“So you knew,” I say, and the words come out brittle. “You knew I had Daisy.”
His jaw tightens. “Yeah.”
“I didn’t think you’d ever come back,” I say quietly.
The words surprise both of us.
Brendon stills, dish towel hanging loose in his hands. “I wasn’t sure if I ever should.”
I turn to face him fully now, my back against the counter, the sink running forgotten. “Why?”
He studies the floor for a moment, jaw tight. “Because you were building something. And I didn’t want to get in the way.”
A sharp, bitter laugh escapes me. “That’s giving yourself a lot of credit.”
He flinches, just slightly.
“I’m not asking for credit,” he says. “I’m just telling you what I told myself.”
“And what was that?” I ask.
“That you were better off,” he says quietly. “That whatever you needed, it wasn’t me.”
The words land harder than I expect.
“You didn’t fight,” I say, my voice shaking despite my best efforts. “You just accepted it.”
His gaze lifts to mine, and there’s something raw there now. “I didn’t know what I was fighting for. You never told me what I’d done.”
My breath catches. “I didn’t know how.”
The truth of that sits heavy between us.
I stare at my hands. At the faint scar on my knuckle from when Daisy slammed a door too hard as a toddler. Evidence of a life lived in aftermath.
“I was eighteen,” I whisper. “I was dumb.”
He exhales slowly. “So was I.”
Silence stretches, thick with all the words we didn’t say back then. All the chances that slipped through our fingers because we were too young to know how fragile things were.
That’s when it hits me. Not as a thought, but as a memory.
Brendon leaning against my locker, sunlight catching in his hair, smiling like the world was kind. His hand slipping into mine, confident and warm.
The night before he left. His truck parked by the river, the water dark and endless behind us. His hands shaking when he cupped my face, promised he’d come back. Me refusing to cry because I didn’t want to be the girl he remembered as weak.
I blink hard, dragging myself back into the kitchen.
Brendon is watching me like he knows I’ve gone somewhere far away. The air between us shifts.
I don’t know who moves first. Maybe it’s him stepping closer. Maybe it’s me not stepping back.
All I know is that one second there is space, and the next there isn’t.
His hand lifts, slow, like he’s asking permission without words. His knuckles brush my cheek, barely there. The touch is so gentle it makes my throat ache.
“Abby,” he murmurs, and my name sounds like a confession.
