Chapter 6 #2
“So what if I have?” I snap, more defensive than I mean to be.
She backpedals a little. “It’s great. I’m saying it’s great. Clearly, this whole breakup thing is working for you. You got jacked. You started playing rugby.”
That makes me laugh. “Those are the same thing. It’s one new hobby. I’m still the same guy, Rory. I still feel the same.”
And like usual, she doesn’t have a reply for that.
After a long, silent pause, I glance over. “You worried about what people are going to say?”
“Of course. You are, too.”
“I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t really know how to explain it.”
She makes a deeply frustrated sound I know far too well and jerks her head away, looking out the window.
Drum drum drum. I press my thumb hard against the wheel. “I’ll wear it, don’t worry.”
“That’s not how it works.” She crosses her arms tighter and hunches up her shoulders. “You’re going to come off like the good guy who tried to hang in there while I gave everything to my training, and I’ll catch flack for a breakup I didn’t even ask for.”
She’s not wrong. It was my stupid fucking idea. I couldn’t keep living in the limbo of being together but never moving forward. Not when she never looked up from her work long enough to notice I was right in front of her, just…waiting.
But her family will only see her ambition and long hours, and decide she ran me off.
She didn’t. She was happy enough, even though she was never actually happy. We broke up because I wanted more and she didn’t have anything left to give. Not because she’s a workaholic, but because I didn’t know how to exist around that. And that’s on me.
“I’ll make it clear,” I say quietly.
“I thought about telling them every time I called home, you know. But the words never came out.”
“Yeah.” I try to grab at any lifeline I can offer her here. “The holidays are probably as good a time as any to break it to them. With all your aunts visiting.”
Rory’s aunts are a lot.
She doesn’t respond, and we drive in silence after that. The city gives way to the highway, then the highway gives way to county roads with frozen marsh on one side and steep, blasted rocks on the other.
The minutes tick by.
The playlist I was listening to when she got in—quiet ’70s rock—finally ends.
I clear my throat. “You want to pick something?”
She blinks at me, clearly lost in thought.
“You don’t have to,” I say. “Just figured it’s fair to take turns.”
“So I can put on a holiday playlist?”
“I don’t hate Christmas music.”
“Sure,” she says sarcastically. “You only grumble every time it comes on and roll your eyes at all the overplayed stuff.”
“No grumbling today. No eye rolling, either.”
“I literally have a playlist called Overplayed Christmas Music. You’re saying I can put that on?”
I bite down on the inside of my cheek. “Yeah, go for it.”
“I’m just kidding, by the way. That’s not what the list is called.” She reaches for the display screen to switch from my phone to her phone—something she’s done dozens of times before.
Except her phone isn’t in the saved devices list, because I deleted it.
“Sorry,” I say gruffly as her fingers pause just above the screen.
She takes a deep breath. “Do you mind if I pair again?”
I gesture for her to go ahead.
She taps the buttons, and then—fuck me—my truck recognizes her phone again, because she’s still in my phonebook.
Neither of us say anything as the display flashes a message. My Favourite Person’s Phone is now connected.
My heart hammers in my chest.
Quietly, she clears her throat, then ducks her head and starts scrolling for something for us to listen to.
The first song is definitely overplayed.
Definitely something I would roll my eyes at.
But as it starts playing, as I can feel her staring at the display, I know I’ll remember this moment every time I hear it in the future.
Rory tightening up, her pretty face going blank, like she needs a mask to get through just being in my truck again.
I’ll remember the hurt I’ve caused her, and the stupid unspoken rules that seem to be developing between us.
Only once a month—if I’m lucky.
Only for ninety minutes.
No talking after.
No kissing, but everything else we can fit in that brief window of time. Absolutely anything and everything.
The sex has never been hotter, and I fucking hate it. I mean, I don’t hate it enough to stop, because I also love it, crave it, need it more than my next breath.
But fuck, I wish everything was different.
And now a fucking Christmas song is going to remind me of every mistake I made that led me to this moment.
The next song sears into my skin, too. Probably the whole playlist of Christmas pop music is going to be trauma-imprinted on my soul by the time we get to Pine Harbour.
Then, somewhere in the middle of song four, without looking at me, Rory murmurs, “It’s hard not being your favourite person anymore.”
The words hit like a sledgehammer.
I’m not sure what’s worse—her thinking that she’s not anymore, because of course she still is, or the weight of knowing that I’ll never get to say that out loud. That’s my secret to carry now, and it’s so fucking heavy.
Instead, I grip the steering wheel and try not to think about the way her voice cracked on that last word.
Try not to remember the last time we made this drive together, my arm draped over the console, her bare knee pressed against my knuckles, singing along to the radio like we were the two happiest people in the world.
Now we’re just two liars, driving home to a family that thinks we’re still that happy.
God damn it.
As if Rory is stewing over the same thoughts, she suddenly asks, “So… what’s the plan when we get there?”
I try not to tense up, but I think she can feel my I don’t fucking know reaction.
She takes a deep breath. “Because I was thinking—what if we, um… broke up again?”