Chapter Three #3
Talia whispered something much worse.
Crew went still beside me.
I did not look at him.
Looking at him felt like handing the moment a match.
“No,” I said loudly.
The child’s mother turned crimson. “Mason!”
Mason, who was maybe six and therefore had no fear of death, frowned. “But the internet said.”
I pointed at him. “The internet also eats laundry detergent, Mason. Raise your standards.”
The crowd cracked.
Crew laughed.
Not silently this time.
It slipped out of him low and warm and surprised, and every part of me that remembered being loved by him lit up like a matchstick.
I hated him for that.
I hated myself more.
Dotty snapped another photo.
Of course she did.
I turned on her. “Dotty.”
She lowered the phone slowly.
“What? It was candid.”
“That word is a felony today.”
Crew stepped down from the gazebo first, then turned slightly, like he wanted to offer me a hand and remembered at the last second that he was not allowed.
His hand lifted half an inch.
Stopped.
Dropped.
I saw it.
So did half of Honeybrook.
A murmur moved through the crowd.
Not loud.
Worse.
Soft.
Romantic.
I wanted to scream into a cupcake box.
Instead, I stepped down without help, because I had legs and a grudge.
Mrs. Paxton hurried toward us. “That went beautifully.”
“That went illegally,” I said.
“No laws were broken.”
“Emotional trespassing.”
Talia appeared with my coffee. “Unfortunately not prosecuted in this county.”
Crew’s phone buzzed.
Mine buzzed one second later.
Then Talia’s.
Then Mrs. Paxton’s.
The crowd made the collective sound of people seeing the same thing online.
No.
No, no, no.
I pulled out my phone.
Dotty had already posted the candid.
Not the posed photo.
The candid.
Me smiling.
Crew laughing.
Our hands three inches apart on the gazebo railing.
The caption read:
Rule #1 of #TheViralBet: no touching. Rule #2: nobody said anything about looking.
The post had been live for thirty-two seconds.
It already had hearts.
So many hearts.
Tiny ones.
Large ones.
Red ones.
A cupcake emoji from the official Webb & Whisk account, because Talia apparently valued comedy over employment.
I looked at her.
She put both hands up. “Engagement is engagement.”
“You are fired.”
“You can’t decorate cakes under pressure without me.”
“I will learn.”
Crew stared at the post, expression unreadable.
Then another notification appeared.
A comment from Wilder Knox.
Wilder Knox: This is cinema.
Crew’s jaw flexed.
I looked at him.
“Control your emotionally unsupervised hockey friends.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try with threats.”
“I started with threats.”
“Start with better ones.”
His phone buzzed again.
This time, the group chat must have been exploding, because his screen lit up like a slot machine.
He locked it without reading.
Interesting.
“Coward,” I said.
“Yes.”
At least he knew.
Mrs. Paxton was reading comments with visible awe. “Someone from Millstone says they’re buying donor dinner tickets.”
“I’m delighted for Millstone,” I said. “I hope they bring boundaries.”
Talia tilted her head at my phone.
“Oh.”
There it was again.
The oh.
My least favorite vowel.
“What?”
She took my phone from my hand.
“Talia.”
“Nope. Protective best friend privilege.”
Crew straightened.
“What is it?” he asked.
Talia looked from the screen to him.
Then to me.
Her face had gone careful.
Not funny.
Careful.
I reached for the phone.
She held it back. “Marin.”
“Talia.”
She handed it over.
The newest comment had been posted by a local account I did not recognize.
No profile photo. No real name.
Just a gray circle and a handle.
@truthbet_17: Funny how everybody forgot he left her once already.
The square noise blurred.
For a second, all I heard was blood in my ears.
Not because it was wrong.
Because it was true.
The comment sat there under the photo like a thumb pressed into an old bruise.
Funny how everybody forgot he left her once already.
Crew saw it over my shoulder.
I felt him go still.
Not tense.
Still.
The kind of still that meant he had taken the hit and would not defend himself from it.
Good, I told myself.
Let it hit.
Let him feel one fraction of what it felt like to be the girl the town had turned into a comeback story without asking whether she had survived the first ending.
