CHAPTER 50
Cole
The door clicks shut, and something in me cracks wide open. I don’t move for a long time after she’s gone. My ears strain for her footsteps, her laugh, anything, but the silence is relentless, pressing into me from all sides. Still I sit, staring at the door as the seconds crawl.
“I wish it had been me first,” I whisper into the empty house.
I didn’t know she and Josh had only just met, that it was that night.
The one that could’ve changed everything if the timing had been just a little different.
If she’d looked up. If I’d spoken. If I hadn’t let her slip away before she even knew I existed.
Eventually, I drag myself to the couch, elbows digging into my knees, head heavy in my hands.
My fingers rub over my eyes, gritty from exhaustion I can’t shake.
I flick on Gilmore Girls just to fill the silence.
The tinny dialogue buzzes in the background, and I watch the screen without seeing it, colours blurring, voices muffling.
Anything to distract me from the echo she left behind.
I know in my heart that she isn’t going to walk back through that door. At least not today. Still, my gaze keeps flicking to the door, muscle memory betraying me. My body waits, even while my brain knows better.
“What the hell was I thinking?”
No. Scratch that. I wasn’t thinking. I just said it. I had to. The words had been lodged in my throat for weeks, pressing harder every time she smiled at me. Every time she leaned into me, like she was starting to believe this was real.
Somewhere between turning Avellana into something beautiful and waking up with her arm draped across my chest, the truth became impossible to swallow.
I grab my phone, thumb swiping across the screen. No message. No missed call. I open our thread, scrolling through the last few days, hoping I’ll find something I missed. A clue tucked between her words that she felt it too.
I click my phone screen off and place it face down on the arm of the couch, only to open it again thirty seconds later.
Still nothing.
I know she’s gone. Not for good. At least she didn’t say that. But her silence screams everything she couldn’t. And silence is still an answer.
“Come on, Quinn,” I mutter, my voice hoarse in the stillness.
All I want is closure—something to stop the loop of regret chewing through me. I often wonder if she would have changed her mind and come with me if I hadn’t told her I loved her? Maybe we could’ve kept going. Travelling together and laughing through the wrong turns, making memories out of nothing.
But after being with her, really being with her, there’s no going back. That kind of intimacy brands itself into you. I couldn’t handle having her that close and not fully mine.
“I could’ve waited,” I whisper to the empty room, voice breaking. “I would’ve waited.” The words vanish into the hum of the television. I repeat it, softer, like repetition might make it true. My voice cracks, and for a moment, I almost believe she might hear me.
I try to tell myself maybe I could handle it.
That I’d rather hurt every day and keep a piece of her than lose her completely.
But I can’t not love her. I can’t pretend that’s not what I want.
This inheritance means nothing if I can’t share it with her.
The money, the bar, the future, it all feels empty without her.
I toss my phone onto the cushion beside me, then immediately snatch it back up and check again. I stare at the screen until my eyes blur, then blink hard, as if that might force a message to appear.
Still nothing.
“What if she needs time?” I say into the emptiness. My voice sounds small, swallowed by the quiet.
My chest aches, that awful, hollow kind of feeling that seeps in when adrenaline fades and silence settles heavy. I get up from the couch, my footsteps dragging like they’re weighted.
My hands dig into my hair until my scalp stings, and then I collapse onto the bed that still smells like her.
Jasmine clings to the sheets, wraps around me as I bury my face into her side of the pillow.
My lungs tighten as I breathe her in, the scent that feels like home.
I stare up at the ceiling as my vision blurs with unshed tears.
I can’t stop replaying the way she looked at me when I told her why I named the bar Avellana, and about the sunflowers. For a second, I really thought she might stay. I never expected her to say it back, but God, I thought she might stay.
Even though I regret the timing and the way I said it, I don’t regret the truth. The truth is a weight that hurts, but it’s mine. And I gave it to her.
I love her.
That’s the only thing I know for sure, even as I let the tears fall. Even as my heart folds in on itself and rewrites every moment into something it warns me not to trust. I love her. And I said it.
And now I have to hope she finds her way back. Or that I learn how to wait. How to move on. How to breathe again. And I foolishly hope that somehow, she’ll find her way back to me.