Chapter 19
Nineteen
Scarlett
18 Years Old
Everything she and Colin were doing felt like a date. The fifties-style diner they decided on made Scarlett feel like she was in a rom-com, right along with Colin’s decision to sit beside her in the booth so he could still hold her hand. Her veins were vibrating with the implications of it all. It felt a bit ridiculous to be this excited about getting food with someone she had already hooked up with, but it felt like a date. The jukebox in the corner was playing “Lay All Your Love On Me” by ABBA, for God’s sake. Her favorite artist, the meaning of the song—it felt kismet. Like the stars were aligning.
“What music do you listen to? Can I take a guess? You like calm, relaxing stuff. Maybe you don’t even listen to music, and you just listen to one of those playlists that’s, like, ocean waves for ten hours straight. Or… maybe folk music? I could actually see you liking smooth jazz, too. Have you ever been to a jazz club? Wait… of course you haven’t.” Scarlett shook her head at the rambling mess of questions that had come out of her mouth.
“I listen to classical music and what Piper calls ‘sad boy music,’ which I guess is just folk and depression music. The tones are lower in register, and I like that. And I usually listen to rain noises when I sleep. I’ve always loved thunderstorms as long as I’m not outside. At one point, I was really into weather science, and I still occasionally obsess over it again. I would love to go to a jazz club as long as it’s not too loud.” Colin released her hand, and Scarlett was disappointed until he set it on her thigh. “What do you like?”
“You.” The second she said it, she wanted to cram the word back into her mouth. Clearly, he had meant music, and her brain had skipped a step, as if she had started an art piece by painting first and then sketching afterward.
“I like you, too,” Colin said. He said it so casually that she wasn’t sure if he meant it in a friendly manner or something else entirely. “Sorry, I wasn’t clear. What music do you like?”
And now he was apologizing to her, as if his original question hadn’t been obvious. She needed to start a tally for the number of times she wished a sinkhole would swallow her up. There needed to be a punch card she could stamp for every embarrassing thing she had done since she met Colin. Twelve embarrassing moments, and she could trade it in for a brain-wiping surgery so the memories didn’t taunt her when she tried to sleep.
“I like sixties and seventies music. Not rock so much, but the upbeat stuff where the singers are dramatic about living or being in love. Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Wonder, Queen, ABBA, Elton John. They’re my favorites, but I’ll listen to just about anything that makes me flail around like one of those blow-up car dealership guys.”
“I’d like to see that,” Colin said. Scarlett’s thigh felt like the only spot on her body that was relaxed with his hand pressed into it. Everywhere else felt as though it were swooping and churning her insides in an unsettled prick of awareness. She didn’t want to be his friend. Hated the idea of only getting his body when she wanted also to look into his mind, memorize the way he thought.
Colin was all about being forthright, so Scarlett took a leap and hoped she wouldn’t fall. “Why are we here right now, Colin?”
“Here as in this restaurant? Or are you asking about the philosophical meaning of life?” Only Colin would ask for clarification on a question about clarification.
“The restaurant, but I’ll take your opinion on the meaning of life later.”
“I thought you might be hungry,” he replied. “And the book I gave you suggests that emotional intimacy goes hand in hand with a sexual relationship, and a lot of the time bad sex is associated with a lack of feeling connected to your partner.”
Her heart sank, and she shifted away from him, his hand falling away from her thigh so the room temperature air felt like ice against the vacant spot. “So you think we’re bad at sex stuff and the only reason you want to know me otherwise is because doing that will make the sex better?”
Colin furrowed his brow. “Did I say something wrong? I was just stating the research. Do you want to keep it more superficial? No friendship, just sex?”
“I just didn’t think the only reason you want to get to know me is because it’ll make the sex better.” Scarlett looked away, hoping she could control her disappointment before she embarrassed herself again. “But I get it. We agreed to no strings.”
“I hate that rule,” Colin grumbled. The irritation lacing his voice gave her pause, and she slowly turned her head to look at him again. “I was trying to make it so you didn’t have to be invested in me if you didn’t want to be. I don’t have any friends that aren’t my siblings, so maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe there’s something that makes me intrinsically unlikable. Maybe it’s that I relate everything back to facts, I don’t know. You don’t have to be invested in me, but I am invested in you, Scarlett . I like hearing you talk. I want to know what makes you decide to paint certain things or how you choose your earrings in the morning.” He reached up to curl one finger around the hot pink dangling arches she was wearing today. The pounding in her chest intensified. He wasn’t looking at her head-on, but it still felt like he was speaking directly into her heart. “I like you. A lot. You’re hot and interesting, and when I’m with you I feel… good.”
