Chapter 47
Forty-Seven
Scarlett
23 Years Old
Scarlett’s keychain with its random assortment of chunky knickknacks clacked together as she opened the door to her studio. She was exhausted, but she had one final thing to do. Colin bent behind her and picked up the flowers her dad had sent her for Tucker’s birthday that had probably been sitting on her porch all day, wilting in the sunlight. She was grateful for the assist because she knew it would hurt if she bent down right now. Her knees were scraped up and scabbed over from her lack of care when she hit the asphalt that morning to hug Theo. She didn’t regret it, even when Braiden had been the one to clean the dirt and pebbles from her cuts at the first aid booth. It was worth it. The rest of the day, she and Colin had companionably taken Theo to the lookout and fed him macaroni and cheese, the only food Theo never protested according to Jessie, who was in a guilty spell that would probably get Theo whatever he wanted for the next month.
Colin hadn’t spoken much outside of Theo’s care, and Scarlett could tell from the way he was barely present with her that she had hurt his feelings by leaving the other morning. But he had to know that whatever he was feeling now was tenfold for her when he had originally left. One morning wasn’t years of abandonment. Even so, with his less than happy agreement to her request, he had followed her back to the studio she had finally gotten the okay to live in again.
“Looks exactly the same,” Colin noted, staring at the wall where the fire had broken out.
“Yeah,” Scarlett agreed. “Do you think Theo will be okay?”
“I think he’ll be all right.” He nodded, wandering over to the front of the room and setting the vase of flowers down on the cubby station. The easel didn’t have a canvas on it, but the construction crew had moved it back to the center of the room after fixing the wiring and cleaning the burnt wall. She had missed this place, with all of its plants that were now half-dead from lack of watering. “Just give it to me straight. You don’t want me, right?” Colin asked.
“What?” Scarlett blinked. “That’s not at all why I asked you to come over.”
“You left my bed after you said you’d stay.”
“And you left town after saying you’d take me with you,” Scarlett said.
“So, what? That was payback? That’s not fair, Scarlett.”
“No,” she sighed. “It wasn’t payback. It’s not like I was going to avoid you forever. I would see you every Tuesday and Thursday anyway. I just needed to think, and I couldn’t do it while I was still in your bed. I needed a clear head, and sometimes you make my brain shut off completely.”
Colin sat down on her stool, his shoulders slumping. “You used to say you liked that because otherwise your brain was going a million miles a minute.”
“I still like it,” she murmured.
His head perked up a bit. “Did you make some sort of decision about me, then?”
Moving toward him, Scarlett took deep, steadying breaths, preparing herself for something that she might not want to hear. “I need you to tell me what happened. I need to know why you broke up with me, because I’m still so confused. My aunt said that you were diagnosed that summer? But you never even told me you were being assessed for autism, so I’m clearly missing something.”
“The same day.” Colin’s throat bobbed.
“What?”
“I was diagnosed on the same day I broke up with you.” His hands started fidgeting in his lap, and he adjusted on the stool again as she came to stand beside him, not in front of him, in case that would make him think she needed eye contact when she didn’t. She just needed the truth.
“Why would that be the reason?” Scarlett asked. “Did you think I would dump you because of that? Because that’s insulting, Colin.”
“I knew you wouldn’t,” he said quietly.
“Then why? What am I missing? I don’t get it.” She was on the verge of shouting at him to get to the point when he finally did.
“I knew how likely it was that we’d end up together. I knew how likely it was that you’d end up resenting me for the way I am. We had big communication barriers I didn’t know how to cross, and I thought you deserved someone who wouldn’t be so hard to understand.” His voice was calm, but hers was anything but.
“That was it, then?” Scarlett demanded. “You dismissed me as a statistic? You were reckless with my heart, Colin.”
“No.” Colin stood up and faced her, his hand karate-chopping the air as he spoke. His calm voice was gone, replaced with frustration. “I was obsessively too careful with yours and completely destructive with mine.”
“You were mean, Colin! You said awful things. You know that!” she yelled. “You have to know that. You never said anything like that to me before.”
“You don’t get it.” He ran an aggravated hand through his hair and shouted back. “I needed you to give up on me!”