I turn the phone around and show him, watching his face come to the same conclusion I did.
“Where is that?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” But even as I say it, I’m already moving, pulling my jacket off the hook by the loft ladder. “Bonfire somewhere. Miller’s Creek, maybe.”
“Rhett—”
“He did that on purpose.”
A beat, then Dawson sets his beer down and stands up. “I’ll drive.”
I don’t argue. I’m already down the ladder.
The drive is fifteen minutes of me staring out the passenger window with my jaw locked and my hand flat on my knee to stop it from doing something I’ll regret. Dawson doesn’t try to talk me down. He knows me well enough to know that’s not what I need and to be worried about what I’m going to do when we get there. But he drives anyway because that’s who Dawson is.
We hear the party before we see it—music thumping through the tree line, firelight flickering where the woods thin out. Dawson parks behind a row of trucks and I’m out before the engine is fully off.
“Hey.” Dawson grabs my arm. “What’s the plan?”
“I’ll find you after.”
“Rhett. What’s the plan.”
I look at him. “I’m going to handle it.”
He lets go of my arm, but he doesn’t look happy about it.
I walk into the party and scan for Colt first, moving through clusters of people I half recognize from high school, nodding at the ones who call my name, keeping my eyes moving.
No Colt.
What I find instead, on the far side of the fire, is Molly.
She’s dancing with someone. Not the way she dances with me, but loose and laughing, head tipped back, hair moving, completely in tune with the music. She looks happy. The observation lands somewhere behind my sternum with a dull ache that I don’t have time for right now.
I cross the field.
She sees me coming and her face changes, the happiness dropping into something more complicated, then into wariness. The guy she’s dancing with clocks my expression and takes a generous step back.
“Rhett—” she starts.
“Can we talk?” It comes out harsher than I intended, but I don’t soften it.
She follows me away from the music, and I turn on her before she can get a word in. “You want to tell me what that was?” I ask.
She blinks. “What was what? I was just dancing?—”
“With Colt’s hands on your face twenty minutes ago and some other guy’s hands on your waist right now.” I look at her and feel the fury and the guilt and the exhaustion of threemonths all hitting at the same time. “Half of Cedarbrook is here, Molly. Everyone knows we’re together.”
Her chin comes up. “Maybe if you actually acted like it I wouldn’t be dancing with anyone else.”
And there it is. The thing she’s been holding in for three months, finally out in the open. She’s not wrong, but I’m still furious. And I’m furious at myself for being furious because I don’t even have the right to be standing here, feeling this way about a girl I’ve never once been able to give a damn about the way she deserves.
“You’re right,” I say. “You deserve better than how I’ve treated you. You deserve someone who shows up. I’m not him. I never was.” I hold her eyes. “We’re done, Molly.”
The slap comes before I can even think of my next move. Open palm, hard, catching me across the left cheek with enough force that my head turns. The sound of it cuts through the music nearby and a few people look over.
I let my head turn with it. Let the sting settle. When I look back at her, she’s got her hand pressed to her mouth, her eyes full of tears. She looks furious and devastated in equal measure, and she deserves so much better than anything I could have given her.
