“Don’t,” I growl. “He needs tohearthis. He needs tofeelsomething.”
Tears streak my face, hot and uninvited. My head spins, tequila and adrenaline crashing together.
“Wow, Penn. Just... wow.” Blake finally speaks. “You’re going to blameallof this on me?”
My brain halts. He can’t be serious.
“Blame you?” I laugh, wild and bitter. “Yes, Blake. This is on you.” My scream reverberates around the bar.
Carrie murmurs behind me, something about how it was just drinks in the office, how it escalated. I don’t know who she’s talking to, until I hearhisvoice. That low growl that finds me even in my most broken moments. Dane. Of course he’s here. He always is. Heat surges over my body, climbing my spine, colouring my cheeks.
“I blamed it on heartbreak. On her loss. On you,” I whisper. “Until I caught youlookingfor another. Now I’m just here. Derailed. A ghost on broken tracks. Waiting for someone or something to fill the cracks you left.” I laugh again, hollow and shaking. “You walk around pretending none of this happened. Pretending you’re whole. Hiding behind your fake laughter and a bar full of strangers who don’t know shit about you. But you love the pedestal they all put you on. The holy bartender with that killer smile and eyes the advice and drinks. The fake they all crave.”
Dane’s arms wrap around my waist, firm and grounding. “Peach,” he murmurs, voice like thunderclouds and safety. “Not here. Let’s get you home.”
My back presses to his chest. I melt against him for a breath, my body exhausted. He takes the rage piece by piece like he always does. But I still push him away. Because part of me will always run back tothisto Blake. To the hope that he’d wake up and choose me.
“Why couldn’t you love me back?” I whisper. “Why did you let temptation rip you from me?” Tears leak from my eye’s betrayal and longing, thick and burning.
Carrie grabs my hand as Dane gently pulls me away. Backwards. Away from the bar, from the memories sealed in resin, now cracking beneath my feet. This isn’t mine anymore. He isn’t mine. He belongs to every Pandora on that fucking dating app.
DANE—BAR SCENE
I felt her before I saw her. The shift in the air. The kind of static that rolls in just before a storm breaks open the sky. Penn.
The door crashed inward like a warning. Her silhouette framed in chaos, hair wind-whipped and wild, eyes hunting. For him. I stayed in the shadows, frozen. Watching her unravel in real time.
The song hit their song, and she broke like glass hitting concrete. I watched Blake straighten behind the bar like he’d seen a ghost. Maybe he had. But I knew better. Ghosts don’t scream like that. She did.
“You ruined this song for me!”
Her voice was a flame, and it set the whole damn room on fire. She was incandescent. A fury wrapped in grief and heartbreak and far too much tequila. And I stood there. Helpless. Because it wasn’t my name she was crying. Not yet.
I watched her slam her hands against the oak, felt the crack of it all the way from the other side of the room. The photos beneath the resin told their story like a museum of a love that no longer lived. And she was begging, begging him for anything. For something. She would’ve settled for cruelty over the silence he gave her.
And when she said their daughter’s name...Fuck. I felt that punch in my chest like it belonged to me, and maybe a part of it did. Because I was the one who held her when she cried last night in her sleep. I was the one who listened to her heartbeat slow when nightmares dragged her under. I was the one who memorized every shattered edge of her. But Blake, Blake was the one she still wanted to bleed for.
She said she’d run through fire for him. And I believed it. But I also knew he let her burn alone.
Her voice was breaking now. Hair falling in her face. Shoulders shaking. But still, she didn’t stop. And neither did he. Not aword. Not a twitch. Just stared at her like she was a problem he didn’t know how to fix.
I wanted to drag him across the bar and force him to see her. I wanted to make him remember the way she used to laugh. Before the ashes.
Then came the silence between her words the kind that screams louder than anything she said. That’s when I moved.
Carrie was trying to calm her, trying to do damage control. But Penn? She didn’t want to be saved. Not from this. She wanted to be heard.
I stepped forward as her voice cracked again, as her fury curved into something rawer. Something lonelier. And I knew this wasn’t just about Blake.
It was about everything she’d lost. Their daughter. Her identity. The home they’d built that was never lived in.
It was about what she couldn’t hold anymore, and who she couldn’t be for him.
I was halfway to her when I heard it.
“You’re still breaking my heart, and you don’t even know.”
That one took the wind out of me. Because I did know. I knew exactly what it was like to love someone who couldn’t see you, not fully. Because they still had their eyes on a door that had already closed. Blake hadn’t just hurt her. He’d hollowed her out.
