She reared back and glanced around. Cobalt shadows filled the barnyard. Only a few volunteers lingered, none of whom Aubrey would know. Conspicuously, Megan was nowhere to be found.
“Really?” Aubrey said, her voice shrinking.
“Really.”
“You’re sure?”
“Very.”
She gnawed at her bottom lip. “I could... walk, then.”
It sounded more like a question. “The hell you could. It’s fourteen miles. Not to mention you sprained your ankle two weeks ago. I’m driving you, and that’s the end of it.”
Her mouth turned down at the corners. “Okay. Fine.”
“Okay. Great.”
Neither of them moved.
“Ugh,” she said, throwing her hands up. “This is so stupid.”
“What, me taking you home?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, thisawkwardness. I mean, why’re things so weird? So what if we dated in high school? So what if we were in love when we were kids? So what if we slept togetherone time? That was a million years ago. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
He stared, a spike of outrage hammering into him from nowhere. If she thought she could... “Oh, no. No way. You don’t get to do that.”
Her gaze thinned at his tone. “Do what?”
“Are you kidding me?” He lowered his voice, pushing words from a graveled throat. “You don’t get to talk about it that way. You don’t get todiminishit. Look, I get that what we were doesn’t matter to you anymore. But it did to me. Then and now. So think of it however you want, but don’t you dare include me in your dismissal. Don’t eventryto take away what you meant to me.”
She blinked so many times he lost count.
He ejected a short, burnt-up breath. He hadn’t meant to say all that, but something about her demanded compulsive honesty. It always had, ever since they’d first sat down on her couch and a gut-deep part of him had recognized himself mirrored inher. She’d waxed poetic about math, and a wealth of feeling had shone from her—the very same light that cast its blaze across the inner walls of his heart. He’d already gotten into the habit of shuttering his, but right then, it had spilled forth, because for the first time in years, he hadn’t been alone.
After an eon of silence, Aubrey said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to... diminish anything. I just meant we should be able to talk to each other. Be civil, regardless of the past.”
“I’m being perfectly civil,” he snapped.
She huffed and dropped her eyes.
His irritation ebbed. “Look, if this is your weird-ass, roundabout way of asking me to be your friend, then fine. If that’s what you want, I can do that.” Sort of. Mostly, it would be like lighting himself on fire and trying to smile through it, but for her? Sure.
She toed the ground with a boot. “Maybe thatiswhat I’m trying to say.”
“Okay. Then we’re friends. All right?”
She hesitated, then nodded.
“So will you get in the car now?”
Another nod. In the truck, she huddled against the passenger-side door. He started the engine and urged the vehicle down the lane. Aubrey faced the window, and just like in the barn, he couldn’t help but steal glances. Words flooded into him as he drove, ones he wanted to brake for and scribble down. He wanted to capture the way her hair fell around her face, the way her bottom lip sloped inward when she breathed.
She looked so different than she had the other night, when he’d glanced through the window at Wilder’s and gotten slapped in the face with the unexpected. Then, the timing couldn’t have been more uncanny, because he’d finally admitted to Jackson what had been weighing on him. Then, as if his words had summoned the real live person, Aubrey had appeared.
She’d looked desperate, then. A little wild. But he didn’t want to ask about it now, didn’t want to risk this progress between them, however tenuous.
Halfway to her house, she broke the quiet. “Your daughter’s wonderful, by the way. I mean, it was weird, meeting her. I won’t pretend it wasn’t. But she’s impossible not to like.”
