“Then don’t make it so easy.”
Her face flushes but she keeps her voice mostly steady. “You’re not mad at me, you’re mad at the situation. I am too, but you don’t need to take it out on me just because I’m the only one here.”
I look at her and think back to that first day she walked into my museum. I didn’t see it then, the gut punch she would be to my life, but I can’t escape it now. “Not mad at you?” I don’t try to hide how incredulous I find that statement. “All I do is think about you, and that’s not supposed to make me mad? It makes me insane!”
She lowers her arms from my door and stares at me like I’m suddenly holding a weapon.
“I can’t get away from you, and when I try, all it takes is one call and I come running. And for what? A tourist girl who doesn’t know the first thing about my life?”
“I know plenty about you.” Her eyes are shining again and her voice breaks. “And we both know you don’t see me as just a tourist anymore.”
“But I need to.” I lean through the window, forcing her back a step. “You think I want to do this to Eryn? She’s amazing and sweet and for whatever reason, she loves me. And that’s been good for me for years. I was fine, and I could have kept on being fine until you showed up and ruined that for me.”
“I didn’t do anything to you.”
No, she didn’t, but I can’t seem to stop lashing out at her anyway. “I was with Eryn when you texted, but the second I heard your voice, I wanted to be where you were.” I slump back against my seat. All these thoughts have been building in my head for weeks now, and they all boiled down to that one admission.
I hate myself for making it.
She looks as stricken as I feel, and I know that there’s no coming back from this. I meet her gaze, drink in the clear green color that has been painting my dreams emerald and sage, for what I have to hope is the last time. I don’t yell or even raise my voice.
“Before you, I thought I had the girl I could be happy with. Now I know the best I can do is try not to let her see how much I want to be with someone else.”
I stop to breathe then, too fast and too hard, because I didn’t want to say that, I didn’t want to know that, and based on the tear that slips down Lili’s cheek, she didn’t want to know it either.
“I may not be able to give Eryn everything she deserves, but I can be loyal, I can not break her heart. I can be better than my mother was to my dad.”
Twenty-Seven
Lili
I hug my arms around myself as Wren backs down the road, turns, and drives off without looking back. I didn’t even get a chance to say anything, to defend myself or explain.
Or tell him not to go.
I turn away and angrily brush the tear from my cheek. That’s when I see Goldie push open the screen door and step out onto the porch. There’s no way to know how much she overheard, but Wren hadn’t exactly been quiet.
Whatever she heard, she knows enough to be silent now as I walk over to her and hand the album back to her.
“Please thank Mrs. Mayhew for letting me see some of her husband’s collection, but I can’t look at anything else right now.” Then I turn and start back down the steps.
“You’re leaving? What about the other letters? There’s so much stuff, Lili. We could spend days going through it all together.”
I completely ignore the hopeful pitch in her voice as I continue walking. “You can’t understand this, but right now, the last thing I care about is the past.”
She hurries after me, trying to keep pace with my quicker stride. “Please? Just for a little bit.” When I show no sign of slowing, she leans in a little closer, her face hardening. “I could still tell Mom that you didn’t come home the other night. She won’t let you go back to the museum.”
I laugh but my chin also trembles. “Go ahead. I don’t think I’ll be going back anyway.”
She stops walking then. She played her trump card and lost. I guess I did too.
I quicken my pace. This wasn’t supposed to happen this way. It’s true I hadn’t exactly thought much about anything after I texted Wren, at least nothing practical. I wasn’t ready to process the blow that this letter from a British official to Kezia was to my dad’s theory, so instead, I’d focused on Wren. I had imagined the look on his face when I first showed him the letter, the way he’d stare at me when I told him there was more, and the hours we’d get to spend close together poring through everything.
I’ve been telling myself I don’t want more than that from him—nothing that would hurt anyone in the long run. But with each step, that belief weakens.
Because thishurts.
Because hedoeshave someone else.
