I laughed softly, because something about the way they were both looking at me—teasing and proud and protective—made my throat tighten.
I reached for my phone, not to chase Wyatt, not to demand reassurance, but because I wanted one small act of honesty to anchor the morning.
I opened a new message.
My fingers hovered.
Then I typed:
Me:I woke up and you were gone. I’m not mad. I’m not spiraling. I’m just … here. I hope you’re okay. And I hope you kept the buckle.
I didn’t send another text.
I didn’t add paragraphs.
I didn’t apologize for wanting him.
I hit send.
Beth watched me do it and made a satisfied sound. “That’s hot.”
“It is not hot,” I said, laughing.
Natasha’s eyes warmed. “It’s clear. It’s secure. It gives him space without letting him disappear.”
Exactly.
I set the phone down and exhaled, feeling my body settle even more, as if it approved of my choices.
Outside, Charleston moved on—carriages, tourists, the rhythm of a city that didn’t care about my love story.
But inside me, something had shifted.
I wasn’t the girl begging a man to pick me.
I was a woman who knew what she wanted and trusted herself enough to wait for the right man to rise to it.
And Wyatt—messy, terrified, loyal Wyatt—had already shown me he could.
Now he just had to believe it, too.
25
WYATT
Ifelt like shit.
Beyond shit. Like something scraped off the bottom of a boot and left to rot in the Texas sun for a week, baking into something unrecognizable and toxic.
I walked for miles before I even thought about calling the driver. Just walked, boots hitting pavement in a rhythm that did nothing to quiet my head, Charleston waking up around me like it had every right to be beautiful while I was drowning in my own cowardice, my own weakness, my own spectacular inability to be a decent human being for more than twelve consecutive hours.
The sun climbed higher, turning the humidity from pleasant to oppressive. Sweat soaked through my shirt, plastered it to my back, ran down my spine. My phone stayed silent in my pocket like an accusation I couldn't answer, like evidence of yet another relationship I'd sabotaged before it could go anywhere real.
Sophie was probably awake by now. Probably found the empty bed, the cold sheets, the space where I'd been and wasn't anymore.
Probably realizing what I'd known all along—that I was exactly the kind of man who said "I love you" and then disappeared before sunrise like it meant nothing.
I shoved the thought away hard, buried it with all the other shit I didn't want to look at.
