But not low enough.
“I’m not doing this with you,” Luke says, his voice stiff. “She told you we’re only friends. That’s what we are. I’m not screwing this up by calling it something it’s not.”
And just like that, something inside me fractures.
The nights.
The training.
The way he holds me as if I matter.
All of it, neatly filed under friendship.
I’ve told myself not to fall. I just didn’t realize I already had. I step back into the shadows before they see me. I don’t cry. I don’t react. I simply reorganize my heart around the truth.
When I round the corner again, my voice is steady. “I’m worn out, Luke. Are you about ready to take me home?”
He turns immediately. Relief floods his face. “What if I don’t want to let you go?”
Brandon smirks.
I don’t look at either of them.
“You always do.”
That lands harder than I intended. I see it in his eyes. Luke cocks his head to the side and narrows his eyes at me suspiciously.
But I don’t soften.
In the truck, he reaches for my hand like he always does. I let him take it. When he squeezes, I don’t squeeze back. Silence expands between us, thick and unbreakable. Before he can park, I open the door.
“Are you still going to be part of my show tomorrow night?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Just making sure.”
I close the door before he can ask what I mean. This time, I don’t wait in the doorway to wave goodbye before he drives away. And I don’t cry. Not tonight. I’ve wasted enough tears in my lifetime.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LUKE
By the time I pull into my parking spot, the apartment doesn’t feel like mine. Nothing has changed. The front light is still on, waiting for me to get home. The windows are dark. The place looks exactly the way it did this morning when I left for Gran’s party.
But it feels different.
The engine ticks as it cools, and I stay in the driver’s seat longer than I should. I keep seeing Andi walking toward her front door, the porch light catching in her hair. She didn’t look back. She always looks back and waves goodbye to me.
And when I squeezed her hand in the truck, she didn’t squeeze back.
That’s what I can’t shake.
I told myself tonight that I was protecting something by not giving it a name. I told myself that keeping it undefined somehow keeps it safe. Keeps me safe. But sitting here alone, I can’t escape the truth that what I protected wasn’t us.
It was me.
My dad and my uncle approached me after I’d finished threatening my cousins’ lives if they so much as looked at Andi wrong. Brandon had been lurking, listening to my conversations while watching Andi and doing everything he could to get into her conversations. I turned to talk to my dad and uncle but kept Andi and Brandon in my sights.
