Chapter 13
LUKE
I toss the pasta into the salted boiling water and watch the rigid strands soften and curl. Behind me, Isla hums under her breath while she sets the table with the mismatched plates I’ve had since college.
Her cardigan hangs over the back of my chair. Her shoes sit neatly by my door. Two weeks ago, I would’ve laughed if someone said she’d be here, in my kitchen, tucked into all the empty spaces I’ve been pretending I don’t notice.
Now my stomach knots at how right it looks. How wrong it feels to want it.
“Luke.”
Her voice pulls me back. She plucks a mushroom off the cutting board, pops it into her mouth, and chews thoughtfully. “When did you learn to cook?”
I slice thin wedges from a bulb of garlic, the blade ticking against the wood. “I’ve picked things up over the last few years.”
She leans her elbows on the counter, watching me. “I don’t remember you ever being into cooking.”
“When I was eighteen…” I meet her eyes for a second too long. “All I was interested in was you.”
The words hang there between us, thick as steam, curling into the corners we’ve both been pretending don’t exist.
Isla swallows. Clears her throat. “So. How was work today?”
I lift the pot off the burner and drain the pasta. Steam climbs my neck, damp and hot. “Long. Mind-numbing paperwork. I’m drowning in administrative bullshit.”
She hops down from the stool and twists the oven knob to preheat it for the bread. “I feel the same. Nursing documentation is the worst. I’d trade half my charting just to sit and hold someone’s hand.”
“Why nursing?”
Her reflection blurs in the oven door. “I wanted to make a difference,” she says. “Do something that matters. Why?”
“You never told me that when we were kids.”
She smiles without looking at me, small and crooked. “I was eighteen. All I was interested in was you.”
“Touché,” I murmur.
We share a low laugh that trembles in the warm air. I taste the sauce and add a pinch of salt.
“Thank you, Luke,” she says quietly.
I set the spoon down and wipe my hands on a towel. “For what?”
She presses her palms against her stomach, like she’s holding something in. “For cooking for me. For…being nice. You could’ve hated me. It would’ve been justified.”
Hate would’ve been easier. Cleaner. You can box up hate, shove it into a corner, and call it done. Whatever this is refuses to stay put.
“I never hated you,” I say, voice rougher than I intend.
She exhales, shoulders dipping. “I hurt you.”
I step closer. “You broke me.”
A single tear slips down her cheek. I reach up on instinct and brush it away with my thumb. It’s hot against my skin, proof that I’m not the only casualty in this story I’ve told myself.
She turns toward the window, where dusk is staining the sky in bruised purples and gray. “Can we…postpone dinner for a bit?”
I glance at the clock above the fridge. “Now?”
She nods, voice barely there. “I want to go to the lake.”
Of all the places in this town, she picks that one. The place where everything used to make sense.
I pull the bread out and wrap it in a towel to keep it warm. “Let’s go.”
Twenty minutes later, we’re at the lakeshore just as the sun sinks behind the trees. The water’s turned to dark glass, small ripples catching the mauve light. No-see-ums float in the air like dust motes.
I park under a pair of pines. Isla slips off her shoes and walks barefoot through the grass to the water’s edge. I follow, boots soft in the damp earth.
We stand side by side where the lake meets land, the old dock to our left, our reflections fractured in the dying light.
She takes a breath that shakes on the way out. “I want to tell you what happened all those years ago,” she says. “You deserve to know.”
I’ve scripted this moment in my head a hundred times—different truths, different lies, different versions of her walking away. None of those rehearsals feels big enough for the weight in her eyes right now.
She steps where a small wave laps at her toes. I stay close, ready, not sure I actually want to hear any of it, but knowing I need to.
“What made you change your mind?” I ask.
Her gaze lifts to mine. Her eyes glisten, full and bright. She swallows hard. “I can’t keep allowing you to think that I ran away from you. From us. Like I just chose not to love you anymore.”
I stare out over the lake, at the line where water disappears into the sky. “Can I ask you something first?”
She nods, lips pressed into a tight, white line.
“Did that car try to hit you on purpose?”
“I think so.” The words are so soft I almost miss them. “Yeah. I think it did.”
I don’t miss the way her hands curl into fists, the way her shoulders hunch like she’s waiting for impact all over again.
“I’m trying to find the car,” I say. “I need everything you’ve got.”
Her eyes lock with mine. A sharp breath catches in her throat. “I never wanted you to get hurt,” she whispers.
My chest squeezes so tight it hurts to inhale. “Talk to me, Isla.”
