She had turned just enough for me to catch it—the sadness. Not dramatic, just there, a quiet resignation in her posture. It was the look of someone who had braced for an impact they knew was coming and was determined to walk away from it on her own two feet.
That look stopped me cold.
“Hey.” My voice dropped, losing the measured, even tone I’d walked up here with. “Hey—this isn’t anything against you. I need you to hear that.”
A long moment passed before she brought the cigarette back to her lips, holding it a beat too long.
When she spoke, her voice was steady, but the effort was visible.
“You’re absolutely right, Finn.”
She tapped ash from her cigarette, the filter bending slightly where her fingers had tightened around it.
“Definitely the situation. Adrenaline, fear, close quarters—” A short, self-deprecating laugh, devoid of humor. “Believe me, I haven’t lost all sense of reality.”
She turned to face me, and the Libby from the first day was back: reserved, a stranger.
“I mean, Jesus, Finn—you’re, what, twenty-seven?”
“Thirty,” I said. “Next month.”
“Well, either way.” She gestured vaguely between us with the cigarette, smoke tracing the motion in the still air. “I’m almost forty. I have a teenage daughter and enough history to fill a damn encyclopedia.” Another laugh, tighter this time. “It’s laughable, really. The idea that you’d—that anyone would—”
She stopped herself, taking a drag instead. The exhale did the work of whatever she’d been about to say.
“Look. I absolutely understand. I do.” She met my eyes, and for one unguarded second the mask slipped. Then she looked away, out over the rooftops, and when she came back, she’d put it all somewhere I couldn’t reach. “I appreciate you getting us home yesterday. I appreciate everything you’ve done.” A pause. She turned the cigarette over in her fingers once, slowly, before remembering it was already out. “And I promise to forgive you for the—” She gestured, searching for the word but not finding it. “Whatever that was.”
She stood before I could respond. The chair scraped back against the rooftop as she pushed to her feet.
“Libby—”
“I should check on Lily. Make sure they’re packing those bags right.”
She moved past me toward the stairs.
The door opened.
Closed softly.
And I sat there, the cigarette burning down between my fingers, the ash growing long.
What the hell just happened?
I replayed it, every word. The way she’d taken my apology and turned it into confirmation of something she’d probably been deciding about herself for years. She hadn’t let me finish a single sentence—hadn’t given me the space to explain that the problem was mine, not hers. Nothing to do with her age, or the baggage she’d weaponized against herself in thirty seconds flat. That part I believed completely. The rest of it, I was less sure about.
She’d simply decided. For both of us. Wrapped the whole thing in self-hatred and walked away before I could dismantle a single word of it.
I took one last drag. Coughed this time—didn’t bother hiding it from the empty rooftop. Crushed the cigarette beneath my boot.
Shit.
I stared at the door she’d disappeared through.
The walls I’d rebuilt on the way up here stood solid. Intact. Every reason I’d identified walking down that hallway still held. I knew that.
I knew the look on her face when she stopped mid-sentence, the way her fingers tightened around the filter.
I turned the lighter over in my hand, then closed my fist around it.
