Instead, the banner had already changed.
The moody, slate-blue aesthetic of the Jackson County woods was gone. In its place was a grainy, high-resolution photo of a smiling girl in a Tennessee Volunteers sweatshirt.
NEW SEASON: THE RIVERSIDE RIFT.
A University of Tennessee junior vanishes after a late-night argument. The boyfriend says he dropped her off. The Knoxville PD says otherwise. Lila Grant is on the ground in Knox County.
Eleanor sat in the stillness, the phone glowing in her hand.
It was gone. The Charleston scandal. Danny Mercer. Even her own name. None of it was a footnote in Lila’s new intro.
Lila had already moved on.
Eleanor looked through the windshield at the highway stretching east.
For almost three years, she had lived as though Lila Grant still had the power to define her. She had broken her own heart in that courthouse alley and fled to Charleston.
But to Lila, Eleanor had never been a person. She had been a plot point.
A jagged, bitter laugh escaped her. She had been ready to sacrifice Reid to protect him from a fire Lila had already put out.
She had treated their relationship like a ticking bomb, only to realize the person holding the detonator had simply gotten bored and walked away.
The words didn’t feel like freedom yet. They felt like a different kind of indictment. She had allowed a woman who didn’t even care about her to dictate the terms of her heart. She had let the ghost of Charleston convince her that a man like Reid Calloway would eventually do what Charlie had done—leave her to save himself.
She looked at her phone. Still no text from him.
She thought of him at Catch My Draft, standing in the middle of the storm she had created and refusing to leave anyway.
Reid Calloway had never once asked her to choose him over her fear. He had only stood there—on courthouse steps, in hallways, outside her house, in the middle of every mess—and waited for her to believe him.
As she watched the Tennessee girl’s face flicker on the screen, Eleanor realized she might have been wrong.
Maybe he hadn't gone quiet to protect his career.
Maybe he had gone quiet because he was tired of chasing someone who always ran first.
Eleanor put the phone facedown in the cupholder and merged back onto the highway, heading toward the Blue Ridge.
The mountains didn't look like a hideout anymore. They looked like a deadline.
She wasn't driving toward a defense.
She was driving toward Reid.
And this time, she would have to be the one to ask him to stay.
63
Reid
Main Street had gone soft around the edges by the time Reid stepped out of his car.
Light spilled from the restaurant windows onto the sidewalk. Voices drifted from doorways.
He should have been home—eating something forgettable, opening a file he had no intention of reading. Thinking too much. Sleeping badly.
Instead, he’d found himself parking two streets over and walking without quite admitting, even to himself, where his feet had decided to take him.