“Honey, if you don’t take him, I’ve got a niece that will.” An older waitress wearing bright red lipstick and an apron was standing at their table, holding up a pen and pad of paper.
Scarlett’s face heated as she stumbled over her words, trying to think straight. “Oh, I—um, you?—”
“No thanks on the niece,” Colin said simply and touched Scarlett’s leg again. “Ready to order?” She wasn’t even close to ready. Before they had started their conversation, she was in the middle of decision paralysis between ten different things. The menu sitting on the table stared at her in judgment. “Do you want me to order for you?”
“Please.” Scarlett let out a sigh of relief.
When the waitress finally left, Scarlett felt like she was bursting at the seams with all of the things she wanted to say but couldn’t quite articulate. A water glass slid closer to her, and she bit her lip as Colin spoke again. “By the end of the day, you’re always massaging your head like you have a headache, and I think it’s because you’re dehydrated, so I think you should probably drink this one and mine, too, and that will help.” He slid his glass across the table.
The glasses clinked together, and she twisted her torso to face him and blurted, “I really like you.”
Colin flinched. “You already said that.”
“No,” Scarlett said, exasperated. “I mean I like you more than as a friend, Colin. More than our experiment. I want to know everything about you because I’m pretty certain you’re going to end up changing the world someday. I wish you’d tell me every thought in your head because I like your deep dives into science and facts, even when I have no idea what you’re talking about. I wish you told me more about your parents or your siblings or whatever’s going on with your uncle. About what’s going on with you . I remember when my brother died, and of course it’s not the same because I was so young and Tucker was fighting cancer for a long time, but you lost two people suddenly, and I know you’re not okay because you occasionally let me see tiny snippets of that, and I just want to make you feel better. I want—” Colin’s mouth landed on hers, and all the tension in her body melted under his touch. His hands were cupping her cheeks, and the warm comfort came roaring back into her body. Her shoulders sagged as she leaned in and kissed him back.
Scarlett’s stomach dropped when Colin pulled away. He reached across the table to his backpack and retrieved a sheet of paper and a pen. It was a scoring chart for their experiment, she noticed, and she thought he was going to immediately kill the moment by grading the kiss until he took the pen and carefully struck through one of their rules at the bottom. Rule three, no attachments or expectations, was officially voided. She thought she had never been happier in her life until he said casually, “you’re a visual learner, so I thought that would help with clarification.” Taking it a step further, he scribbled a little note next to the strikethrough: dating exclusively . He didn’t even seem to realize how quickly he had understood her. She did need that visual assurance. As he started to meticulously fold the paper into rectangle after rectangle, she found his leg under the table and set her hand on his thigh because she knew him, too. Colin liked contact. Like a cat arching into a hand, Colin shifted closer to her so their sides were firmly pressed together.
“Should we get rid of the ‘keep everything a secret’ rule, too?” She wiggled happily in the booth.
“I still think we should keep it a secret,” he said. Her face fell, and she tried to recover it before he noticed. A situationship wasn’t really what she had in mind when she said she wanted to know everything about him.
“Are you embarrassed of me or something?” Scarlett forced a laugh that came out extremely ditzy and punched his shoulder. It was supposed to be playful, but she had never jokingly punched anyone before, and it felt strange from the second she lifted her fist to the moment she connected with his arm.
“I didn’t like that.” Colin scooted a few inches away from her and rubbed the spot she punched, and she inwardly wanted to punch herself for good measure “Talia—the girl my uncle is in love with—does that all the time to him, so I know it’s supposed to be like a cute couple thing, but I don’t get it. Why is violence cute? I don’t think we need to do that to be cute. Can you be my girlfriend without punching me?”
She groaned and buried her face in her hands. “I actually hated that. I take it back. I was trying to be cavalier, and I’m not cool, so I don’t know why I did that.”
“It’s weird that you’re trying to be cool around me when I’m the least cool of the two of us.”
