He chose himself.
Don’t let him walk away from you.
And because my mind is vicious, because heartbreak never lets you replay the right thing, I don’t think of some neat ending under campus lights.
I think of the library.
Of the look on Tristan’s face when he walked out.
That hollowed-out, wrecked look.
Like he’d just carved up two girls and hated himself for bleeding neatly.
That look.
The one that didn’t feel like relief.
Didn’t feel like freedom.
Didn’t feel like a man running toward another woman.
It felt like loss.
And that thought is enough to make my whole chest ache all over again.
I lower the phone slowly.
Drew doesn’t ask what my mother said right away.
He already heard enough.
He already knows.
The silence between us gets heavier by the second. Firelight. Rain. My bare legs under the oversized shirt. His old T-shirt hanging off me, soft and warm and smelling like detergent andhim. His house feels too safe for the kind of thoughts I’m having in it.
I swallow.
“She thinks it’s not over.”
There.
Said.
Drew goes completely still.
Not dramatic.
Not loud.
Worse.
His hand stops moving on my back.
The pause lasts one second.
Then two.
When he finally speaks, his voice is low and rough and very, very controlled.
