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“I told him you’re not coming back. Stringing this out is cruel on him, alright.”

I look down, because he’s right. I hate that he’s right.

“And don’t tell my shit to Drew,” he adds. “He keeps giving me shit. He thinks I’m all cut up about him.”

“You are.”

“He doesn’t need to know that.”

“You ridiculous man,” I say, turning on my heel and walking away.

“Carmen.”

His voice stops me. It’s quiet. Almost stripped bare.

“Just let me say it once,” he says. “Then you can hate me all you want.”

I close my eyes for a second. Then slowly, I turn back.

“What’s there to say?” I ask. “I know what you did. I know what you are. There’s nothing left to discuss.”

“Didn’t do it though, did I? I could’ve told your husband after that first night. Could’ve handed him what he wanted. I didn’t say shit.”

“That doesn’t undo what you did.”

“I think it counts for something.”

I shake my head. How can he think there’s anything redeeming about this? But then I make the mistake of looking in his eyes. He sounds angry, and irritated. Like himself. But then there’s a softness in his eyes. Sadness.

And a question that’s been bugging me for days comes out.

“How was this going to work? You thought I’d never find out? That it would never come up?”

“I was going to tell you after the dance,” he says. “I didn’t want to ruin it for Theo. I know it wouldn’t have made it much better, but I wanted to tell you.” He looks down, then forces his gaze back to mine. “I’m sorry, Carmen. I didn’t plan any of this. I didn’t want to do it. It made me sick from the start, but if you weren’t so fucking impossible, I would have done it.”

“You’re sick⁠—”

“Probably,” he says. “But I’m being honest. I didn’t count on any of this. I fought it…I tried to…” His shoulders drop. “I didn’t count on being happy.”

He swallows hard, and I feel like there’s a stone in my stomach.

Because I know he’s telling the truth.

I saw it happen.

At first, he came at me impatient and irritated, like I was an obstacle he needed to move out of the way. Like he had somewhere else to be and I was making his life difficult.

Then he changed tactics.

The gate. The yard work. The bake sale.

God, the bake sale.

I almost laugh, even now, because it had worked. Somehow, that gruff, impossible man working a bake sale had worked.

But by then, something else had started to happen too.

His smiles came more often. Still rare. Still like they annoyed him. But they were real. Then came the laughs—out of him before he could stop them, breaking across his whole face like he had forgotten he was capable of making that sound.