“Says the guy who wants to make sure no one knows he’s dating me,” she muttered grumpily.
“What?” Colin flexed a perplexed brow. “I don’t not want people knowing you’re dating me, I just don’t want the fanfare from announcing it. My family would be overwhelming with the questions, and I value the peace that I’ve found with you. Obviously, if we decide to go the distance, they will have to know at some point, but for now, I like how quiet our little bubble is.”
It wasn’t exactly what Scarlett had envisioned. Having a boyfriend for the first time since freshman year, when she had dated Robbie Lackey for one month, felt like a big deal. She wanted to be seen with Colin. Still, the thought of everyone staring at them made it feel like the acid in her stomach was rising, so she could understand where he was coming from, but even so, she wanted to be fully immersed in his life the same way that they touched each other, firmly and assuredly.
“Okay.” She bit her tongue. “Can we at least talk about you for once? The issues with your uncle, your parents?—”
“We should fix my uncle’s problem, because that’s more immediate.”
Scarlett smiled softly, shoving down the feeling that he seemed too eager to avoid any discussion about his parents. “What’s up with him and his not-girlfriend?”
“Every single one of my siblings knows he’s in love with her, and I know because he frequently checks her out and will not stop talking about her.”
“Okay, so, what’s the problem?”
Colin lifted both hands in an endearing, cartoonesque shrug. “I truly don’t know. They’re annoying. If you like someone, then ask them out. It’s that simple. I like you, I asked you if you wanted to get food, and here we are. I told you I liked you, and you returned the sentiment.”
She considered that for a moment. “Not everyone is as forthcoming with that information as you are. I wouldn’t be if you didn’t make me be brave. It’s scary to admit that kind of thing because there’s a lot people can lose.”
“I’d argue that there’s a lot people can lose by not saying exactly what they want or what they feel. For instance, I’m leaving for Johns Hopkins at the end of summer. If I don’t tell you now that I like you, then we’d have no opportunity to see where this goes because I won’t even be in the same city.”
That thought churned Scarlett’s insides. Everything was new, and yet the attachment she had to Colin now felt so permanent. When he inevitably left, it was going to hurt. Like a key clicking into a lock, the fear slotted itself into the back of her mind and took up residence there.
“You’re right.” Scarlett swallowed. “But it’s still scary. Maybe with the chaos of all your siblings and dealing with that, your uncle and his friend haven’t been in enough of a romantic setting to spill their guts to each other.”
She could see he was thinking about it by the way he closed his eyes for a moment, rocking front to back, the way he sometimes did when she was well into a particularly long rant. Colin paid more attention when his eyes were closed, as if he needed to eliminate one of his senses to really glean the information or think properly. Sometimes his responses were quick off the cuff, but if they required more thought, he always seemed to retreat in on himself first.
He finally opened his eyes. “So, what you’re saying is we need to force them into an intimate setting. Make them go on a date, and maybe they’ll end up figuring it out?”
“Force is maybe a little much. I just meant—” But Colin already had his phone pulled out and a dial tone ringing through the speaker as he set it face up on the table between them. The contact glaring up from the black screen said “Carter Hartrick” with a picture of Colin’s brother grinning from ear to ear. Startled by the sudden change from Colin literally just saying he wanted to keep his family in the dark, Scarlett floundered beside him, unsure if she should speak or sit quietly.
“What’s wrong?” Carter was breathing heavily when he answered after two rings. The feeling Carter implied with those two words must have been universal, because occasionally Scarlett felt like she too was only one phone call away from bad news. She wondered if the Hartrick siblings all picked up the phone like that.
“I’m going to loop in Piper. I think I have an idea for how to force Walker’s hand with Talia,” Colin said, then started tapping away at his phone.
“Dude, I’m at basketball practice, and Piper is with Talia right now,” Carter said, then sighed. “You know what? Fuck it. I’ll just tell Coach Winston I’m going to the bathroom.”
“Good,” Colin replied. “Hold, please.”
A few minutes later, the eldest three Hartrick siblings were all on the line. Scarlett’s suspicions about how each sibling would always expect the worst were confirmed when Piper’s initial reaction to Colin’s phone call was to immediately ask if he was okay. Food was delivered midway through the conversation, and Scarlett listened in as she stuffed her face with fries and the burger that Colin had ordered her. By the time she had silently finished her burger, the siblings had an entire rundown of tasks each of them would complete to push their uncle in the right direction.