But then I looked at his face.
Bad idea.
His eyes were not on the comment.
They were on me.
Not guilty for himself.
Worried for me.
That made it worse.
It would be easier if he were selfish.
It would be easier if he made excuses.
It would be easier if I could point to him and say, There. That is the villain. That is the reason I became sharp.
But Crew Donnelly had the audacity to stand there quietly taking responsibility with his stupid shoulders and his stupid remorse and his stupid face that had, yes, gotten worse.
The crowd had not seen the comment yet.
But they would.
Honeybrook always found blood in the water.
Mrs. Paxton’s smile faded as she read it from her own phone.
“Oh, Marin,” she whispered.
I hated the pity.
I hated the comment.
I hated that my hand had started shaking.
I curled my fingers around the phone until they stopped.
Then Crew moved.
Not toward me.
Toward the crowd.
He stepped down from the gazebo and turned so the cameras, Dotty, Mrs. Paxton, the teenagers, Mrs. Bell, Mason the internet-poisoned child, and half of Main Street could see him.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Crew looked back at me.
“I’m fixing my part.”
“No.”
Too late.
He faced the crowd.
His voice was calm.
Clear.
Captain voice.
The one that made locker rooms shut up and listen.
“I owe Marin an apology,” he said.
Every phone rose.
My heart slammed once.
No.
No, no, no.
“Crew,” I said.
He did not look away from the crowd.
“She didn’t ask for any of this,” he continued. “She didn’t ask to be part of a story, or a hashtag, or a joke. And she definitely didn’t ask for people to dig into something I hurt her with.”
The square went silent.
So silent I could hear the flags snap softly against the gazebo.
Crew’s jaw tightened.
“I left,” he said. “That’s true. And nobody gets to use that to embarrass her.”
I could not breathe.
He looked at the phones.
All of them.
Then back at me.
And the look on his face broke every rule I had written.
“If anyone wants to blame somebody,” he said, “blame me.”
My chest went painfully tight.
The crowd stayed quiet.
Even Mrs. Paxton had stopped moving.
Crew stepped back toward me.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Like I was something he had no right to approach.
Correct.
He stopped with the respectful gap between us.
Three inches felt like miles.
His voice lowered.
Only for me now.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I swallowed.
There were too many people.
Too many phones.
Too many memories.
Too much Crew.
“Don’t,” I whispered.
His eyes held mine.
“Okay.”
That was it.
No argument.
No speech.
No begging me to accept it.
Just okay.
The first tear burned before I could stop it.
Absolutely not.
I turned away immediately.
Talia moved in like a shield, blocking me from the crowd.
“I need the bakery,” I said.
“Yep,” she said.
I started walking.
Fast.
Too fast.
The square murmured behind me, but I did not stop.
The bakery door was ten feet away.
Safety.
Sugar.
Walls.
No cameras.
I reached the sidewalk.
Then Crew’s voice came behind me.
Not loud.
Not public.
“Marin.”
I stopped.
I should not have.
I knew better.
Every woman in America knew better than to stop when her ex said her name like regret had finally learned language.
But my feet stopped anyway.
I turned halfway.
Crew stood at the edge of the square, hands at his sides, not chasing.
That was the worst part.
He was letting me choose whether to listen.
“I won’t let them make you the joke,” he said.
My throat hurt.
“You already did.”
The words landed.
I saw them land.
He nodded once.
Like he accepted the sentence.
Like he would carry it.
Then he said, very quietly, “I know.”
And that was when my phone buzzed again.
Because apparently the universe was not finished.
I looked down.
A new post from the Honeybrook Happenings page.
A video.
Of course someone had recorded Crew’s apology.
The caption had already been written.
Crew Donnelly just defended Marin Webb in front of the whole square, and Honeybrook may never recover. #TheViralBet
Under it, one comment was already rising fast.
@DottyDaily: Oh, honey. He still loves her.
I stared at the screen.
Then at Crew.
His phone buzzed.
He looked down.
Saw it.
Looked back at me.
The whole town watched us from behind him.
The whole internet waited in my hand.
And for one terrible second, neither one of us denied it.