’t all a game to you.”
It’s a perfect echo of Owen’s words to him—the words that had caused him to run in the first place.
I reel back like he physically pushed me. Cold dread washes over me, followed inexplicably by an eerie calm.
Wesley’s eyelids flicker and then open wide. “No, wait. That wasn’t—”
“You still believe that.”
He’s stumbling over his words now. “That wasn’t fair, I just—I’m trying to talk to you about this, and you keep avoiding—”
“I’m not avoiding anything! You’ve made all these assumptions about what I want to do, and where I want to go, and how I feel—but you won’t listen to me.
You have no idea what I might have done back then, Wes; you didn’t know me.
Maybe I would have kicked you to the curb, or maybe I would have given things a try, but you didn’t stay long enough to find out.
You didn’t know the whole me then, and you clearly don’t now. ”
“I’m trying, Reagan! I keep trying to get to know you better, but you won’t let me.” He audibly swallows. “Please. I swear, this whole time, I’ve been trying to tell you I—”
“No, you don’t. Loving someone isn’t leaving them.
” It’s not running in the middle of the night on the word of some loser you barely know.
It’s not sending dozens of gifts from across the country to make yourself feel better about never being at home.
It’s not inviting your daughters to all of your new family functions but never making time to see them alone.
“It’s not something you do from far away, where no one else feels it but you. Loving is staying.”
“Is that what you tell yourself every time you turn down another perfect opportunity so you can stick close to Ramona, just in case she stubs her toe? Just in case she needs someone to hold her hand?”
The whole world gets very, very small. I feel every ounce of my peripheral vision disappear until I’m just staring down a narrow tunnel at Wesley’s eyes, which have suddenly become flinty and hard. I can’t remember standing; I can’t remember him following me, can’t remember how we got nose to nose.
“That’s too far, Wesley. That’s enough,” I say dangerously.
“Is it? Is that what you think?”
“Is that what you think?” I throw back. “That you’re the perfect opportunity?
” It’s a nasty thing to say, but I’m too far gone.
My rage is like a white-hot sword. “The game designer who just lost his job and is looking for any possible way to squeeze back into the industry that didn’t want him in the first place?
The guy who’s about to join a startup that has an even better chance of failing and letting him down than Hurricane ever did? That’s what you want me to bet on?”
“You don’t mean that.” His voice is small, too.
I don’t know what I mean. Before I have time to think it through or consider whether I even want to take it back, I storm back into the house.
Wesley doesn’t follow me, and thank god for that.
It takes me only five minutes to stuff everything I brought back into my duffel bag.
Before long, I’ve grabbed my keys and shoved my feet into my boots, and I’m shouldering my things out to my car.
Wesley’s frozen in shock for a moment, and he angrily—or anxiously—runs a hand through his hair.
“Reagan, don’t. I’m sorry, hold on. Let’s start this over. I didn’t—”
“I don’t want to. I want to go home.”
He swallows. “Don’t go.” He says it like a plea.
I remember when I said the same thing to him, but right now that feels like such a long time ago.
I say nothing and continue to throw everything into my trunk.
I suddenly feel very dumb and very silly trying to swipe my windshield clean of snow so I can make my dramatic exit.
But in the back of my mind, the refrain run, run, run plays over and over, despite the dull, painful ache that threatens to cleave my chest in two.
I try to ignore it; my whole body buzzes with the need to get out of here.
He tries one last time. “It’s staying,” he says, his voice cracking on the last word. “You said as much. Loving is staying.”
I finally look at him. I don’t know what he sees: the angry blotches of heat on my cheeks, or the way tears cloud my eyes, or the line of determination on my forehead.
But all I see is him with his shoulders hunched and his head hung low, looking smaller and more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen him.
I have to take a long, measured breath before I say, “I know it is.”
I hesitate for a moment with my hand on the car door. But I don’t turn around, and I talk just loud enough for him to hear. “Whoever you ride with—be careful on these roads. They’re hell in the snow.”
I fall into the car, shove the key into the ignition, and don’t look back.