“I’m not starting,” she says quickly. Then softer, “I’m noticing.”
Silence fills the car for a few miles, the kind that doesn’t feel comfortable; it just feels loaded.
Aubrey shifts in her seat. “You almost didn’t answer my call.”
“I answered.”
“After three rings,” she counters.
I keep my eyes forward. “What do you want, Aubrey?”
Her gaze stays on the windshield. “I want you to show up.”
“I am showing up.”
She scoffs. “Physically, sure. You always show up physically. You’ve been showing up physically since you were—” She stops herself, swallowing. “Since forever.”
Something sharp flares in my chest.
“You don’t get to use that,” I say.
“And you don’t get to pretend it didn’t happen,” she shoots back, voice tightening.
I exhale slowly through my nose. “Why now?”
“Because Mom called me crying last week,” Aubrey says. “And before you roll your eyes … no, she wasn’t being dramatic. She sounded … sad.”
I feel the familiar anger immediately take hold. Protective in a way that doesn’t make sense anymore.
“Sad,” I repeat. “That’s convenient.”
Aubrey flinches like she didn’t expect the bite. “I’m not defending them.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
She turns toward me fully. “Colton, I’m not asking you to forgive them. I’m asking you to stop disappearing.”
I let out a short laugh. “I’m a doctor. My job is literally to be at the hospital.”
“You know what I mean.” Her voice drops. “You disappear from me too.”
That touches a deep shame that sits inside of me.
I don’t look at her. “That’s not true.”
Aubrey watches me for a long moment. “It is,” she says quietly. “Sometimes, I call you, and it’s like you’re there, and sometimes, it’s like I’m talking to a wall you built when you were a teen and never tore down.”
A lump forms in my throat. I hate that she knows me like this. I hate that she’s right.
“I don’t have the energy for this,” I mutter.
“Yeah,” she says, soft but firm, “you didn’t back then either. And you still did it anyway.”
My jaw flexes. The road stretches ahead, empty and long.
Aubrey clears her throat. “We don’t have to stay long. Just dinner.”
“Dinner is never just dinner there.”
