The car keeps pace. Water drips down my neck, and my stupid backpack is probably ruined, and I can’t deal with him right now. Can’t deal with feeling this humiliated, this angry, this…visible.
“It’s a forty-minute walk.”
“Then I’ll walk for forty minutes.”
“In the rain?”
“Better than being in a car with you.”
He’s quiet for a moment, then, “At least let me drive you home. No talking required.”
I want to refuse. Want to be stubborn and angry and walk the whole way in this stupid rain. But my backpack is soaked and my mascara is probably running and I just... I’m tired.
“Fine.” I yank open the passenger door. “But I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Okay.”
I shiver a little against the cold that has seeped into me.
He turns up the heat, and the silence stretches between us. Part of me wants him to try again, to push, to give me an excuse to yell at him properly. To match the storm inside my chest with the one outside.
But he just drives, careful and controlled like always. Respecting my wishes exactly like I asked. Because, of course, he does - he’s Alfie Spencer, and even when he’smessing everything up, he still somehow manages to be annoyingly perfect about it.
His profile is dark, the sharp line of his jaw, the way his fingers tap against the wheel at red lights. He’s right there, close enough to touch, but it feels like we’re miles apart.
He pulls up outside my building, engine idling. Neither of us moves. Rain drums against the roof, creating this bubble where time feels suspended. Where I can pretend we’re not broken.
I should get out. Should be angry, should stay angry. But the heat from the vents is making me drowsy, and he smells like lab chemicals and expensive cologne, and it would be so easy to just...
“Thanks for the ride.” My fingers curl around the door handle, but I don’t pull.
His grip tightens on the steering wheel, knuckles flexing.I remember those hands.Splayed across my spine, gripping my hips, tangled in my hair.
“Of course.” His voice is low in that way that makes heat pool in my stomach.
Iknowif I look at him, I’ll cave. Will forget why I’m mad, why this is wrong. Will just seehim—Alfie, who kisses like he’s running out of time, who touches me like he’s trying to commit me to memory, who made me fall apart in his arms justhours ago.
“Do you...” Want to come up? Want to press me against my door? Want to make me forget my own name?
“Tara.” The way he says my name isdangerous.
It would be so easy to lean across the console. To grab my fingers in his hair and kiss him until we both forget why we’re supposed to be apart. Until the hurt and angerdissolve into something simpler, something that feels like his hands on my skin and his mouth on mine.
I make the mistake of turning toward him. He’s already watching me, his dark eyes heavy with everything we’re not saying.
One kiss.That’s all it would take. Just one, and I’d be gone. I’d let him touch me, ruin me, rewrite the ending to a story that’s already over.
His gaze drops to my mouth.
Run,my brain whispers.Stay,my body begs.
I wrench my fingers around the door handle and push it open before I can second-guess myself.
I don’t look back when I say, “Goodnight, Alfie.”
But I hear his exhale when I step into the rain.
And that’s somehow worse.
