I tried to answer.
Couldn’t.
Regan leaned closer, her voice low and fierce.
“I don’t hate you. I don’t see you and think her. I never did. I never mistreated you because of Mandy. I never looked at your face and saw the girl who hurt me.”
My lips parted, but nothing came out.
“I just loved you,” Regan said.
That broke something open.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just one clean crack right through the center of me.
“I don’t know how to believe that,” I whispered.
“I know.” Regan brushed her thumb over my knuckles. “But you can start by hearing it.”
The ocean moved below us, endless and blue.
Regan looked past me, through me, into some old desert night she had carried for years.
“That feeling you had when you kissed Dylan last night,” she said softly.
Heat rushed into my cheeks.
I looked down too fast.
Regan’s mouth curved faintly, but her eyes stayed serious.
“That,” she said. “That feeling. Like something in all that darkness belonged only to you. Like you caught a shooting star with your bare hands.”
I swallowed.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“That’s how I felt about Edge.”
I closed my eyes.
“Like the desert had given me one wild, impossible thing that was mine,” she continued. “But the desert is wild and unforgiving. And a lot of people die thinking they can tame wild nights.”
“Like her,” I said.
Regan went quiet.
I opened my eyes.
“Mandy,” I whispered. “She got in a car and drove away too fast.”
“Running,” Regan said.
“From what?”