The plan they concocted was ridiculous, and there was a small pang of sadness lodged in Scarlett’s throat at the thought that she would never get to do any scheming with her own brother. The things about Tucker that always hit the hardest were the what ifs. What if he had gone into remission and she had been old enough to be his accomplice for one of his many pranks? She would be fine for months on end until she would find a sparkle on the ground from the time her brother had glitter-bombed their mom. Nora had been furious at first because sparkles were a pain in the ass to get out of anything, but then Tucker looked her dead in the eye and said that she couldn’t be mad at him because he had cancer. Everyone had burst into laughter, and it was forever one of those memories that was brought up at Thanksgiving dinners. All the untapped potential of future pranks had died with him.
It seemed like the Hartrick siblings’ conversation was coming to a close, so Scarlett tuned back in for the end, shoving down her aching jealousy. It was silly to be envious of them at all considering the position they had been left in. Swapping out one sad story for another wasn’t anything to be jealous of. They deserved a little fun. They deserved a little peace like Colin had said he had found with her.
“Dammit,” Piper muttered.
“What?” Colin’s voice was tinged with panic.
“Did we forget something?” Carter asked.
“No, sorry.” A long, feminine sigh on the other line echoed through the speaker. “Harden keeps texting me.” Another groan from Piper. “Listen to me right now, Carter, if you ever send a girl an unsolicited dick pic, I will maim you. No girl wants that shit.”
“Ew!” Scarlett screeched.
“Who is that?” Piper asked, alarmed. After finally resolving herself to stay quiet for the entire conversation, Scarlett’s knee-jerk reaction to a douchey guy sending Piper a schlong picture had given her away. “Carter, are you with a girl right now?”
“That would be me,” Colin said casually. “I’m with Scarlett.” He picked up a fry like he was finally going to eat something, bringing it to his mouth to only take one bite before setting it down.
“Another tutoring session?” Carter asked. Scarlett could detect a hint of suspicion in Carter’s voice, but Colin seemed none the wiser. That was what she had been rendered to—a girl who needed a science tutor.
“We did that earlier. Now we’re just eating.”
“Does Scarlett get to speak, or do you speak for her?” Piper asked.
Scarlett cackled. “Hi, guys.”
“She lives!” Carter exclaimed.
“Why would she not be alive?” Colin cinched his eyebrows together.
“Maybe she died of having to listen to you yap about chemistry,” Carter said.
“Ah, a fellow science hater.” Scarlett smiled and caught a reproachful look from Colin. “I-I mean, hating science is wrong because everything is science.”
“Is Colin making you read off a teleprompter? Blink twice if you need help,” Piper’s tongue-and-cheek response came with a chuckle from Carter.
Scarlett’s eyelashes fluttered with purpose when she noticed Colin look in her direction. “What’s it mean if she blinks thirty times in a row?” he asked.
“She’s having a stroke,” Carter quipped.
“She’s trying to create a windstorm,” Piper offered.
“She’s using Morse code to deliver a message to an underground operation,” Colin added.
“Ooh, I like that one.” Scarlett grinned. “That makes me sound like a badass. I was just going for Life Alert. Like, ‘help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!’ I’d rather be a spy.”
“As Dad used to say, you can be anything you want to be, you just have to get out of bed,” Carter said in a mocking old man voice.
“He only said that to you because you are a pain in the ass to get out of bed,” Colin said.
“We all have our faults,” Carter droned. “Colin’s is that he’ll tell you right to your face what your worst flaw is. Piper’s is her inability to not date bottom feeders.”
Piper gasped. “Rude!”
Scarlett grimaced, remembering the original text that had launched this conversation to begin with. Every single interaction she’d ever had with Harden Rochester ended with him hitting on her in a way that made her feel like she needed to take a shower after. “You’re not still dating Harden, are you?”
“Absolutely not,” Colin grumbled. “She’s not allowed to.” The older big brother attitude he was projecting made her flush with affection, and Scarlett’s hand involuntarily reached up to latch around his arm again. He moved it, and at first she figured it was because she was gripping him too tight, until his arm traveled behind her, coming to rest on her hip. She liked it way too much to not lay her head back against his chest so they were practically on top of each other, his palm partially cupping her ass.
