Chapter 6 #5
“No.” Her voice sharpens. “He did not choose Stella. He did not choose you. Which means this is not over unless you decide it is.”
I pull back from Drew enough to look at the fire.
At the room.
At the giant rough man holding me like I weigh nothing and the phone in my trembling hand and the whole humiliating shape of being loved in one place and fighting for somebody else in another.
My throat aches.
“He broke my heart.”
“I know.”
“He said it’s always been her.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why are you acting like this is still salvageable?”
That comes out harsher than I mean it to.
But my mother doesn’t flinch.
Because my mother has never once flinched from me.
“Because,” she says, calm as law, “men like Tristan Vale mistake history for destiny all the time. It doesn’t mean they know what to do with the future when it finally stands in front of them.”
The words settle.
Ugly and bright.
I hate them.
I hate how badly I want them.
My mother lowers her voice.
“Sweetheart, Stella is his past. You are his future.”
Drew’s fingers flex once against my back.
That one he definitely hears.
That one he definitely hates.
I should care.
Instead all I can think about is the fountain.
The look on Tristan’s face.
The fact that he stood there hollowed out too.
The fact that he didn’t run to Stella after.
The fact that maybe—
No.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
I know what hope costs now.
And yet.
My mother drives the final nail.
“Do not let him walk away from you just because he got scared of making the wrong choice,” she says. “Give him space if you have to. Fine. But don’t hand another woman the ending because you were too proud to stay in the game.”
Game.
God.
Everything in my life is a game to somebody.
Soccer.
Football.
Basketball.
Love.
Maybe she’s right.
Maybe that’s the worst part.
I press the heel of my hand to my eyes.
“What am I supposed to do?”
My voice is wrecked.
Not at all the polished Texas steel I’d prefer to be wearing.
My mother answers immediately.
“You don’t chase. You don’t beg. You don’t humiliate yourself.”
That helps.
A little.
“You let him feel your absence.”
A beat.
“You let him miss what you were to him.”
Another beat.
“And if he comes back, you make him come correct.”
The room goes very still.
Fire.
Rain.
Drew’s hand on my back.
My mother breathing softly on the line, having just handed me the kind of pep talk women like her use to survive men like him.
And me—lying there in the arms of one man while trying to decide whether to keep fighting for another.
It should make me feel monstrous.
Instead I just feel tired.
So tired.
But somewhere under all that tiredness, under the heartbreak and humiliation and the hollow ache in my chest, a tiny ember stirs.
Not healing.
Not even peace.
Something worse.
Resolve.
I whisper, “Okay.”
My mother hears everything in that one word.
Of course she does.
“That’s my girl,” she says softly now. “Now drink some water, stop crying yourself sick, and don’t make me get on a plane.”
That startles a real laugh out of me.
“Goodnight, Mama.”
“Goodnight, sweetheart.”
The line clicks dead.
For a second I just sit there staring at the phone in my hand.
The line goes dead.
For a second, I just stare at the phone in my hand.
Rain keeps striking the windows in silver streaks. The fire breathes and shifts in the hearth, throwing warm light over the stone floor, the blanket around us, Drew’s big hand still spread between my shoulder blades like he’s afraid the second he moves it I’ll come apart again.
My mother’s words are still inside me.
He didn’t choose her.
He chose himself.
Don’t let him walk away from you.
And because my mind is vicious, because heartbreak never lets you replay the right thing, I don’t think of some neat ending under campus lights.
I think of the library.
Of the look on Tristan’s face when he walked out.
That hollowed-out, wrecked look.
Like he’d just carved up two girls and hated himself for bleeding neatly.
That look.
The one that didn’t feel like relief.
Didn’t feel like freedom.
Didn’t feel like a man running toward another woman.
It felt like loss.
And that thought is enough to make my whole chest ache all over again.
I lower the phone slowly.
Drew doesn’t ask what my mother said right away.
He already heard enough.
He already knows.
The silence between us gets heavier by the second. Firelight. Rain. My bare legs under the oversized shirt. His old T-shirt hanging off me, soft and warm and smelling like detergent and him. His house feels too safe for the kind of thoughts I’m having in it.
I swallow.
“She thinks it’s not over.”
There.
Said.
Drew goes completely still.
Not dramatic.
Not loud.
Worse.
His hand stops moving on my back.
The pause lasts one second.
Then two.
When he finally speaks, his voice is low and rough and very, very controlled.
“Of course she does.”
I look at him then.
Really look.
“She wants me to make a good marriage. Old money. Old Yankee family name.”
His square jaw goes tight. My eyes roam over him.
