“Agreed,” I echo.
The word feels hollow in my mouth.
Because I already know it’s not going to work. We can make all the plans we want. We can agree to avoid her, to stay cold, to protect ourselves.
But this is Honeyridge Falls. You can’t avoid anyone in a town this small. We’re going to run into her at the grocery store, the Honey Crumb, the gas station. We’re going to smell her scent on the wind and feel our hearts do that stupid thing they’ve been doing for ten years.
And when she looks at us with those dark eyes, asking for a chance to explain?—
I don’t know if any of us are strong enough to walk away.
Later,the kitchen is cleaned up and Lucas is making tea because he needs something to do with his hands that isn’t checking his phone.
“The whole town’s going to be talking about this by tomorrow,” he says. “Mrs. Peterson probably already knows.”
“Great.” I drain the last of my beer. “Can’t wait for everyone to ask how we’re handling things.”
“We’ll handle it,” Nate says. “We’re a pack. We’ve handled worse.”
But he doesn’t look at either of us when he says it. He’s staring out the window at the snow, and there’s something in his expression that makes my chest ache.
We’ve never talked about it. Not really. We made the decision years ago to stop waiting, stop hoping, stop letting her ghost rule our lives. We built this house. Built our careers. Built a life that didn’t include her.
But she’s always been here anyway. In the empty bedroom at the end of the hall. In the garden I plant every spring. In the way Nate still flinches sometimes when his phone rings.
“I’m going to bed,” Nate says abruptly. He pushes back from the table, takes his coffee cup to the sink. “Early shift tomorrow.”
He pauses at the doorway.
“For what it’s worth,” he says without turning around, “the nod was probably the right call. Anything else and you might have done something stupid.”
It’s the closest he’s going to get to sayingI would have done something stupid too.
“Thanks, Nate.”
He nods once and disappears down the hall.
Lucas and I sit in silence for a while. The kettle boils. He pours two cups of tea neither of us really wants.
“He’s taking this hard,” Lucas says quietly.
“We all are.”
“Yeah.” He wraps his hands around his mug. “But Nate... he was the last one to stop calling. Did you know that?”
I didn’t.
“Three months after you and I gave up, he was still trying. Still leaving voicemails.” Lucas shakes his head. “I found him one night, sitting in his truck outside the post office at two in the morning. He’d written her another letter. Couldn’t decide whether to send it.”
“Did he?”
“No. He threw it away.” Lucas takes a sip of tea. “That was when he finally stopped.”
I think about Nate. Stoic, steady Nate, who never talks about his feelings, who shows love through actions instead of words. Sitting alone in his truck with a letter he couldn’t send.
We’ve all been carrying this for ten years. We just carry it differently.
“I should get some sleep too,” I say.
