Page 19 of My Girl to Ruin

I grin, biting down on my lower lip as I settle deeper into my pillow. “Maybe I like impossible.”

“That right?”

“Maybe,” I tease softly.

But then something shifts inside me. A thought. A question I’ve been holding back.

“What are you going to do now?” I ask, my voice quieter, more careful. “I mean…with everything. Are you going back to the shop? Working on cars again?”

The change is immediate. His voice when he answers is flatter. “I don’t know.”

“That’s not true,” I say gently. “You’ve always known what you wanted to do.”

“Things change.” The words are clipped now. Closed off.

My chest tightens. “Lachlan—”

“I said I don’t know,” he cuts in, sharper.

I sit up slowly, my grip tightening slightly around the phone. “Why won’t you talk to me about it?”

“Because I don’t want to,” he replies bluntly. The bluntness stings.

Frustration flares up instantly, pushing past the hurt. “You don’t want to, or you don’t trust me enough to?”

He pauses. Then exhales quietly. “That’s not it.”

“Then what is it?” I press, my voice rising. “You told me what you thought about in prison. You told me that, and I know what it cost you.” I press the heel of my hand against my eye. “So don’t tell me you can’t talk to me. You can. You just won’t talk about anything that hasn’t already happened.”

Silence.

“You’ll give me every single thing that’s over,” I say. “You won’t give me one minute of what’s coming.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“It feels like it,” I snap. Then, softer but no less firm. “You don’t get to decide what I can and can’t handle. You don’t get to take care of me and then not let me do the same for you.”

Silence stretches between us again. I’m expectant. Maybe I’ve finally reached him.

“I’ve got to go,” he says.

The line goes dead. I stare at my phone for a second, my chest tight, frustration and hurt tangling together in a way that makes it hard to breathe.

“Fine,” I mutter, tossing the phone onto the bed beside me.

***

By the time I get to my next class, I’m still angry. It’s quiet but deep, simmering beneath everything like it’s waiting for the right moment to surface again.

I try to focus on the lecture, on the professor’s voice, on the notes I’m supposed to be taking. We’re three weeks into products liability, and the professor is building toward something about manufacturers and knowledge. Normally, I’d be the one with my hand up, but my pen barely moves across the page.

All I hear is him. I don’t want to talk about it.

I start tapping my fingers as I stare at my notebook, the words blurring together. It’s not fair. He lets me in when it suits him, when it’s about me, my day or my life. The moment it turns toward him, to anything deeper, anything that actually matters, he shuts down.

And I’m left standing outside again.

The class ends before I realize it has. Chairs scrape against the floor as students start packing up, still lost in my thoughts.