He turned, eyes flicking toward me in warning. “Lillian.”
“What? I’mengaging. This is fake-couple bonding.”
“This is psychological warfare.”
I gasped. “You said you trusted me.”
“I saidyoushould trustme.”
“Details,” I muttered, waving him off. I folded my arms and stared out the window, pretending to be offended while fighting the smirk tugging at my lips. The mountains rose higher with every mile, their peaks dusted white even though it was earlyspring. Pines blurred past in endless shades of green, the sky a perfect watercolor blue.
After a while, I said, “You know, this is the first time we’ve driven somewhere together that wasn’t an airport or a hospital.”
He smiled faintly. “We drove to dinner with my coworkers. Besides, you don’t go anywhere.”
I kicked the dashboard lightly. “I do too.”
“Name one place.”
“The grocery store,” I said.
“That doesn’t count.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t go to shop. You go to silently judge everyone’s produce choices.”
“I don’t—” I stopped, remembering the woman who’d tried to return avocados because they were “too green.” I sighed. “Okay, maybe I do.”
He grinned, and the sound of his unguarded laughter filled the car, melting the frost inside me. For the first time since Jennie’s surgery, I felt my chest expand without pain.
I glanced at him, leaning back against the seat. “You’ve done this drive before.”
“Hundreds of times.”
“With who?”
“Mostly myself. I like quiet drives.”
“Of course you do,” I teased. “You seem like the type who needs silence to recharge your inner storm cloud.”
He side-eyed me. “And you seem like the type who fills silence just to hear herself speak.”
“Incorrect,” I said primly. “I fill silence to annoy you.”
He gave a soft, disbelieving hum that almost sounded affectionate.
We fell silent for a while, the radio playing something slow and instrumental. When he finally spoke again, it was low. “Iused to come this way a lot when I first moved to Canada. Before I started teaching.”
I turned toward him. “Why?”
“Because it reminded me of home. The mountains, the smell of pine after rain.” His jaw tightened. “Beirut has a range like this—less snow, more olive trees. My mom used to make us climb every summer. Said it kept our hearts strong.”
“Did it?”
“Guess we’ll find out.”
I folded inward, drawing my knees up to my chest, curling sideways in the seat until my cheek found the cool leather. It made me feel smaller, contained in a way my feelings weren’t. And from that cocoon, I watched him drive us to God knows where. I wanted to say something about last night, about his brother, about how his father’s grief had turned into a loaded stare that pinned all the blame onto the nearest surviving heart. I wanted to know how it felt to live with a loss that didn’t scar so much as rewrite the entire blueprint of a person.