“No, I’m not.” Piper said it in a way that made it clear she was rolling her eyes.
“If you want me to deck him, I will,” Carter volunteered. “Also, I’m very offended that I was the first person you thought would send unsolicited dick pics. What about Colin?”
“I doubt anyone would want mine.” Colin dropped his mouth to Scarlett’s ear so no one would hear. “Unless you do, Red.”
A shiver traveled up Scarlett’s spine. She opened her mouth to say no, but she ended up just shrugging. There might come a time where she was horny enough to suggest he send her one. Penises were weird-looking, and Colin’s was intimidatingly large, so she didn’t think that request would ever come into play, but she didn’t want it off the table entirely.
The rest of the conversation passed in a haze. Scarlett barely paid attention. Colin’s hand on her ass and his hot breath near her ear made her want to sink into his touch. To be covered up in him. By the time everyone said their goodbyes, they got their to-go order for Harper, boxed up the entirety of the meal Colin had barely touched, and were sitting in the car, Scarlett was so keyed up that a knot of pleasure was sitting in her core.
“Back to your house?” Colin buckled himself and reached back to set Harper’s paper bag on the backseat.
“Mm-hmm.” Scarlett’s mind was preoccupied, a thousand things swirling around in her head. She couldn’t decide if she wanted him to render her speechless with his mouth or if she wanted him to keep talking. Per his earlier declarations, talking would make the intimacy better. Her heart won out after a moment of silence, and she lifted Colin’s hand off her thigh and held it. “It was fun scheming with your siblings, but we didn’t really talk about how you were feeling.”
“I told you how I was feeling. I’m annoyed he doesn’t just date her already,” Colin said, turning the key and beginning to back out of the parking spot.
“No.” Scarlett bit her lip. “I mean in general. About your parents.”
Colin pulled his hand away. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“But you’ve talked to me a little about it before. It could be good to talk about it,” she urged. She was pushing him too hard and she knew it, but she couldn’t help the feeling that while she talked on and on about every facet of her life and had frequently overshared about her brother, Colin had only shared trivial things.
“I have a therapist.” Colin punctuated this statement with a flick of the blinker to make a right-hand turn. She could tell he was getting irritated, but she pushed on anyway, desperate to know.
“But… I’m your friend, right? You don’t have to just keep your feelings hidden away in therapy, I’m here, too, I’m right?—”
“No, Scarlett!” he yelled. She snapped her mouth shut and looked down at her hands. “Sorry, I just—I don’t want to talk about it. You make me feel good. You give me some sort of a purpose, and I don’t feel so aimless when I’m with you. The last thing I need is you knowing how fucked up I am, because you’re the one holding me together right now.”
“But I don’t care if you’re fucked up. I just want to know you,” Scarlett murmured.
“You do know me,” he said. “Whatever you felt when your brother died, multiply it by two because two people died, and then add in some maturity to those feelings because you were really young and I was seventeen, and you’ll reach a conclusion about how I feel.”
Scarlett’s mouth dropped open, and she twisted her torso to glare at him. “Grief is not a math equation, Colin. It’s different for every person. The fact that you even think that way means your experience is way different than mine because I’d never reduce it down to two plus two equals four.”
“Well, that’s how I think. I don’t know what to tell you.” His cold demeanor wasn’t something she had seen on him before. He was awkward and stiff a lot, sure, but never so rigid that the light couldn’t come in. “Maybe there’s an entirely different way I’m supposed to be dealing with grief, but the only way that feels good is being with you.”
There was something about this conversation that she wasn’t quite getting, like she had finished a painting but it felt just the slightest bit off because she didn’t tone the canvas beforehand. “I feel good when I’m with you, too, but grief isn’t supposed to feel good. For me it felt like someone had just smeared black paint all over something pretty. Or they’d stabbed a hole straight through the center of the canvas, and I’d repeatedly try to fix it just for the same hole to be broken open again.”
