The ticking of the clock.
The turning of our page.
77
Katie
I woke up that morning to an empty bed. This was not unusual. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d reached out for Tyler mid-dream only to find a cool pillow or salt air. But this was different. After the past forty-eight hours, this did not feel right.
I fumbled for the nightstand, expecting a note—but no. Nothing. I scoured the main house, the library, the dock, and the beach. No sign of him, or even of Meredith and Pinot. No evidence of toast burned or coffee brewed. No remnants of lobster ravioli in the cat bowl.
I headed back to the terrace. I was being crazy, wasn’t I? Searching for evidence of something that would not happen. The three of them were probably off somewhere, poring over Tyler’s finished manuscript, and I’d simply missed them by a minute. Soon enough, they’d appear, and Tyler and I would make brunch.
I closed my eyes. I remembered his mouth on my mouth yesterday afternoon, my body glued to his in that bed, my life finally making so much sense. The glow of a single lamp, the swirl of that cottage—brick and terra-cotta tile and everything else, whitewashed and the safest place I’d ever known.
He was mine.
I was being crazy, and he was mine.
I walked back to the cottage, clinging to the memory. Clingingto every minute we’d shared in this place. Clinging to every taste and scent and sound.
I opened the door.
Tyler was sitting on the floor at the foot of his bed, his head in his hands. My entire body went slack.
“Katie,” he said.
I was trembling. “No. Don’t do this... Don’t do this, please.”
The thing about loving someone is that you don’t always get a say in who they are, what they do, or when they go. The heart wants what it wants. I believed that, even in this moment, even though I could already see the next five, ten, fifteen minutes play out like I’d scripted them myself.
“I think,” he said, “your mom is right.”
Something cold and metal clanked shut around my rib cage. Tyler’s head was still in his hands. Behind him, in that bed, were still the ghosts of us, braiding our bodies under the covers.
“What are you talking about?” I said. “Why are you doing this? We had a plan. What happened? What changed?”
He winced. It was a full-body wince. One that spread from what little I could see of his face all the way to his shins.
“I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t take you away from them.”
“You’re not,” I said. “I love you. That’s not what’s happening. And it was my decision to make.”
He frowned again. That wince, multiplied by a thousand. I kept waiting for one of us to raise our voices, but there was a calmness to the whole thing that made it infinitely more real. This was not a fight, but the nail in the coffin. This was not a third-act breakup but the end of a love story. He knew exactly what he was doing.
I slumped against the closed door. We were six, maybe seven feet apart. It was perfect blocking, really. It was exactly how I would’ve drafted it. It was exactly how much space I would’ve given myself to fall apart.
“Why did you start this?” I said. My voice was still so low. “Why would you let me fall in love with you all over again? If you knew you’d go?”
Tyler bent his body a little more. His face was pressed against his knees. He was in a pair of basketball shorts and that old gray T-shirt I’d worn every night it was remotely clean for the past five weeks. “I thought I could do it,” he said. “I thought I was ready to face what I’d done. But I can’t take another child away from them. Your mom, your dad, they raised me.”
I frowned, and somehow, my hand began to rise. It was reaching out to touch him, wasn’t it? But it only floated an inch. After all, I had my armor on.
“Last night,” he said, “I just sat there, watching you sleep.” He raised his head. His eyes were wet, and his face was swollen. “You deserve better than this, Katie. You deserve someone who’s never hurt you. Who can help you repair what happened with your parents, not the other way around.”
“What I want,” I said, “is you.”
Another flinch. This one, even the armor couldn’t refract. Dulled, sure, but it cracked between my ribs all the same.
