He finally spoke again after several minutes of silence. “You almost had me convinced I couldn’t reach you anymore.”
“You never owned me.”
“I owned your doubt, that was always enough.”
The gravel changed under the tires. Deeper. Less traveled. The world grew quieter in a way that felt like being submerged.
I didn’t ask where we were going. I already knew the answer wouldn’t matter.
My phone vibrated again.
Wyatt.
My vision blurred. “Please,” I whispered.
Colin’s hand came down on the console between us. Hard. “You’re done asking.”
I swallowed the sound, trying to claw its way out of me.
The abandoned place came into view like a bruise on the land. A sagging structure set back from the road. Windows dark. The roof was broken in two places. The kind of property people forgot because it hurt to remember it existed.
“Pull in,” he said.
I did.
Gravel crunched under the tires as I brought the truck to a stop. The engine clicked and ticked as it cooled.
For a second, neither of us moved.
Then he reached across and shut off theignition.
My hands slid uselessly in my lap. My muscles stayed locked. My heart felt too big for my chest.
“Get out,” he said.
“If you lied about her,” I whispered. “If you even scared her.”
He opened his door. “You’ll behave better if you keep believing she’s fine because of you.”
That broke what was left of me.
I stepped out onto the gravel. The air smelled like dust and rot and old rain. The sky over the roofline was pale and endless.
The truck door shut behind me.
Colin walked around the hood with lazy confidence and stopped a few feet away.
“Welcome to quiet,” he said.
And as the wind moved through the dead grass around my boots, the last thing I saw in my mind was Maddy’s face in that impossible slice of normal morning light.
Thirty-Three
Wyatt
The brewery was in that late stretch when nobody came in, and the stragglers were thinking about leaving, when the place belonged to the work and not the customers. The tanks held their steady heat, the lines were purged and ready, the back hallway smelled like grain dust and sanitizer, and the whole building breathed in a low industrial hum that usually calmed the restless part of me. I liked mornings here because the work didn’t ask questions. It didn’t care about grief or banks or old promises. It only cared whether the mash temp held and whether the schedule got done.
I’d been checking the delivery log with a mug of coffee in my hand, half listening to the rattle of kegs in the cold room while one of my guys stacked empties. No one was arguing. No one was calling. No one needed me to fix anything.
