Get it together, Amelia. He’s probably just tired. I’ll just see how he acts tomorrow.
The voice in my head tried to reason with me. It’s been a long journey. He’s tired. He’s dealing with his own inner conflict. It’ll be better tomorrow.
We crossed into the county line just after midnight. The world was reduced to headlights and blacktop, all the color sucked out by darkness and exhaustion.
I watched the shadow of Caiden’s profile. The silence had become unbearable, so I broke it with the most banal question I could imagine: “You want me to put in some music?”
He shook his head, never looking from the road. “I like the quiet.”
“Okay,” I said, and folded my arms, trying to keep the cold from getting inside.
My mind replayed the last forty-eight hours in a stuttering, endless reel: his hands, his mouth, the way he’d held me tight until I believed, for one soft second, that we could outstrip everything we’d ever done to each other.
Now we sat side by side, less than a foot apart but sealed off by a thousand miles of old pain.
He slowed as we approached the turnoff for my neighborhood, which felt like a comment in itself. I saw the street sign coming and felt a dread, the certainty that once wecrossed that line, everything would revert to the way it always had been.
He pulled into my driveway.
My house sat there, and suddenly it was a strange sight.
“I’ll walk you up,” he said. “Just to make sure you get in.”
My legs tingled with pins and needles as I stepped out. The air was hot and wet, the kind of southern night that pressed sweat out of your skin even at rest.
I fumbled with my keys and managed to unlock the door.
He followed me into the darkened front hall, the only light coming from the streetlamp that bled through the frosted glass.
For a second, I could almost pretend it was normal: Caiden, walking me to the door like a date after prom, the old ghosts of high school clinging to our heels.
He didn’t linger. He didn’t reach for my hand, or my face, or any of the other places he’d made holy the night before. Instead, he set my bags and my mother’s boxes on the floor, straightened, and looked around, as if searching for an escape hatch.
“I should go,” he said, not quite meeting my eyes. “You look tired.”
I wanted to scream at him to stay, to not leave me alone with the echo of what we’d just become, but the words knotted up in my throat.
Instead, I forced a strained smile. “I am tired. It’s been a long trip.”
He nodded, jaw flexing. Then, without warning, he leaned in and pressed a kiss to my cheek. So soft, so careful, it barely registered as real.
For a second, his lips lingered, and I could feel the heat of him, the hesitation, the unfinished sentence that pulsed between us. His hand rubbed my finger, so delicately.
But then he straightened, let go, and stepped back, hands jammed in his jacket pockets like he was trying to hide the shaking.
“Goodnight, Amelia,” he said. The words hung there, heavy and final.
I watched him retreat down the walk, the darkness swallowing his broad shoulders and the fading glint of his eyes.
I waited for a text that didn’t come. I waited until morning painted the window with the soft light of dawn.
I knew I had to get up and start the day, time kept ticking by, but my body wouldn’t let me. I laid there.
Hoping, wondering, waiting.
I should have showered, but I didn’t want to wash off the remnants of where he touched me.
He’d poofed from my life the way he always did, sudden and silent.
