She'd laughed and called me crazy. But she'd kissed me after, long and slow, and I'd known right then that I was telling the truth.
I did marry her. I just didn't stay worthy of her.
The road to her father's place wound out past the old Carter farm, past the creek where we used to catch crawfish as kids. I knew the turnoff by heart, could probably drive it blindfolded.
I slowed the car when I reached it, then stopped.
Sat there with the engine idling, hands tight on the wheel, staring down the gravel drive.
What was I going to say? What words could possibly fix this? I'd rehearsed a dozen speeches on the drive down, each one sounding more pathetic than the last.I'm sorry. I love you. I made a mistake. Please give me another chance.
She'd heard all of it before. From me, from every other asshole who'd ever cheated and come crawling back. Words didn't mean shit. I knew that, she knew that.
But I didn't have anything else.
I sat there for a long time, watching the light fade behind the trees, watching the shadows stretch across the fields. The sun was almost down now. If I didn't move soon, I'd be showing up in the dark like some kind of stalker.
I took a breath, let it out slowly.
Then I turned onto the drive.
CHAPTER 13: ELENA
Dad made chili that night.
It was his go-to comfort food, the recipe he'd been making since before I was born. Ground beef, kidney beans, enough chili powder to strip paint. Mom used to joke that she married him for his chili and stayed for his bedside manner. He'd always laugh and say it was the other way around.
I sat at the kitchen table and watched him stir the pot, the same way I'd watched him a thousand times growing up. He moved slower now, more deliberate, but his hands were still steady. Even when Mom was dying, even when everything was falling apart, those hands never shook.
The kitchen smelled like cumin and tomatoes and something that might have been home, if I let myself think of it that way. Two days since I'd met Bryan at that diner. I’d spent those two days helping at the clinic, eating Dad's cooking, sleeping in my childhood bed. And, most of all, I’d spent them not thinking about what came next.
"You talk to a lawyer yet?" Dad asked, not looking up from the pot.
"Not yet."
"Probably should."
"I know."
He nodded and kept stirring. That’s how Dad operated. He'd say his piece once, then let it sit. He wouldn’t push or nag. Instead, he just planted the seed and waited for you to come around on your own.
We hadn't talked about it, not really. I'd shown up on his porch at 3 AM, fallen apart in his arms, and he'd held me without asking why. In the days since, he'd fed me and given me space and let me work at the clinic, and not once had he asked what Matt had done. What had sent me running three hours in the middle of the night.
But he knew… Dad always knew. He'd been reading people—and animals—for forty years. You didn't get to be a vet in a small town without learning when to push and when to hold back. When to ask questions and when to just be there.
He knew my marriage was over, that Matt had done something unforgivable. He probably knew more than that, pieced together from the way I flinched when my phone buzzed or the look on my face when I came back from meeting Bryan.
He just wasn't going to make me say it until I was ready.
"Goat looked good today," he said after a while. "The Nigerian Dwarf. Becca brought her back for a follow-up."
"Hoof's healing clean. Should be fine in another week."
"Mm." He tapped the spoon on the edge of the pot. "You did good work there. Quick diagnosis. Good bedside manner with the girl, too. She was convinced that goat was dying."
"They always are."
"They always are," he agreed. He turned to grab bowls from the cabinet, his back to me. "Been nice having the help this week. Forgot what it was like to have someone competent around."
