I keep moving, though I do it slower, reaching for the seat belt, dragging it across her chest and buckling it in place.
I straighten, trying to catch her eyes, to look into a face I once knew better than my own, but she’s looking out the window now, and her body is so damned tense…
Like it had been when I first met her, when I had to carefully make my way through all of those walls.
It fucking burns, the truth of that.
I created it. I’m the reason for it.
And…it still fucking burns.
I reach for the wig, wanting it off, wanting nothing but her.
“Don’t,” she rasps.
I freeze, my fingers on the synthetic strands that do nothing but remind me they’re fake, they’re not her.
Fucking sandpaper compared to the silk of her hair.
“It’s pinned in place.” The words are quiet. Husky.
A thousand questions barrel through my mind, spinning like a fucking tornado, but before I can quiet the storm, can pluck a question out of the maelstrom to ask, her eyes come to mine.
They spear into me, the burning in my belly growing, expanding out and consuming my insides.
“You need to let me go and pretend you never saw me.”
The words are cold…but her eyes?—
Fuck, her eyes aredead.
Idid that.
The guilt, it’s so fucking heavy, sitting so deeply on my lungs that it feels impossible to draw in a breath.
She reaches for the handle.
I stay her arm.
“I can’t,” I rasp.
Her eyes close and then she turns her head away, but she doesn’t try to get out again as I put the transmission into reverse, as I navigate the winding road down from the winery, as I take the freeway to the city, as I turn into the underground garage for my apartment building.
I park in my spot and rotate to face her.
She’s still looking away from me.
“Briar.”
She doesn’t move.
“Raindrop—”
It slips out, and it has her eyes flashing to mine. “Ihateyou.”
I shrug even though the words flay me open, regret and guilt spilling out like a defeated knight’s entrails on a long-forgotten battlefield.
But I’m not a white knight.