The wet-dark hair still half unruly from the rain.
The broad shoulders filling out that faded gray shirt.
The tape on two fingers.
The rough hands.
The way he’s holding me like I’m breakable and still somehow making it feel like I’m not weak for being held.
He looks away first.
That surprises me.
Then he laughs once under his breath, no humor in it.
“Unbelievable.”
“Drew—”
“No.” He drags a hand down his face. “No, because I just sat here and held you while you cried over him like somebody died, and now your mama’s got you ready to go back in the game for the same guy who put you here. I think a lot of things about you Isa… but never had gold digger on the list.”
I flinch.
“I’m sorry,” he mutters, but he doesn’t sound sorry for the point, just the sharpness.
I shift, trying to sit up straighter, trying to gather whatever scraps of pride are left to me.
“It’s not like that.”
He looks down at me.
Rain shadows move over the room behind him. The fire catches the hard lines of his face and makes him look even rougher somehow, more carved out of heat and weather than flesh.
“Then tell me what it’s like, Texas.”
My throat tightens.
Because how do I explain it without sounding pathetic?
How do I tell him that Tristan still lives in all these little ordinary spaces inside me? That money is my mother’s thing, not mine?
Coffee dates.
Breakfast runs.
Study nights.
The easy way he fit into the shape of my days.
The almost of him.
The rhythm.
How do I explain that sometimes losing a person isn’t just losing their body?
It’s losing the version of yourself that existed beside them.
I look down at the blanket gathered in my lap.
“He didn’t run back to her,” I whisper.
Drew’s nostrils flare.
“That’s your bar now?”
I lift my chin.
It shakes anyway.
“No.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
The words land hard.
I open my mouth.
Close it again.
Because yes.
Maybe it would have.
He leans back slightly, just enough to look at me fully, and the frustration in him is bigger now, less hidden.
Not violent.
Not mean.
Something almost worse.
Helpless.
“You keep getting hurt,” he says, voice lower now, rougher around the edges. “And you keep fighting for the wrong damn guy while running into my arms.”
That one goes in clean.
I laugh once, brokenly.
“Please don’t start.”
“Why?” His eyes lock on mine. “Because somebody in your life finally said it to your face?”
I stiffen.
He sees that too and immediately reins himself in, but not enough to take it back.
His hand comes up and catches lightly at my jaw, thumb brushing once under where tears dried sticky on my skin.
“Baby girl,” he says, quieter now. “Look at me.”
I don’t want to.
I do it anyway.
And there he is.
Big and warm and furious on my behalf.
Not polished.
Not princely.
Not the kind of man my mother would point across a room and call safe.
Something much more dangerous.
A man who means what he says right when he says it.
He studies my face for one second too long.
Then he says, with all that rough certainty that makes every word hit harder. “When you’re in my arms, baby—and don’t deny it—it feels damn good.”
My breath catches.
Because the horrible thing is—he’s right.
It does.
Too good.
That’s what makes it dangerous.
The warmth.
The size of him.
The safety.
The fact that even heartbroken and humiliated and raw, some part of me has been melting into him all night like my body knows something my pride is still too stupid to admit.
I shake my head on instinct.
He gives me a look.
Not mocking.
Not soft.
Just direct.
“Don’t lie to me, too.”
I go still.
Because I had told myself his kiss didn’t affect me.
That the little flirtations, the notes, the flowers, the jersey, the broad shoulders and cut-off hoodies and rough hands and relentless certainty of him were just noise.
But here in the firelight, wrapped in his shirt and his blanket and his arms, I know exactly how false that is.
He sees the answer move across my face.
And whatever last bit of restraint he had left goes with it.
Not all at once.
Not in some wild, reckless snap.
In a choice.
His hand slides from my jaw to the back of my neck.
Big.
Careful.
Possessive in the earned way.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “That’s what I thought.”
Then he leans down and kisses the tears right off my face.
One at the corner of my eye.
One along my cheek.
Another just beside the trembling edge of my mouth.
My whole body shivers.
Not from cold.
From the unbearable tenderness of it.
From the fact that he is not trying to devour me.
Not trying to turn my heartbreak into a win for himself.
He is kissing me like I’m hurt.
Like I’m precious.
Like he hates the man who made me cry but isn’t going to make me pay for loving him anyway.
That might be the cruelest thing of all.
Because a girl can survive arrogance.
Survive heat.
Survive being wanted.
Being cherished when she doesn’t feel worth cherishing?
That’s the kind of thing that cracks her open.
I whisper his name without meaning to.
“Drew…”
His mouth pauses at the corner of mine.
His forehead almost touches mine.