Except... I don’t want to just survive it. Not really. Not if I’m honest with myself.
Today will be different. I’ll actually talk to her. Explain why I’ve been... like this. She deserves that much, at least.
I practice in my head while I get dressed.Cara, I’m sorry I’ve been shutting you out. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that I care too much, and I don’t know how to?—
I stop. Even in my head, the words sound wrong. Incomplete.
I’ll figure it out when I see her. Maybe it’ll be easier face to face.
By 11:45,I’m parked outside Eileen’s house, fifteen minutes early because apparently I’m a masochist.
The truck idles. Heat blows through the vents. I grip the steering wheel and stare at the front door, willing myself to put the truck in reverse and drive away.
I don’t.
I kill the engine and get out. The walk to her door feels longer than it should. I knock before I can talk myself out of it.
The door opens at 11:58, and there she is.
Cara.
She’s wearing jeans and a sweater—green, the color that always made her eyes look like forest pools—and her hair is down around her shoulders. Surprise flickers across her face. Like she didn’t actually expect me to show.
That makes two of us.
“You came,” she says.
“I said I would.”
She studies me for a second, then grabs her coat and steps outside. We walk to the truck in silence. I open the passenger door for her—my mother raised me right, even if I am an emotional disaster—and she climbs in.
Her scent fills the cab the second I get in the driver’s side. Honey and citrus and something warm underneath—familiar and foreign all at once.
My hands tighten on the wheel.
Every instinct I have sits up and takes notice.Omega. Ours. Want.The same damn response I had when I was eighteen, like my body never got the memo that she left. Like ten years means nothing when she’s right here, smelling like home.
I shove it down. Lock it away with everything else.
I put the truck in drive and pull away from the curb.
“Nate.”
Nothing.
“Are we really doing this again? The silent treatment?”
I keep my eyes on the road. My scent locked down so tight it hurts, like holding my breath underwater.
“Okay.” She settles back in her seat. “Fine. Where are we going this time?”
I haven’t actually thought about that. Yesterday was the lookout point, which was a mistake. Too many memories up there. Too many ghosts of who we used to be.
I turn toward town instead, heading for the one place I know she won’t expect.
The Barn Baris nearly empty at noon on a weekday. Just a couple of old-timers nursing beers in the corner and Milo behind the counter, wiping down glasses.
He looks up when we walk in, and his eyebrows shoot toward his hairline.
