Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LUKE
By the time I reach my apartment, the anger that carried me out of my parents’ house has hardened into something heavier and less defined.
It no longer feels righteous. It feels defensive.
I pace the length of the living room, replaying the confrontation in fragments—the photos in my hands, the court document, my father’s voice strong with certainty.
I tell myself I reacted the way any man would react when blindsided like that.
I tell myself that withholding something that large is the same as lying.
I repeat it enough times that it almost sounds reasonable.
Almost.
But every time I try to settle into that narrative, another memory cuts through it. The look in Andi’s eyes when she asked me to believe her. Not defiant. Not manipulative. Terrified. Not of being exposed—but of losing me.
The pounding on my door jolts me out of the spiral. I know who it is before I open it.
Brandon doesn’t wait for an invitation. He forces his way inside, his countenance a mix of fury and disbelief. He looks at me like I’ve become someone he doesn’t recognize.
“You left her,” he says, and there’s no shouting at first—just a weight in the words that feels heavier than anger.
“She lied to me,” I fire back automatically, because I need that sentence to hold.
“Did she?” he asks, and now his voice sharpens. “Or did she not tell you yet? There’s a big difference, Luke.”
I turn away from him, running my hands through my hair, trying to keep control of the narrative I’ve built in my head. “She was committed. There are documents. There are pictures. That’s not small, Brandon. That’s not something you just forget to mention.”
“And did you ask her why?” he demands. “Did you let her explain? Or did you see the word institutionalized and decide she was unstable?”
The comparison hits before I can block it.
“You don’t understand,” I say, but I hear the weakness in it. “I won’t go through another Megan.”
Brandon exhales sharply, the sound filled with years of frustration. “This isn’t Megan. You’re the only one still fighting Megan. And you’re swinging at the wrong person.”
He steps closer, lowering his voice. “I picked her up off the floor, Luke. She collapsed when you walked out. Not because Dad had papers, pictures, and accusations. Because you left her. You abandoned her when she needed you most.”
That image lodges somewhere deep in my chest. I didn’t see her fall. I didn’t hear her cry after I stepped out the door. I didn’t look back.
“You think Dad was protecting you?” Brandon continues. “He didn’t ask questions. He delivered a verdict. And you joined him at the guillotine.”
The room falls quiet after that. The accusation isn’t loud, but it’s precise.
“She should have told me,” I say again, though it sounds thinner now.
“She was going to,” he replies. “She asked you to believe her when the time came. And when it came, you chose fear.”
I don’t have an answer for that.
“Luke, she’s nothing like Megan. Look, you never listened to me about Megan.
She had been hitting on me for a while, but I didn't think much of it until she openly propositioned me. She didn’t care which one of us she was with.
She was just trying to play both of us. When she kissed me, I pushed her away, I swear.
She’s not the standard you should measure any other woman against.”
“You never looked at Megan the way you do Andi. You never cared enough about Megan to even fight with her. The only part of you that hurt over Megan was your pride, and you know it. What happened to Dad’s business wasn’t your fault any more than it was mine.
And you know Megan’s not worth even mentioning again, much less thinking about. "
When I don't say anything, Brandon continues.
"Not once has Andi ever been even slightly interested in me. Even when you claimed you were just friends and I was openly flirting with her, I love you, man. But if she ever looked at me the way she looks at you, I would take her away from you in a heartbeat. You obviously do not know what you have in her.”
He looks at me for a long moment, and when he speaks again, the anger has completely drained from him. “If this is how you handle someone’s worst moment while claiming to love her, you don’t deserve her.”
Then he leaves, and the silence he leaves behind is worse than the confrontation.
It has been just over a month since Mack set the clock. And already everything feels unstable.
ANDI
I don’t remember the exact moment my knees buckled—only the sickening lurch as the world swayed and the hardwood floor rushed up to meet me.
My palms scraped against the floor, and for a second, all I could see was the blur of wood beneath my cheek, the taste of salt and panic thick on my tongue.
Somewhere above me, the door closed with a final, echoing click. Luke wasn’t coming back through it.
It wasn’t just the accusations that hurt.
It was the way he recoiled, as if my very presence might burn him.
That instinctive retreat—like I was something dangerous, something to be feared—cut deeper than any words ever could.
I felt myself shrinking, folding in on the empty ache where hope used to live.
Brandon’s arms were suddenly around me, lifting me as if I weighed nothing at all.
He didn’t ask permission. He just carried me out to his truck, muttering curses at his father, at the universe, at the mess we’d all become.
I barely heard him. My body felt scooped out, emptied, as if something vital had been torn from the center of me and left behind in that room.
When we reached my house, Brandon stayed. He didn’t press for explanations or try to fill the silence. He just sat across from me, his presence serving as a quiet anchor in the storm. “He reacted,” he said, voice coarse. “He’ll come back.”
Maybe. But love that disappears under pressure doesn’t feel like love at all. It feels like a test I was always meant to fail.
After Brandon left, the house was too quiet—so quiet it pressed in on me from all sides, amplifying every thought until it was deafening.
I wandered through the living room, trailing my fingers along the back of a chair, the edge of the counter, searching for something solid to hold on to.
The silence was so complete I could hear my own heartbeat, frantic and uneven.
When the tears finally came, they weren’t gentle.
They doubled me over and wrung sobs from my chest so deep they left my ribs aching and my throat raw.
I am not ashamed of what happened when I was fifteen. I am ashamed that I let myself believe—just for a moment—that someone could see all of me and choose to stay. That hope feels like the cruelest betrayal of all.
When the tears finally ran dry, what was left was a cold, hard clarity. I did not lie. I survived something violent and complicated. I carried it alone for years because timing matters and trust has to grow before wounds can be opened safely.
If Luke cannot hold both truths at once—my past and my present—then the break is not in me. It is in him. I am not the one who shattered.
By the time I crawled into bed, I was still brokenhearted, but I was done begging. If he comes back, he will have to come back differently. I will not make myself small again, not even for love.
LUKE
My anger dissolves on the second day.
What replaces it is worse.
I replay the scene over and over, but now the focus has shifted. I no longer see my father as the authority in the room. I see Andi at the end of the table, holding photographs with shaking hands.
I hear her say, You promised me. Then I see myself stepping back from her.
That’s the part I can’t outrun.
At the gym, she adjusts her schedule to avoid mine. I hear about it from the guys before they realize what they’re telling me. She’s quieter. More focused. Not distracted—just contained.
Contained.
The word stings because it fits… it sounds like survival.
I volunteer at the youth center again, half hoping she’ll be there and half afraid she will. She isn’t. Or maybe she was—and chose not to be seen. Either possibility lands the same.
I call. She doesn’t answer.
I go to her house. She doesn’t open the door.
For five days, I examine every memory we’ve built together, looking for evidence of deceit, but all I find is consistency. Generosity that never asked for credit. Loyalty that never wavered. The way she looked at me like I was worth believing in—even when I wasn’t.
Megan bruised my pride.
Andi exposed my fear.
And instead of rising to meet it, I not only hesitated… I ran.
The realization doesn’t come like lightning. It settles slowly, undeniably. I didn’t protect myself in Dad’s office. I protected my old wound. I let my father’s suspicion override my own experience of who I know her to be. I broke a promise in the exact moment she needed me to keep it.
The worst part isn’t that I may have lost her.
It’s that she reached for me, and I pulled away.
And now I have no idea how to ask for a second chance without proving that I deserved to lose the first.