20. “You didn’t deserve it.”
“YOU DIDN’T DESERVE IT.”
YASMINE
We drove.
The radio was low, Beyoncé singing about carriages while the treeline slid past my window and Hale kept one hand easy on the wheel.
After a while, he pulled off onto an overlook most people only found if they got lost on purpose. Beyond the guardrail, the ridgeline sat blue-gray in the distance, the sky soft and wide above it.
I folded my hands in my lap. A few minutes passed before I realized I was pressing my thumb into my palm hard enough to leave a mark.
Then I started talking.
I told him about CeeCee. He knew pieces. That she was pregnant, that she’d been staying with me, that Shaun had done enough to make leaving feel safer than staying. But he didn’t know the shape of it.
So I gave him the unedited version. The one that was supposed to stay locked inside family business.
The money. The cheating. My mother seeing what she wanted to see and un-seeing the rest. The way she could make disappointment sound like concern. The way she would never pick my side, because picking mine would mean admitting Shaun was wrong, and she would rather swallow glass than do that.
When I finished, I stared down at my hands. “You’re an only child, right?”
“Yeah,” he said.
I nodded. “You know how parents joke about not having favorites? How they say all their kids are their favorite?”
He nodded again.
“Shaun’s my mother’s favorite.” The words tasted bitter coming out. “She loves me, but he’s the one she chooses.”
First. Always.
He let my confession rest there. Then, almost casually, “He came to me for a job.”
My head came up.
“Applied at the garage a while back,” Hale said. “When I didn’t move fast enough, he went around me to Grant. Dropped your name. Dropped Ava’s. Tried every door he could find.”
“When was this?”
“While you were away this last time.”
“I didn’t know,” I said. “He never told anyone. My mother’s been asking me for months to talk to you about hiring him, like I was the one keeping him from eating.”
Hale took that in. “He didn’t tell her.”
“No.” I laughed, because of course he hadn’t. “Why didn’t you hire him?”
“I did,” Hale said. “Gave him a shot. I don’t personally love his energy, but I kept it fair. He wasn’t good at it, Yaz. Not good at the work, and not interested in learning or admitting he needed to learn.”
“Yeah… that tracks.” I swallowed. “I’m sorry about earlier. He shouldn’t have come at you like that.”
“The town slut thing?” He said it lightly.
I glanced at him. “Yeah.”
“I don’t mind being called a slut,” he said. “Always figured men got the short end of that stick, to be honest.”
A laugh slipped out. It felt strange in my chest. A little helpless, but good. “Still. You didn’t deserve it.”
Hale’s brow went up. “Neither do you.”
His face blurred, and I turned toward the valley until it steadied.
“Yasmine,” he said carefully. “You keep apologizing for him like he didn’t just try to gut you in public.”
“I know,” I said, quietly.
He reached across the console and took my hand. His palm was warm.
I thought about my mother in my kitchen. Too busy for family? The look she’d given me when I said I hadn’t talked to Hale yet, all quiet disappointment and unspoken accusation.
And the whole time, Shaun had already tried. Already failed. Already made sure the door was closed, and left me standing in front of it anyway, looking like the one who wouldn’t open it.
“Hey,” Hale said, his thumb brushing once across my knuckles. “You want to go somewhere?”
I turned to him. “Thought we were.”
“Somewhere else. Not the hills you were looking for, but the views aren’t bad.”
He waited with that easy patience of his.
“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”
He drove us out past Route 9, past the turnoffs I knew by name and into the ones I didn’t. The road narrowed until trees pressed close on both sides, sunlight flickering through the canopy in bright, broken pieces.
I kept quiet and watched the light move. Somewhere in the last few miles, I could breathe again.
A gravel drive appeared through the trees, and Hale turned onto it without ceremony.