“Not sure why you’re chasing after me if you don’t like me,” she said flatly. “Wouldn’t want you to break out in hives just standing beside me.”
The words hit me like a sucker punch, and my throat tightened. “You weren’t supposed to hear that.”
“Well,” she said, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear with fingers that weren’t quite steady, “I did. Loud and clear. So—thanks for the clarity.”
“Tally, wait. I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did.” Her voice wasn’t angry. It wasn’t raised. But it was steady in that way that meant she was holding in what she really wanted to say. “You meant every word. And it’s fine. You can relax. I don’t want to be your problem. I never did.”
I stepped forward, useless. “Tally—”
She exhaled, one slow breath that cracked between us like thunder. Then she looked at me—really looked—and it felt like standing dead center in a storm I hadn’t seen coming.
It was the look I’d dreaded since the moment I met her. That sharp, unflinching way she saw people, the same way she did behind her camera lens. And now, she’d found it in me—the thing I’d buried so deep I thought no one could touch it. That beneath all the steady, reliable armor was a man bluffing his way through, desperate for the world not to notice he had no idea what the hell he was doing.
“You’re doing my brother a favor.” Her voice wavered, then steadied. “And I thought… I don’t know what I thought. I guess I let myself believe all the little moments meant more than they did. But now I get it. Message received.”
The rain picked up, gentle but persistent, flattening her curls and darkening the hem of her dress. Nancy Reagan gave a single bark, judgy and unimpressed, before they both turned and walked away, shoulders high, spine straight, dignity fully intact.
And I didn’t chase her.
Because maybe this time—whether I meant it that way or not—I’d earned the walk away.
Chapter Twenty-Six
TALLY
Therainhadstartedsoft, barely a breath against my skin—as if the sky couldn’t decide if it wanted to cry or not. Kind of like howIcouldn’t decide if I wanted to cry or not. But a few blocks from O’Malley’s, it made up its mind. The mist turned to a steady, warm drizzle, slicking the cobblestones beneath my feet, painting the streetlights in hazy halos, and muffling the city’s usual chatter into a gentle hum.
I didn’t run. I didn’t pull up my hood. I walked.
It felt like the city was exhaling with me, and maybe I could loosen my grip on everything—the shame, the panic, thetightness behind my ribs—and exist. For a minute. For a block. For as long as I needed.
Nighttime in Savannah was when the real charm broke through the bustle. She was older, quieter, alive in a way that didn’t need to shout through the iridescent glaze of the moon. Gas lanterns flickered beside chipped bricks, casting golden halos that danced along the wet pavement. The Spanish moss above me swayed in slow motion, like it was watching me from above, patient and unbothered. A cargo ship groaned in the distance, its whistle breaking the stillness.
I turned down a side street without thinking, Nancy padding beside me like a soggy, judgmental cloud. She stopped to sniff a fire hydrant with the gravitas of someone solving a cold case, then looked up at me with sullen chocolate-brown eyes.
“I know,” I murmured, brushing damp hair from my eyes. “I was an idiot. I shouldn’t have stormed off like that.”
But it wasn’t about Charlie. It wasn’t what I’d overheard. It was everything.
The weight of not belonging. Of being the one who always showed up too late, with too much baggage and not enough answers. I’d spent most of my life being a visitor. A layover in someone else’s story. Never the destination.
And yet… here.
Here, even angry and embarrassed and soaking wet, a spark of hope uncoiled inside me. Like maybe this place didn’t care about my past. Maybe it only cared that I kept showing up.
I stopped in front of a bakery with fogged-up windows, the warm glow inside casting silhouettes of someone folding dough, dusting flour from their apron. Across the street, two college kids ducked under a tiny umbrella, laughing like it didn’t matter that they were already soaked. A group of older tourists shuffled past a ghost tour guide with a cane and a top hat, who looked likehe’d been pulled straight from a Dickens novel. And they were all… here. Living, moving forward.
For the first time since landing in Savannah, I wasn’t watching from the sidelines. Maybe I was already part of the story. Maybe this was the start. It was messy and imperfect, sure, but finally, there were words on the page.
Nancy Reagan gave a little sneeze beside me, shaking the water from her wiry curls, and I crouched to scratch behind her ears.
“I think we might be falling in love with this place,” I whispered.
She sneezed again, which felt like a yes.
The poodle paused to sniff at what I was sure was some other dog’s disgusting pile in the grass while I slowed my steps, one hand resting on the curve of my belly. My dress clung to my skin, damp and a little chilled, but I didn’t mind. It grounded me in the moment—this strange, in-between moment where I wasn’t quite the girl I used to be and not yet the woman I hoped I’d become.