“I either feel nothing at all, or I feel too much and I explode. There’s barely an in-between.” Colin shook his head, as if to scold himself. “I think I’m supposed to cry more and sleep more, but I just feel uncomfortable with everything. The world has always been uncomfortable, and now that they’re not here, it feels even more so. I was trying to get used to one equation, and it suddenly changed on me, and now I don’t really know what to do about it. I haven’t been eating a lot or sleeping much, and when I eat it has to be very specific foods, or I just can’t do it.” A flash of Colin barely eating one bite of a french fry earlier flashed through Scarlett’s mind, and she felt guilty for how easily she had scarfed down her own food. “It probably doesn’t help that Walker burns half the stuff he cooks, but Piper and Talia have been cooking most of the food now, and I still… I’ve lost a bunch of weight since they died.” She had seen him without a shirt enough times to notice how gaunt he seemed, but she didn’t realize he hadn’t been that way before. “I’m confused about why I don’t react the same way as my siblings. Carter’s in a depression where he doesn’t want to get out of bed even more than normal. Piper got drunk at some parties and probably hooked up with an asshole. Pearl is crying in her room constantly. Cooper has been out of character in his silence. I saw Walker having some sort of an episode that, per Google, was likely a panic attack. But I don’t do any of that. Pearl asked me once if I was even sad because while she cries the most, all of them cry way more than I do. And of course I’m fucking sad! I just don’t know why the thing that bugs me the most is that the routine of my life has been fundamentally disrupted and now I can’t function. Is that what you wanted to know, Scarlett? That I must be cold-hearted because I really miss my parents, but I miss the way it was easier with them around even more?”
There were tears sliding down her face, and she wiped at them frantically, because the only thing that would do was make him feel even more abnormal if she could cry but he couldn’t. But it was too late. “Why can I only cry when it’s an explosion? Even you can cry about this,” he said, exasperated.
“No, Colin, it’s—I’m sad for you,” Scarlett insisted, trying to control herself with a hefty sniff. “I cry super easily. You’re not a bad person for not crying or for wanting things to go back to being simple.”
“I miss that they both knew exactly when I needed a break. I miss that my mom knew what foods I’d be able to eat right now. My dad had insomnia, too, and he’d probably stay up with me and we could watch something on TV. I just want comfort, and you’re the only person I feel that with. I’m desperate to keep this going between us because it’s the one time I don’t feel like I’m trying to guess how I should be feeling at any moment.” His speech was spiraling. From beginning to end of his monologue, his breaths had quickened, his hands around the wheel tightening so hard his knuckles turned white.
“I love being that for you,” she assured him. “I promise, I do.” She hadn’t realized that at some point, Colin had driven in the opposite direction of her house. They were completely surrounded by woods, up a graveled path that she hadn’t been focused on at all. The shaking of the car must not have been Colin’s body after all, but the small rocks under the tires.
“I need to breathe for a second,” he said, skirting up to a pull out in the road and throwing the car in park. The Audi wasn’t yet at a complete stop, and Scarlett had to brace her hands on the dash to keep from faceplanting into it when the car jerked as if it had hit a wall and could go no farther. Colin left the engine running as he flung himself from the driver’s seat and stumbled out to what she now realized was the lookout above the city. As if Colin’s reaction was viral and Scarlett had caught it on the wind, her chest tightened with panic. How was she supposedly his comfort when she was completely out of her element with him? Slowly, she stepped out into the dirt and traveled the distance between them at a crawl. He was gripping the small display plaque listing off Archwood’s founding information near the ledge that looked out over the city’s lights. It was usually a pretty sight, but Colin wasn’t even looking at it, his forehead pressed into the plaque in an almost-hug.
“Colin?” Scarlett asked, leveling out her voice as much as possible. He didn’t respond, just continued shaking in a metal embrace with the plaque. “I’m going to touch you,” she announced as she got closer. When her hand pressed hard into his back and started rubbing, he finally looked up at her. It looked almost painful the way he unlatched his fingers from the edge of the sign before reaching for her and yanking her into his chest. The hold was just short of too tight. Her breathing was slightly constricted, but not so much that she wouldn’t do this for him. Not so much that she wasn’t desperate to hold him. He was warm, and for all his talk about not being able to cry, this must have been what he considered an explosion, because he was almost hyperventilating, he was sobbing so much. She returned his hug with as much force as she could and murmured a series of apologies into his shoulder as she cried, too. For him. For herself. For a world that no longer knew Cole and Paisley Hartrick or Tucker Wallace.
For all the reasons she loved this person who just wanted a little peace. By the time Colin had regained control of his body, Scarlett had resolved herself to be just that for him. Peace.