"I need you to start talking immediately," she said. "Where did you get this? And when?"
I closed the door behind us and leaned back against it, my arms crossed and a breath trapped in my chest just like the day that ring arrived. The day I knew she was gone and not coming back for me. "I've had it since you mailed it back to me, Saunders. Right after you left for California."
"I never— No. I never would've done that."
"It came with a note saying you'd decided it was time for us to go off into the world on our own and hoping I could understand."
She pressed a hand to her forehead, letting her eyes shut for a second. "I didn't write that note."
If I could've done one thing differently back then, it would've been questioning the validity of that note. I should've picked up on the stiff wording, the mangled sign-off ofWishing you all the best and lots of love, Your friend Audrey.The fact that it'd been typed and not handwritten. But being eighteen didn't come with that kind of perspective.
"I thought I lost it." She ran a finger around the silver band. "The only reason I went home at the end of the semester was to turn my bedroom upside down for it. I spentyearslooking for it. I'd wake up in the middle of the night thinking I knew where it was and tear my dorm room apart." She peered at the thin band, at the single lilac bloom preserved in clear resin. Not the lilac stone she'd requested but the placeholder—the promise—I'd given to her on her seventeenth birthday. "I thought it was gone but you had it. And you kept it right here with you, all this time."
That part, I couldn't explain. Because there was no clean way to sayIt was the only real proof I had that you'd ripped my heart out, claimed it as your own, and then mailed the dead, pointless muscle back to me.To sayI could hate you when I stared at that ring and that felt better than missing you. To sayThe sight of that ring was torture but nothing hurt worse than being separated from it.
No way to sayYou broke me and I never recovered.
Because I couldn't lay that blame at her feet. It hadn't been her choice or her fault, and I'd been too young, too naïve, too drunk off my resentment of the wealthy world she came from tosee what was happening. To understand that the girl I'd adored so thoroughly, so completely hadn't woken up one morning and decided she didn't want me anymore. That our plans weren't good enough for her, our promises weren't good enough. ThatIwasn't good enough.
And I'd let that crystallize into facts as I believed them.
She swept a tear from her lashes and I felt that pain square in my chest. I pushed off the door but she held up a hand, shaking her head as she said, "No. I need you to stay over there for a minute."
I didn't like it but I didn't argue.
She went on staring at the ring, the dainty silver polished to a shine because yes, I did clean it regularly and no, I had yet to grow tired of hurting my own feelings.
"Why did you try to stop my wedding?"
Her words were quiet, almost as if she didn't intend for me to hear them. But they were also a wall, solid and tangible enough for me to flatten my hand against.
"I know I was terrible to you that day," she continued, "but I was scared that my father was going to see you. I knew he'd do something heinous and I couldn't let that happen. Not after everything I'd done to protect you."
My jaw tightened and I felt it all the way in the back of my neck. "You could've left with me instead. Saved everyone a lot of grief."
"Why were you there?"
I crossed my arms, leaned one shoulder against the door. "Because I had to see it for myself. That it was what you wanted."
"But you knew it wasn't."
"Mmhmm. Yeah. Pretty obvious, considering you looked like you were being marched to the gallows," I said.
"You let me go through with it," she said.
"What was I supposed to do, Audrey? Kidnap you? Throw you and your fucking ball gown on the back of my bike, and take off? The restraining order hadjustexpired and you fucking told me to leave. You hadn't answered a single email in four years and all the letters I sent came back undeliverable, and?—"
"Emails?" She glanced up at me then, all agony. "What emails?"
I stared at her for a moment, that teenage vow still pressed between her fingers and our history filling the room, ghosts and shadows curling in around us. "Then you don't remember everything that happened that night in Sedona. With the ecstasy," I added.
Even more color drained from her face. "What are you talking about?"
"After you danced with every bull rider in southern Utah?—"
"It wasn'teverybull rider."
"One bull rider is enough for me." I held her gaze until the corner of her mouth kicked up. "You said something about how you left for California and it was over, and you were alone. And I couldn't understand how you'd say that when I emailed you for months. A year went by without a single response but that didn't stop me."
