She doesn’t argue.
Instead, she asks, "Is this job worth it?"
The question startles me.
"I’ve given so much of my life to that firm," I say. "I don’t even know who I am without it."
"You’re good at protecting people," she says. "You have a huge heart. You don’t need Legacy to validate that."
"I don’t know how to want anything else," I admit.
She studies me carefully.
"You could stay here. Move back into your old room. Live rent-free while you figure out what you want."
The idea both comforts and terrifies me. I don't give her an answer right away but I thank her and tell her that I will think about it.
Later, when I’m alone and the house is quiet, I sit on the couch.
He’s five miles away.
Five miles.
Close enough that I could drive there in ten minutes, stand outside his building and stare up at a window. And yet he feels unreachable.
I thought if I could just explain myself, it would fix something. Instead, I confirmed his worst fear… and maybe mine.
As much as not going back to Arizona feels like too much hope… I have to face that whatever I thought Luka and I had, it’s over. It’s time to get back to my real life.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll get on that flight with Molly and I’ll head back to the life I left two weeks ago like Luka and Switzerland never happened.
Though that life, for the first time, feels empty without him in it.
Chapter Thirty
LUKA
The hotel room is quiet.
Built to be forgettable, with sealed windows and recycled air, and that low hum from the vent that never shuts off. It’s the kind of quiet that is supposed to make it easier to sleep because there’s nothing personal in the space to hold your attention, no familiar corners where memories collect and wait for you.
I usually prefer it that way.
This morning, it only makes it harder to escape my own head.
I wake before my alarm, staring at the ceiling and trying to convince myself that all I’m feeling is fatigue from travel and not the restless, jagged awareness that I left something unfinished behind me in Switzerland. The bed is too soft. The air is too dry. My shoulder aches from sleeping wrong. None of that shouldmatter, but it all stacks together until my body feels slightly wrong inside itself.
My phone sits face down on the nightstand.
I don’t reach for it immediately because reaching for it would mean admitting that I’m waiting for something. It would mean admitting I care whether she kept trying, whether she gave up, whether she is still begging for the kind of conversation I’ve spent my entire life avoiding.
Eventually, I flip it over anyway because pretending not to care has never actually stopped me from caring.
There are no new notifications.
No missed calls. No messages.
No desperate attempts to wedge her way through the wall I threw up in that concrete hallway above the stands.
