A few hours later, Parker and I are taping up the last of the boxes in the kitchen. He’s now appropriately dressed in a T-shirt, shorts, a pair of Nikes, and the latest iPhone in stock, which makes me wonder…
“Hey, how do you have money right now?” I ask. “Did you, like, get a job in jail or something?”
“No,” he laughs. “I had a bunch saved before I went away, remember? For the move and everything,” he says, crouching at the box at his feet. I nod agreeably as he tapes it shut. I guess I never realized Parker had a bank account, considering the way he earned money wasn’t necessarily on the books. “Alright, last one.” He drums a beat against the box. “You actually had a lot of stuff in here.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve lived here for two years. Things kind of accumulated, I guess.”
“Mm-hmm,” he hums. His eyes flick past me and toward the hallway. “Like a guy’s sweatshirt hanging in your closet?”
I turn to him, annoyance sharp and immediate. “That’s… We’re not discussing that.”
His brows hike, lips twisting into a knowing smirk. “I was just being observant.”
“Well, observe other things,” I warn. “Regularthings.”
“Fine,” he says with an exaggerated roll of his eyes, pushing himself up from the box. “I’ll drop it.”
“Thank you,” I breathe, relief loosening the knot in my chest.
Silence stretches a bit too long.
“I just figured,” he adds casually, “you’d wanna tell me about the boy who’s so in love with you.”
My head snaps up. “Who said anyone’s in love with me?”
He pauses, arms crossed over his chest as he leans back against the counter, studying me like he’s deciding how much truth I can handle.
“He did,” he says calmly. My brows knit together in confusion, and he adds, “Jake, that is.”
I swear my heart stops.
The whole world stills around me.
My ears begin to ring, and a coldness coats my palms like I’ve just stepped off the edge of something I didn’t know I was standing on.
Parker clears his throat. “I got a letter from him last month. That’s how I knew when your graduation was. Where it would be.”
It doesn’t even register at first. I never gave it any thought—how Parker just showed up out of nowhere, knowing exactly where to be. I was too in shock to question it.
“How?” is all I manage. It's barely a whisper.
“I guess he looked me up in the system, public records and all that.” He shifts from one foot to the other. “He, uh…” His voice falters. “He thanked me for taking care of you. Said that meeting you was a gift. That…if he had the chance, he’d choose you all over again.”
I don’t move. I don’t even breathe. Parker’s words settle heavy and slow, like dust after a collapse. Every syllable lands in my bones with a crushing weight.
He crosses the room, stopping just in front of me, but my eyes don’t register him there. They’re too blurred by tears spilling freely down my cheeks.
“He loves you, Alana,” he says quietly. “Undoubtedly. And I’m gonna take a wild guess here and say you love him, too.”
I close my eyes, sucking my lips between trembling teeth. “Yeah,” I breathe.
Parker nods. “What do you want, Alana?” he asks. “Do youwantto go back home? Or were you just going because you had to? Because if that’s what you thought, I’m here to tell you, you don’t. Not if it costs you everything. Not if it means walking away from something that’s too big to bury. I know that kind of love, Alana, and I’m telling you—it’s worth everything. So if you’re keeping yourself from it, don’t. You don’t need to sacrifice anymore. That’s my job now.”
“P,” I sob, my voice shaky and broken. “You’ve already sacrificed so much. You’re whole life—”
“I’ll get it back, Lana. But I don’t want any of it if it means you have to give up yours. That wasn’t the point of all this. The point was so that you could have a life. You deserve to be happy, Alana. Whatever that looks like.”
My head shakes. “I can’t leave you now.”
