The truth hits me like a freight train—she means it.
She chose him.
Him.
I exhale. My legs move—not toward them, but away—because I cannot stand there and watch that tableau any longer.
I came here to grab food and head back to my best friend’s office for an hour of uninterrupted bro time, but instead I find myself in the exact same position I was in just a few years ago.
In love with a woman who has chosen someone else.
She deserves happily ever after. And clearly, I am not it.
I slip back through the crowd toward Dexter. People brush past—a shoulder here, a backpack thud there—and the ordinary overcrowding of the restaurant gives me anonymity.
If she glances up from across the room she doesn’t catch me. She doesn’t see my face go blank. She doesn’t see the way my fingers curl until the knuckles go white.
Dex is waiting, our lunch in hand, eyebrows lifted.
“You okay, man?” he asks again, with the genuine concern of someone who knows you well enough to read the train wreck before it happens.
I don’t meet his eyes. I can’t. I rub a hand over my face becauseif I look at him he’ll know I am undone and I… I just can’t right now.
I let out a breath that sounds like a laugh and say the only thing I can at this very moment.
“Just get me the fuck out of here.”
THIRTY-ONE
TORI
I callJake the second I leave Grand River, my Telluride engine humming against the cold as I merge onto I-70 east. Roughly four and a half hours lie between me and Moraine.
That’s four and a half hours to brace myself for the conversation waiting for me when I get there.
He answers on the first ring.
“Hi, Tori. I’m assuming you have news.”
I skip the pleasantries.
“Chase came to the office today. Calm. He just wanted to talk. I don’t know if he’ll stay this calm, but I’m not dragging it out anymore. I’m on my way to Moraine. This ends today.”
“I’ll have my co-counsel meet you at the house,” Jake says evenly. “Call me when you’re about an hour out so he has time to pull the paperwork together and drive over.”
“Okay.” My knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. “Thank you.”
The line clicks off and leaves me with nothing but the road and the ache in my chest. The drive blurs—winter-bare trees that look more like bones than branches, snow crusted in the ditches.
I try music, then silence. Neither helps. Every mile closer, the weight in my chest gets heavier, but my resolve is steady.
Mountains crest and fall into foothills. I cut north, trading highway speed for narrower roads that twist along creeks and through shuttered towns. Snow dusts the shoulders, bare branches bow over the pavement, and every curve brings me nearer to the jagged outlines of the Rockies.
By the time I’m about a half hour out, I call Jake again.
“I’m on track,” I tell him, my voice steadier than I feel.
He confirms the co-counsel will meet me there in an hour, and I end the call and drive the last stretch in a quieter, bleaker kind of focus.
