My jaw twitches. “You had three years to offer me the truth.” I keep my voice even by force. “But all you mailedme was silence, and then you show back up with a rock on your hand.”
“I know.” She steps closer. “And I’m sorry.”
“Sorry’s a cheap currency, Noah.” I lift my gaze and let it rake over her. “You want to clear the air? Okay. Let’s try this. You ran. I tried to hold on. Then I stopped. End of story.”
“You didn’t stop.” Her eyes skim the cuts on my knuckles and the dark under my eyes I can’t wash away. She drifts another half-step, like this pull between us is affecting her, too. “I didn’t either.”
I laugh once. The force of it threatening to break a rib on its way out. “You… wearing that”—I point to her finger—“says otherwise.”
Her hand twitches. Instinct, or maybe defiance, makes her fold it into a fist like she can hide it. “I chose Bradley.” Her voice doesn’t shake, which might be the worst part. “I keep choosing him.”
“Then why are you here?” It comes out harsher than I mean it to.
Her eyes shine, not with stage tears but the real kind she hates. “Because I can’t carry you into my marriage. It’s not fair to either of us.” The honesty of it strips me down to bone. She blinks fast, swallows it back. “I needed to tell you I didn’t leave for me. I left for you. So you wouldn’t be torn in two. You belong in Black River,Rhett.” Her shoulders drop as her eyes dart to her feet. “And I don’t… not anymore.”
Her words land in the spot behind my ribs where I’ve been keeping rage as a placeholder for grief. I stare at her until I feel the shape of my own mouth again.
“If that’s what you need to tell yourself to justify how this played out, fine.” The word tastes like blood. “But don’t expect me to swallow your bullshit.”
She closes her eyes like I just drove a nail through something soft. When she opens them, they’re stubborn and wet. “Just tell me you hate me,” she whispers. “Make it easy.”
I take a step. Then another. Close enough that I can smell her shampoo under the perfume, the same one that used to live on my pillow. Her head tips back on instinct. I can see the flecks in her irises, gold like spilled whiskey.
“I don’t hate you,” I tell her, honest against my better judgment. “That’s the problem.”
Silence settles, heavy as the dust that hangs between us. We’re two stars, catching light, shooting through the sky in different directions.
She reaches without thinking. Her fingers hover over the cut on my knuckles, then move to my jaw. Electricity crackles beneath my skin. She feels it. I feel it. The whole goddamn world feels it.
“Rhett,” she whispers. Mirroring her movements, my hand lifts to her neck by its own command, thumbfinding the place it’s always fit. Her pulse flutters hard against it, a bird trapped under skin. I lean in until our mouths are a breath apart.
Her eyes flick to mine, and I see the silent request.Kiss me.
I lean closer, my breath fanning over her lips. “I’m not a half measure.” My voice turns to gravel. “I don’t do borrowed things, and I sure as shit won’t be the ghost you visit before you make the biggest mistake of your life.”
She swallows the flinch at that last word like it burns. “I’m not asking you to—” She breaks off, jaw locking as she tries to step back from my hold. “This was a mistake.”
I wind my arm around her waist and keep her close. “Call it whatever you want. Nobody forced you to come here, Starlet.”
“I needed to say goodbye.”
I let my hand fall. The air that rushes between us feels like a door slamming. “Fuck you! I heard you the night you left, even if you didn’t say it out loud.”
“I didn’t know how to stay without breaking me,” she chokes out, voice resigned and small. “And I didn’t know how to go without breaking you.”
“Yet somehow you still broke both of us.”
We stand there with the truth, pretending it’s not ripping open a wound we never healed.
In her jacket pocket, her phone buzzes. Once. Twice.Again. She flinches each time like it’s wired to bone. Her mind goes somewhere else as she looks down, somewhere far from this barn, the river wind, and a man who would have built her any life she wanted until his hands bled.
“Go!” God, I hope she listens because if she doesn’t, I might rip the goddamn world apart to keep her. “You’ve got people. Schedules. A sky to climb.”
Throat working, she nods, taking one step backward, then another. Each step clawing at us both. “I’m sorry,” she offers one more time, as if the word might do different work now than it did before. “Find happiness, Rhett. Even if it’s without me.” Turning on her heel, she leaves my life for a second time.
Thankfully, she doesn’t look back, because if she did, I’d run the risk of claiming something I’m not allowed to have.
My hands rise to my head, fingers intertwining in my hair as I watch her car ride off into the sun. “Goodbye, Mercedes.”
