And another part of me felt… oddly hurt.
I didn’t want space.
Not from her.
Not after that night in the tent.
Not after the morning after.
Not after Easter, where I’d watched her smile across the table like she was trying not to give something away.
Liam stretched and started backing toward the door. “Good luck talking to her.”
“She’s not avoiding me that much,” I said defensively.
“Oh?” He lifted an eyebrow. “Then surely she’ll answer her phone.”
“Why wouldn’t she answer her phone?” I said, already pulling it out.
“You’ll see.”
I texted her a simple message:
Hey. Want to go over the weekend trip schedule?
The little “delivered” text appeared beneath it.
No typing bubble appeared.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Liam sipped his coffee. “And now she’s panicking.”
I frowned. “She’s not panicking.”
He raised one eyebrow slowly, like a man observing a train wreck he’d predicted.
I waited another twenty seconds.
Still nothing.
“She might be busy,” I said.
“She might be climbing out a window,” Liam replied.
“She doesn’t climb out windows.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “She’s absolutely climbing out a window.”
I stared at my phone, trying not to read too much into the empty screen. Maybe she really hadn’t seen the message yet. Maybe she’d left her phone in her room. Maybe she was helping her mom.
Or maybe she was hiding.
From me.
