28. Lucy
LUCY
THEN
Ty came at eight seventeen the next morning.
I knew because I had been awake all night watching numbers change.
At one twelve, I had stopped crying.
At two forty, I had almost answered one of his texts.
At three twenty-eight, I had deleted the almost-response because every version of it sounded too small for what had happened.
At four, the sky outside my window began to lighten in that pale, indifferent way summer mornings had, as if the world did not understand it had broken during the night.
By seven, I had showered.
By seven thirty, I had made coffee I could not drink.
By eight, I had changed out of the blue blouse and into jeans and an old sweatshirt because I could not stand the fabric touching my skin anymore.
At eight seventeen, Betsy pulled up to the curb.
The sound of that truck had lived inside me for years. I knew the uneven rumble before I saw it through the front window. Knew the brief grind as he shifted into park. Knew the door’s complaint when he opened it.
My body reacted like it still belonged to the girl who used to smile when he arrived.
Then I remembered the door closing.
The guest room.
His hand on her back.
I stepped away from the window before he could see me standing there like someone waiting.
The doorbell rang.
I did not move.
It rang again, followed by a knock. Not loud. Not careless. Three taps against the wood, spaced like he was trying not to scare me. “Lucy?” His voice came through the door, rough with no sleep. “Luce, please.”
That made me angry enough to open the door.
Ty stood on the porch in the same jeans he had worn last night and a wrinkled gray T-shirt, hair wrecked, eyes bloodshot, one hand braced against the doorframe like he had needed it to stay upright. He looked awful.
Good, I thought. Then hated myself for thinking it.
His face changed the second he saw me. Relief first. Then fear, because whatever he found in my expression must have told him relief was premature. “Hey,” he said quietly.
I folded my arms. “What are you doing here?”
“You wouldn’t answer.” He blinked. “I called you all night.”
“I noticed.”
His hand dropped from the frame. “What happened?”
The question was so sincere, so confused, that for one insane second I wondered if I had imagined it. If grief had made a monster out of shadows and a hallway and a closed door.
Then the image came back so sharply I could hardly breathe.
I stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door partly closed behind me.
I did not want this inside the house. I did not want his voice in the entryway where Dad had taken prom pictures, where Ty had looked at me in my green dress like I was the only future he could see. “I saw you,” I said.
Ty went still. The porch held its breath around us. Morning sun cut across the lawn, too bright and too clean. A sprinkler clicked somewhere down the street. Birds called from the maple near the driveway. Ordinary sounds. Cruel sounds.
His brows drew together. “What do you mean?”
The last fragile piece of me snapped. “Don’t play dumb with me, Burns.”
His face flinched like I had slapped him. “Lucy—”
“I went to the party.”
His mouth parted.
“I wasn’t going to. My mom canceled, because of course she did, and Naomi said I should go find you instead of sitting in my room feeling sorry for myself.” My laugh scraped out thin and ugly. “Really solid advice, actually. Very clarifying.”
The color drained slowly from his face.
I kept going because if I stopped, he might speak, and if he spoke softly, I might fall apart before I finished. “I saw you take her into that bedroom.”
Ty’s eyes closed for half a second. That was all. Not shock. Not outrage. Not immediate denial fierce enough to make the porch shake. Just his eyes closing like he understood exactly how bad it looked.
My throat burned. “So don’t stand here asking me what happened like I misplaced my mind somewhere between the driveway and the guest hallway.”
“It wasn’t—”
“No.” I held up one hand. My fingers trembled. I curled them into a fist. “Do not.”
He stopped.
Some desperate, stupid part of me had wanted him to fight the interruption. To step forward. To say my name like it mattered more than my anger. To tell me I was wrong with enough conviction that my heart could grab onto it.
Instead, he stopped.
His jaw flexed once.
I stared at him. “If this is what you do at a party when I’m not there, how is any of this supposed to work?”
His eyes came back to mine, blue and wrecked. “Shortcake, come on.”
“No, answer me.” My voice broke on the last word.
I hated that. Hated the tear that slipped down my cheek before I could stop it.
“You’re going to Fargo. I’m going to Aldenmere.
We’re supposed to trust each other across time zones and schedules and new people and months apart, and I couldn’t even trust you for one night at Mason Keller’s house? ”
He looked like every word had hit somewhere soft.
“Say something,” I demanded.
His throat worked. For a second, I saw the boy from prom night. The boy in the ridiculous suit. The boy who had pulled over because he could not hear about Aldenmere while driving. The boy who had looked at me with so much certainty I had been foolish enough to borrow some.
Then something changed. His shoulders lowered by an inch. His face went quieter. I watched him leave me before he moved.
“Maybe,” he said, voice rough, “this is for the best.”
The world narrowed to the porch boards beneath my bare feet. “What?”
He looked down.
I waited for him to take it back. I waited for the correction. The explanation. The fight. The frantic, messy Ty Burns refusal to let silence win because silence had never once known what to do with him.
Nothing came.
My lips parted, but no sound followed. There were too many things inside me now, shoving against each other.
My mother left.
Ty let go.
The two wounds folded together so perfectly I could not tell where one ended anymore.
“You don’t get to do that,” I whispered.
His eyes lifted.
“You don’t get to decide that breaking my heart is some noble thing you’re doing for me.”
He swallowed hard.
“You promised me.” My voice shook. I could not make it stop. “You promised we would figure it out.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” The tears were falling freely now, but I refused to wipe them away. “Because if you knew, you would be fighting right now.”
His face twisted.
For one breath, I thought he might.
His hand moved like he wanted to reach for me.
I held myself still.
Reach, I thought. God, please. Reach anyway.
He let his hand fall.
There it was.
The exact moment.
Not the party. Not the hallway. Not the closed door.
This.
This was the breaking.
I stepped back.
Ty’s breath left him in a sound so small I almost did not hear it. “Lucy.”
“No.” My voice had gone strangely calm. Empty in a way that scared me more than crying had. “Go to Fargo, Ty.”
He flinched again.
I reached behind me for the door handle.
His eyes were wet now. He did not wipe them. He just stood there in the morning sun, looking eighteen and shattered and still somehow beautiful enough to make the pain worse. “I love you,” he said.
I hated him for saying it then. I hated myself more because I believed him. “That’s not enough,” I whispered. Then I went inside and closed the door.
For a moment, I stood with my forehead almost touching the wood. My whole body shook, but no sound came out. The house behind me stayed quiet. Dad was already at the arena. Arlo was on a run.
No one was present to witness me become someone else.
Through the narrow window beside the door, I watched Ty walk back to his truck.
He moved slowly, like every step cost something. At Betsy, he stopped with one hand on the driver’s door. His head bowed. His shoulders rose once, then fell.
I pressed my palm flat against the wall.
Open the door, some terrible part of me begged. Call him back. Make him explain.
But I had already asked him to fight. He had already answered.
Ty climbed into Betsy and shut the door.
The truck sat at the curb for a long time.
Long enough for the sprinkler down the street to complete another slow arc.
Long enough for sunlight to slide across the hood.
Long enough for me to memorize the shape of him through the windshield, both hands gripping the steering wheel, head bent, unmoving.
Then the engine turned over. Betsy pulled away from the curb and rolled down our street, smaller and smaller beneath the bright summer morning, until the truck turned the corner and disappeared.
I stayed by the window after he was gone.
Upstairs, my Aldenmere acceptance letter sat in a folder on my desk, waiting for the life I had wanted before I understood what wanting could cost.
I did not cry again.
That came later.
For now, I stood in the quiet house and let the silence teach me what Ty had not been able to say.
People promised.
People loved you.
And sometimes, when it mattered most, they still chose the door.