35. “Are you comingnot.”
“ARE YOU COMING OR NOT.”
YASMINE
Four days.
That’s how long I’d been watching him stand half a step outside of us.
He still texted back fast, the way he always did, like his phone lived in his hand.
Tuesday mornings he put coffee in my palm before I’d finished getting my eyes open.
His keys stayed on my counter like they’d grown roots there, and his shirt hung over the back of my chair for three days without either of us moving it.
And food. Cinnamon rolls from the bakery near his business. Banana pudding from a barbecue place forty minutes outside town. A peach pie currently taking up the bottom shelf of my fridge.
He’d always paid attention to what I reached for when things got hard. I’d told him that once and he’d never forgotten it.
It made me uneasy. It felt like getting flowers before bad news.
At Ava’s on Wednesday his knee stayed warm against mine under the table, and his hand found the small of my back on the way out, and he kissed my neck when he dropped me off.
All of it exactly the same.
Except he never once said the word Antarctica.
And I didn’t push. He’d asked for a few days, and I could give him that.
What I didn’t give him was what I was actually feeling. I didn’t have language for it yet. It was a slippery thing between worry and dread I couldn’t pin down without sounding dramatic even to myself.
Everyone else had plenty of language, though.
Diana emailed twice, once about equipment and once about funding, and both times ended the same way.
Have you confirmed your travel companion yet?
“I looked up the research station,” Ava said Thursday, sliding her phone across the table. “McMurdo. Over a thousand people during peak season. They have a gym and a coffee bar.”
“Cool.”
“Bowling alley, too.”
“Hmmm.” I turned the phone facedown.
Ava watched my face. “Still thinking about it?”
“Apparently.”
Her expression softened. “It will be fine either way. Even if he decides not to go. Six months isn’t forever.”
“Right.” I picked at the corner of a napkin. “Am I asking for too much?”
“No.”
“He’s acting like I am.”
“Then he needs to say that.”
Tabby loaded my e-reader with enough books for six months, then added another dozen for emergencies. She didn’t ask about Hale.
Annie grinned at me over the rim of her wine glass, lazy and wicked.
“You’re gonna freeze your tits off,” she said. “But I know you’re into that.”
“Occupational hazard.”
“Hale coming to keep you warm, or you flying solo?”
“Still deciding.”
“Mm.” She let it go, and Annie never let anything go.
I smiled. Answered questions. Sent the emails. Checked my lists, then rechecked them. All of it swirling around me while I waited for the one answer that actually mattered.
The celebration was loud.
The waiting was quiet.
And the quiet was starting to sound a lot like an answer.
By the fifth day I was done waiting.
We were standing outside the shop when I finally asked him.
Late afternoon. Sun sliding low, throwing long shadows across the lot—Hale leaned against his truck, arms loose at his sides, the garage bay open behind him.
“Are you coming or not.”
He straightened. “No.”
I’d known it was coming. Hell, I’d known it for days, probably. But knowing a thing in your head and taking it in the chest are two different countries, the border between them longer and meaner than it looked.
My brain kicked into gear, scrambling for solutions like it could fix this if it just thought fast enough.
“If it’s about taking too much time away,” I said, “I’m sure Grant wouldn’t mind taking on an extra hand to cover temporarily. You said yourself you’ve been easing back for months—”
“Darlin’—”
“And the NSF stipend covers a companion, or at least helps. If it doesn’t, I can—”
“Yaz.”
“—cover the rest. It’s not even that much, I checked. Flights to Christchurch, then the transport down to—”
“Yasmine.” His hands closed around mine. Firm. Steady. Stopping the words.
I stopped.
The silence rushed back in.
“It’s not about work,” he said.
“Then what?”
“I can’t leave Whitlock Hills.” He exhaled slowly. “Not right now. There are things here I’m responsible for.”
He said it like that should be enough. Like the sentence ended there. Like there wasn’t supposed to be anything after it.
I waited anyway. Gave him room. Kept my face still and my mouth shut—but nothing came after it.
No because. No here’s why. Just the town’s name and the word can’t.
I sucked in a breath and told myself it was fine, and it should have been. People had reasons. Lives were complicated. This wasn’t a promise he’d made or a commitment he’d broken.
And yet.
I wasn’t angry. Not exactly. It was quieter than anger. Sharper. Underneath it sat my father, choosing to leave. My mother, choosing Shaun. Shaun, choosing whatever void he’d always been feeding.
I knew Hale wasn’t doing that. I knew, in the part of me that operates on evidence and not wound, that this was different. That he was different. That there was something he wasn’t saying, not something he didn’t feel.
But the older part of me, the part that learned its lessons before it had words for them, didn’t give a damn about the difference. It only saw the outline. The same old silhouette of being second.
“Please come with me, Hale,” I whispered.
His grip tightened around my hands.
“I can’t.”
I nodded once and tried to keep my face still, but whatever I was feeling slipped through before I could stop it.
He saw it anyway. His whole body shifted toward me before he caught himself.
I took my hands back. “Okay.”
“Yaz, hold on.”
I was already walking.
He said my name again behind me.
I kept walking.
I made it to my car before I cried, but only for a minute.
Just long enough to grieve the distance opening between us.