Chapter 16
Sixteen
The hotel has done something incredibly kind with the wedding dress.
When I came down this morning, it was hanging in a heavy garment bag and treated with a dignity it frankly doesn’t deserve.
I accepted it with a faint, burning embarrassment and thanked Barb at the desk.
She just waved me off and told me to take good care of myself, which I am currently choosing to believe is a skill I can still learn.
I carry it out to the car, holding my plastic bag of new clothes in my other hand. Griffin is already at the trunk. I hand both to him, and the white silk disappears into the dark.
When he closes the trunk, he leans against the rear of the Camaro, arms crossed, looking at me in the morning light.
“So,” he says.
“So,” I say, my voice a little tight. “I guess it’s time to go home and face the fallout.”
Griffin tilts his head. “Is it?”
I blink at him. “What do you mean?”
“If you want to go home, we’ll go home. But if you want to keep driving, we do that.”
I study his face for the catch, but there isn’t one.
He pushes off the car. “Whatever you decide, just make sure you’re doing it for you. Not because you think you’re supposed to.”
Then he gets in the car.
I stand by the passenger door for a moment, the words echoing in my head.
For me.
I’m not quite sure I understand what that means anymore. Over the past few years, the question of what I wanted grew quieter and quieter until it became a dull hum I could easily ignore.
After I get in the car, he pulls out of the lot and rolls to a stop at the junction at the end of the street.
The radio is on, playing a song I don’t recognize. A guitar riff builds in the background.
“Right or left, Pipes. It’s your call.”
Right takes us back the way we came—the highway, the city, the apartment with both our names on the lease and all his things in their proper, approved places. Right is the conversation I have to have, whether I’m ready or not.
Left is the road that continues through Opal Creek and out the other side into a California I haven’t seen yet.
I stare at the junction.
My voice comes out small when I finally speak. “Right.”
It’s the sensible thing. The mature thing. It’s the version of me who never makes a scene.
You’ve had your twenty-four hours of chaos, Piper. Time to go back to the cage.
Griffin puts on the turn signal.
Click. Click. Click.
Right.
I watch it blink, and then something happens. It’s like a film reel jammed on fast-forward, and I can’t stop the images.
I imagine myself going home. I picture the apartment door opening. I see Ezra’s face—the controlled version he uses when managing logistics and shaping a narrative.
This is what happened, Piper. This is what we’re telling people.
I see myself getting smaller, bit by bit. The solo I abandoned. The blue dress in the back of the closet I never wore. I see myself at fifty, looking back at this crossroads, at the moment I had a choice and still turned right because it felt safer.
“Left!” The word explodes out of me.
Griffin hits the brakes so hard the car chirps.
He turns and looks at me, his eyes wide.
“Go left.” My voice is vibrating somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “Go left. I want to go left.”
“You’re sure?”
I press my hands to my face. Breathe in. Breathe out. My whole life is to the right. All the guilt and the explanations and the mess—it’s all there, and it will still be there tomorrow or next week. I’m only delaying it.
And I am one hundred percent okay with that.
“I’m sure,” I say, dropping my hands. “I’m positive.”
Griffin looks at me for one more second, searching for the crack. Then he faces forward and guns it.
The Camaro takes a sharp left, and the road opens up ahead of us. He cranks the volume until the music fills every inch of the car. I roll down the window until the California morning rushes in.
He says something, but the wind steals it. I look over to see him grinning.
“That’s my girl!” he yells over the engine.
I burst out laughing. Full, genuine, from-the-ribcage laughter.
The road is unwinding ahead of us, and my hair is whipped into a wild tangle across my face, but I don’t bother to fix it.
I let it stay there. I let the wind in. I laugh until Opal Creek disappears in the side mirror, and there’s nothing behind us but pavement. Somewhere in my chest, beneath the fear and exhaustion, something lifts.