Tears carve warm, glistening trails down her cheeks. “I’ve been so scared. And I just wanted to be left alone.”
“You’re not alone.” My voice leaves no room for argument this time.
She looks down at her bare feet, toes digging into the wet sand. “My mom left everything to me,” she says. “She wrote me a letter. It was with the will. She said she loves me, and she wants me to live a happy, fearless life. The kind of life she wished I’d had when I was younger.”
Her shoulders sag under the weight of that word—fearless.
“She was changing, Luke.” Her voice cracks. “She was getting her life together. And I missed it. I kept her at arm’s length, and I missed it.”
I brush another tear off her cheek, my thumb catching the tremble in her bottom lip. “What are you scared of?”
She laughs once, sharp and humorless. “Staying. Leaving. Breathing. Existing. Take your pick.”
I let that sit for a moment, then add, “Tell me about the night of the fire.”
Her chin drops, shoulders curling inward as if she’s trying to make herself smaller. When she finally looks up, her pupils are blown wide, blue eyes ringed in a shaky halo of black. Her fingers twist the frayed edge of her sleeve like she’s trying to hold herself together.
“Once I tell you,” she whispers, voice splintering, “I drag you into something so much bigger than us. You’d be safer—God, so much safer—if you just walked away. And telling you anyway…”
Her throat works around the words. “It’s selfish. I know it is.”
I step closer until that familiar coconut-citrus scent wraps around me, dragging me back a decade in one breath.
“I’m not letting you walk away,” I say quietly. “Not again.”
A breeze comes off the lake, cool and damp. I turn and walk to the edge, the water almost kissing my boots. The lake looks calm, but I know its depths. I know how fast it goes from shallow to dark.
“I’m in this,” I tell the horizon. “Whether you talk or not.”
“Okay,” she breathes.
Her knees fold and she sinks onto the cool, damp sand. I lower myself beside her, close enough that our shoulders touch, a small line of contact that lights up every nerve on that side of my body.
I rest my elbows on my knees and lean forward, watching her profile in my peripheral vision. The air feels charged, like right before a summer storm.
“When I got home after being at the lake that night,” she begins, staring straight ahead, “the house was dark. Quiet. My mom’s car wasn’t in the driveway.”
She shrugs, a small, brittle lift. “That wasn’t weird. She was probably out drinking.”
Guilt gnaws at me for making her walk back into this. But the hell we’ve both been living in was built on silence. We can’t stay there.
“I climbed into bed,” she says. “My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I figured it was you. But when I checked, it was a text from an unknown number.”
My jaw slackens. I force my voice to stay steady. “What did it say?”
“It said, ‘Leave town. Now. Or you and your boyfriend won’t live to regret it.’”
The words hit like a punch to the sternum. Ten years too late, but the impact still lands.
She swallows. “I’d gotten a few texts before that,” she adds. “Telling me to leave you alone. To back off. I thought it was some stupid, jealous girl. Stacy, maybe. Just…petty crap. I ignored them. But then they got more aggressive and started threatening you.”
I turn toward her and gently hook a finger under her chin, dragging her gaze to mine. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Honestly?” Her voice is barely a whisper. “I didn’t think it was serious. You were already dealing with your dad, with college applications, with everything. I thought saying anything would make it a bigger thing. So, I decided to sleep on it. I was going to tell you the next morning.”
Her throat works around the following words. “And then the fire happened.”
“They said a candle caused it,” I say, remembering the investigator’s report. The charred outline of where her bed used to be.
She shakes her head immediately, eyes sharp. “I didn’t burn a candle that night.”
My fingers dig into my hair. “Why didn’t you tell me that when you woke up in the hospital?”
She looks at me like I’ve spoken another language. “I didn’t wake up in the hospital, Luke.”
The ground tilts. “What do you mean? Where did you wake up?”
A sob tears through her, shaking her shoulders. “I woke up in a closet.”
Her arms wrap tight around herself. She rocks once, twice, her nails digging crescents into her skin. Every protective instinct in me roars to life.
“I didn’t know where I was,” she says. “It was pitch-black. Freezing. I could smell cleaning supplies, dust, something…plasticky. I couldn’t breathe right. I kept thinking I was back in the fire.”
I pull her against me without thinking, her cheek landing over my heart. My hand slides into her hair. “Ssh. I’ve got you.”
“It took a while before I stopped panicking long enough to feel around,” she whispers into my shirt. “My hand hit a wall. A handle. I found a light switch. I was in a tiny supply closet. There was a backpack on the floor.”