I stood there. My wolf was pressing against my chest, shoving me toward the house, toward the door, every instinct screaming at me to go in, to find her, to make her listen. I stayed on the grass. She told me to leave and I wasn’t leaving, but I wasn’t going to force my way in either. I was done making decisions for other people.
She came home mid-morning. The rain was still falling, lighter now but persistent.
I saw her before she saw me, walking up the sidewalk from the direction of the park in a light jacket and sneakers, her hair darkened with rain, the jacket soaked through at the shoulders. She looked different from the last time I saw her. More colorin her face, something in the way she carried herself that had changed.
She saw me and stopped on the sidewalk maybe twenty feet from the porch.
“Finneas?”
I pulled off my jacket without thinking and crossed the distance between us. “You’re soaking wet, put this on.”
She stepped back. “Don’t touch me.”
“Andrea, you’re drenched, just take the jacket.”
“I said don’t touch me.” Her voice was ice. “What are you doing here?”
I held the jacket out between us, helpless. She was shivering slightly, rain on her face, and I wanted to wrap her in it so badly my arms ached. She didn’t take it.
“I came to see you. I need to talk to you.”
“I don’t want anything to do with a married man.”
“I’m not married. The wedding is off. My mother lied, Andrea. She faked the illness, the hospital, all of it. She did it to separate us.”
She stared at me. Rain running down her temples into her collar. I waited for the shock, the questions.
She slapped me across the face.
My head snapped to the side. The sting bloomed across my cheek, sharp and immediate. I didn’t lift my hand to touch it.
“I don’t care about your reasons.” Her voice was shaking but her eyes were dry and furious. “You looked me in the face and said none of it was real. Whatever your reason was, you still chose it over me.”
“I know.”
“Go home.”
“Andrea, please, you’re freezing. At least go inside and get warm.”
“Don’t pretend you care about whether I’m cold.”
“I do care. I’ve never stopped caring. Please just take the damn jacket.”
“Go home, Finneas.”
“My home is with you.”
“No.” Her face twisted and I saw the hurt underneath the fury, raw, still fresh. “Don’t you dare say that to me right now.”
She turned and walked up the porch steps. Her grandmother was standing at the screen door, arms crossed, watching the whole thing. Andrea pushed past her into the house without a word. The grandmother looked at me for a long second, then followed Andrea inside. The door closed. The lock turned.
I stood on the lawn holding my jacket with the rain soaking through my shirt, watching the closed door, the image of hershivering past me burned into my brain. She was cold, wet, shivering, and she wouldn’t take the jacket because taking anything from me meant accepting that I was here, that I existed in her space. She wasn’t ready for that.
I put the jacket back on even though it was soaked and useless. I deserved this. The slap, the locked door, the refusal to let me explain. My mother manipulated me and Lorraine schemed behind my back but I was the one who said the goddamn words. I chose them. Standing on this lawn in the rain was the least I owed her.
I went to my car after a while. Not giving up, just soaked through and shivering, my shirt plastered to my skin. I sat in the driver’s seat with the heat on and watched the house. The curtains were drawn. Warm light glowed behind them and I pictured her in there with her grandmother, drinking tea, not thinking about me. Or thinking about me and hating me, which was worse.
An hour passed, then two. My phone had been buzzing nonstop since the morning, the screen lighting up every few minutes with names I didn’t want to see. Luca I answered, texted back:she’s here. she won’t see me. I’m staying.His reply was justeat something.I’d texted Lorraine on the drive to the airport:the wedding’s off.Twelve missed calls from her since. Eight from my mother. Three from Conrad Ashtor. I turned the phone face down on the passenger seat.
