I looked at him across the table, really looked, and he held my gaze without flinching. No defensiveness. No expectation. Just... openness. Vulnerability. Things I’d never seen from Dutch, but were becoming familiar from Jacob.
The moment stretched. One minute. Two. The coffee shop hummed around us—the hiss of the espresso machine, the murmur of other conversations, the scrape of chairs on the floor—but it all felt distant, like we were in our own bubble of complicated history and uncertain future.
Finally, I stood. He rose with me, and we walked toward the exit without speaking.
My mind was spinning as I walked back to my apartment. The meeting had been more intense than I’d expected. Jacob had been everything I’d hoped he might be—respectful, mature, genuinely interested in my wellbeing over his own desires.
But it was his pain that stuck with me. Not the noble, generous acceptance I’d expected, but the raw honesty that hearing about my dating life gutted him even as he supported it. That vulnerability—that admission that this was hard for him but he was doing it anyway—felt more real than any grand gesture could have.
I thought about Vaughn, with his easy smile and guitar-roughened hands. About the other men I’d casually dated, the reminder that I had options, that I was desirable and interesting and worthy of pursuit.
I didn’t need Jacob to be whole. The question was whether I wanted to see if the man he’d become could add to the life I’d built, rather than consume it the way he had before.
I didn’t have an answer yet. But for the first time since I’d left Millfield, I wanted to find out.
Chapter 18
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— Dutch —
My hands won’t unclench from the handlebars.
I’ve been riding for six hours straight, and every time I try to relax my grip, the image floods back. Indira’s confident smile when she admitted to datingmultiple men. My fingers tighten again, knuckles white against the leather.
She was dating multiple men. Living a whole life I wasn’t part of. The words kept echoing in my head, each repetition like a fresh wound. I’d prepared myself for a lot of possible outcomes from our meeting—rejection, anger, indifference. But somehow I hadn’t prepared for the reality that she’d not only moved on but was thriving. That multiple men were getting to see her smile, hear her laugh, take her to dinner, maybe more.
I’d known about Vaughn for months. For some reason, I’d never thought about Indira seeing anyone other than him. But I shouldn’t have been surprised. She wouldn’t jump into a committed relationship so soon, not after what I’d done to her. And she wouldn’t lack for options—I’d seen how men looked at her when we were out in Millfield. That’s why I’d constantly found myself touching her, pulling her into my lap when we went out, making sure other men knew she was mine.
What a fucking idiot I’d been. If I’d made her my old lady when I had the chance, given her that commitment and security she deserved, I wouldn’t be here thinking about Indira dating other men. But I hadn’t.
Now multiple fucking men were getting what should have been mine alone.
My first instinct was rage mixed with sick jealousy. But the rage only lasted about ten minutes before something else took its place. Something that hurt worse than anger.
She wasn’t just dating to fill time. She was genuinely happy. Thriving, she’d said, with that confident tilt to her chin that showed she meant it. The woman I’d broken had rebuilt herself into someone whole, vibrant, and completely independent of me.
And that realization—that she didn’t need me, that she’d built a good life without me—hollowed me out more than any betrayal ever could.
I pulled over at a gas station and just sat there, hands gripping the handlebars, trying to breathe through the pain. This was what I deserved. I’d destroyed something beautiful, and now I had to face the reality that she might never choose me over the options she had. Why would she? I was the man who’d cheated and lied. They were men who’d never hurt her.
But underneath the pain was something else. Something that surprised me with its clarity.
If she was happy—genuinely, vibrantly happy like she’d been today—then that mattered more than what I wanted.
The thought was foreign enough that I had to sit with it for a while. When had I become the kind of man who could put someone else’s wellbeing ahead of his own desires? When had I learned to care more about her happiness than my own satisfaction?
Somewhere in the last few months, I’d stopped thinking of Indira as something I’d lost and started thinking of her as someone whose life I wanted to be good, whether or not I was part of it.
The realization should have been depressing. Instead, it felt like the only thing keeping me from completely falling apart.
The next three days blurred into asphalt and sky. I took the long route—through the Smokies instead of cutting straight west—because the mountain curves demanded attention. Every switchback forced me to focus on something besides her voice sayingVaughn, David, James, a few others.
The wind at seventy miles an hour stripped away everything but the essentials. Road. Machine. Breath. The basic mechanics of staying alive when your chest felt hollowed out.
Somewhere around the Arkansas border, the highway stretched flat and endless, nothing to distract me from the loop playing in my head. But by then, something had shifted. The knot in my chest had loosened just enough to breathe.
Thinking about Indira thriving made me think about my mother. She had a nice tidy sum in her bank account now—Glitch kept an eye on it for me, had mentioned she’d finally started using it. That was good. But what else could I do to help her get to a happy place like Indira had found? My mother had spent forty years shrinking herself to fit into King’s shadow. She didn’t have friends, didn’t have hobbies, didn’t have a life outside of that house. The money gave her options, but options weren’t the same as freedom. Maybe I needed to call her more. Visit more. Show her that someone actually gave a damn about what she wanted, not just what she could do for everyone else.
