Her voice slices right through him before he can finish his sentence.
“I told you guys I could handle this on my own! Why couldn’t you just listen to me?” There’s anger in her words, yeah, but underneath it there’s something much worse…hurt. Disbelief. “Jesus, do you know what kind of hell this is going to cause?”
I glance sideways.
Callum’s jaw is locked tight, eyes flicking toward me for the briefest second before returning to the phone.
His face is growing pale, a pinched and worried from working onto his face. “We were trying to protect you both.”
She breathes out harshly, the sound of it making something twist hard in my chest. “I can’t believe you… I trusted you. Now—god, I don’t even know. Just…stop. Okay? Whatever you guys have planned next,don’t. I’m taking Eli back to my dad’s. Don’t contact me. You’ve done enough.”
“Noelle, wait,” I start, leaning forward like she can see me, like proximity might fix this, but the line goes dead.
Her voice cuts off mid-breath, and the silence that follows feels deafening.
I slam my fist into the dashboard, the sound cracking through the cab.
Pain shoots up my knuckles, sharp and useless. “Goddammit!”
Callum flinches then exhales hard, dragging a hand over his face. “Shit, Grant… We fucked up.”
I don’t even try to deny it. My jaw aches from clenching it too hard. “Yeah. We more than fucked up.”
For a while, neither of us says anything.
The sound of the road fills the void, the faint whistle of air through the cracked passenger window, the rhythmic thud of my pulse in my ears.
We’d gone in there thinking we could control the narrative.
Show Jared that he couldn’t scare her, couldn’t use her, because she had us at her back.
We wanted to protect her.
Hell, maybe we wanted to prove we still mattered to her. But all we did was make it worse.
Last night, there’d been something between us all again.
For the first time since we came back, it hadn’t felt like standing at opposite ends of a battlefield.
Now it feels like we’ve burned the whole damn bridge down.
“She’s scared,” Callum says finally, almost to himself. His voice cracks in a way I’ve never heard it do before. “And we just gave her another reason to be.”
“Yeah,” I murmur. “We did.”
My mind spins with the image of her outside of her car, throwing Eli’s things into the trunk in a rush before we can get there.
Him asking where they’re going and why they’re leaving without saying goodbye.
Her lying to keep him calm, to make sure he isn’t as scared as she is.
All because we couldn’t keep our tempers in check. BecauseIcouldn’t.
I don’t know if Eli’s mine, or Callum’s, or Dean’s, or if it even matters anymore.
What I do know is that Noelle’s out there right now, scared and angry, and we’re the reason why.
And that realization hurts worse than any punch Jared could ever throw.
