I looked at the tequila.
Smooth, Dylan.
Real smooth.
“No,” she said after a moment. “She’s not. Not in her heart. Her heart’s transforming from girl to woman, and you’ve had a big part in that.”
I bowed my head.
The cigarette burned between my fingers, forgotten.
“I never meant to write myself into this story,” I said.
Regan didn’t answer.
“I was just on a run through the desert and saw the fire.”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I know.”
“That’s it.”
“No, it isn’t.”
I looked at her.
Regan’s gaze stayed on the ocean. “That’s the thing about life, huh? Fate and Destiny decide to intervene.”
I let out a humorless breath and took another swallow of tequila because there was no safe answer to that.
Regan sipped her drink.
For a while, we sat in the kind of silence adults used when they both knew the conversation was about to hurt and neither one wanted to be the first to cut.
“She can’t go back,” Regan said.
“No.”
My voice was flat.
Too flat.
She noticed.
“She can’t,” I repeated. “Not now.”
“She needs to start over.”
“Yes, she does.”
Regan nodded once, like I had passed a test she hated giving. “I got her into a nursing program.”
I turned my head.
“For fall,” she said.
“Nursing.”
“She’s good at it.”
