His eyes are gentle.
I don’t know what I want to say. I don’t know what would fix anything. There isn’t a sentence in the world that would untangle this knot.
So I say the only thing that’s true:
“I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Wyatt’s expression softens further, like he understands the fear beneath my words.
“I know,” he says.
And then he opens the door and leaves.
The moment the door shuts, my knees go weak.
“Okay,” I whisper to myself. “Okay. That happened.”
My skin is buzzing.
My stomach is in knots.
My heart is trying to crawl out of my chest and go chase him down the driveway, yelling, “Wait, I’m just confused.”
But I don’t.
I don’t move.
Because confusion is not an excuse to use someone as an emotional lifeboat. And Wyatt… deserves better than that.
I turn slowly, like my body is made of heavy wax.
The window by the door is old and slightly warped, so it doesn’t show much, just a smear of gray daylight and the suggestion of movement.
But I still catch it. The moment Wyatt steps off my porch.
The moment his shoulders lift, just once, taking this and tucking it back where he keeps everything else that hurts.
He doesn’t slam the gate. He doesn’t stomp. He doesn’t dramatize it.
Of course he doesn’t.
Wyatt Tucker is the kind of man who walks away carefully so no one can accuse him of leaving a mess behind.
Even when the mess is me.
My throat closes. My eyes burn.
I swallow hard and immediately regret having a throat at all.
“Don’t,” I whisper to myself, still pressed to the door like a ridiculous, heartbroken barnacle. “You do not get to cry. You said no. You were honest. This is what honesty looks like.”
Honesty looks like his back disappearing down my path.
Honesty looks like the quietest kind of rejection, even when you’re the one doing it.
I push away from the door before I can do something even more humiliating, like fling it open and scream his name.
My kitchen comes back into focus in sharp, unforgiving detail.
