“Gisele.” His voice comes out wrecked. Scraped raw.
“Yeah?”
A long silence. The crowd’s still watching—I can feel them at my back like a physical weight—but I don’t move. Don’t rush. Don’t do anything except sit here on the cold street next to a man who’s falling apart and pretending I’m not terrified of what comes next.
“Franklin told me I was turning into my father.”
Everything in me goes cold.
His father. The town’s golden boy turned cautionary tale. The drunk who destroyed his family in slow motion while everyone watched. The ghost that’s haunted Bennett every single day of his adult life, driving him to control everything because he’s convinced that if he doesn’t, he’ll end up exactly the same way.
And someone—Franklin Baker, the Slammers’ owner, a man who’s supposed to support him—said that to his face.
“Bennett—”
“He’s right.” The words are flat. Dead. “I can feel it. Every day, I can feel myself becoming—” He cuts off, swallows hard. “I don’t know how to stop it. So maybe Virg should just…”
I want to wrap my arms around him. Want to tell him he’s nothing like his father, that I’ve watched him fight that legacy every single day for years and it’s the bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do. Want to shake him until he believes me.
But we’re in the middle of Main Street with half the town watching, and what Bennett needs right now isn’t comfort.Comfort lets him retreat back behind his walls. Comfort gives him permission to file this away and pretend it never happened.
And I’m done watching him pretend.
I stand up. Brush off my jeans. Offer him my hand.
“Get up.”
He finally looks at me. Really looks, those dark eyes finding mine for the first time since I got here. There’s pain in them. Confusion. A desperate kind of hope that makes my chest ache.
“Gisele—”
“I’m serious. Get up. We’re done with this.”
“Done with what?”
“This.” I gesture at him, at the street, at the whole situation. “The shutdown. The silence. The part where you fall apart privately and I pick up the pieces while you pretend nothing happened. We’re not doing it anymore.”
He blinks. “I don’t—”
“You do. You absolutely do. And it ends now.” I keep my hand extended. “You’re going to get off this street. You’re going to let me help you. And you’re going to stop acting like asking for support is the same as weakness, because I have watched you white-knuckle your way through years of barely holding it together, and I am done, Bennett. I am so completely done.”
The crowd’s gone quiet. I can feel their attention like a physical thing, pressing against my skin, but I don’t care anymore. Let them watch. Let the whole town see this. Let everyone know that Gisele LaRue is officially declaring war on Bennett Foster’s emotional avoidance, because pretending hasn’t worked and distance hasn’t worked and apparently sitting in the middle of the street like a wounded animal is where we’ve landed, so desperate times call for desperate measures.
“You’re not your father,” I say, quiet enough that only he can hear. “And I’m going to prove it to you. But you have to let me.You have to actually participate instead of just surviving. Can you do that?”
His hand finds mine.
His grip is strong, calloused, familiar in a way that makes my stupid heart flip even now. I pull him to his feet, steady him when he sways, and don’t let go even when he’s standing and towering over me and looking at me like I just rearranged his whole understanding of the universe.
“Good,” I say. “Now let’s get out of the road before Virgil actually does run you over. He’s been eyeing you like you insulted Lindsay Buckingham for usingGo Your Own Wayas a revenge ballad.”
A ghost of something—not a smile, not yet, but close—flickers across his face. “You’re serious about this.”
“Dead serious.” I start walking, tugging him with me toward the sidewalk. The crowd parts like we’re Moses and the Red Sea. “You think I sat on asphalt and ruined these jeans for fun? Do you know how hard it is to get road grime out of white denim?”
“They’re black.”
“It’s a metaphor, keep up.”
