“I know,” Cade said simply. He didn’t elaborate, didn’t make a thing of it, just accepted the thanks with a quiet steadiness that told me he’d understood exactly what it would have cost if the others had known. Jude would have meant well. Asher would have meant well. But meaning well and handling it well were two different things, and Cade had understood that without being asked.
“It wasn’t mine to share,” he said. “Still isn’t. But you need to. You know that.”
“That’s the plan.” I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Tonight, hopefully.”
Cade was quiet for a moment, watching me in that steady, unhurried way he had. “You nervous?”
I let out a short breath that was almost a laugh. “Yeah,” I said. “A little.”
“A little,” he repeated, in a tone that suggested he thought the number was higher than that.
“Okay, more than a little.” I looked out at the dark street. “I don’t know how to start it. We’ve been—” I paused, trying to find the right word for what we’d been doing. “Circling it. Both of us. Things have been good lately, and I don’t want to drag us back to an uncomfortable place, but it’s also just—sitting there. Between us. Every time we’re in the same room.”
Cade nodded slowly. “She knows it’s sitting there, too.”
“I know she does.”
“So you’re both just waiting for someone to go first.”
“Basically.” I looked back at him. “Which is not ideal.”
Cade unfolded his arms and pushed off the hood of his truck, unhurried. He thought for a moment, the way he always did before he said something he meant.
“Here’s what I know about Becca,” he said finally. “She doesn’t avoid things because she doesn’t care about them. She avoids them because she cares too much.” He paused. “So if you go first—and I think you have to go first—don’t make it a big thing. Don’t set it up like a conversation she needs to brace herself for. Just—say it like it’s something that needed saying. Because it does.” He looked at me steadily. “She already knows how you feel, Levi. She just needs to see that you’re not going to make it harder than it has to be.”
I stood with that for a moment. The street was quiet around us, the night still, the occasional far-off sound of the town settling in.
“When did you get wise?”
“I’ve always been wise,” Cade said. “You just don’t usually ask.”
He pulled his keys out and moved toward the driver’s side door. He paused with his hand on the handle. “You’re good for her,” he said, without looking at me. “Whatever she’s going through right now—and I mean that in every sense—you being there matters. Don’t undersell it.”
He got in. The engine turned over. He lifted two fingers off the wheel as he pulled away, and then his taillights were diminishing down the street, and I was standing alone in Asher’s driveway.
I stood there for a moment longer than I needed to, hands still in my pockets, turning over what he’d said.Don’t make it a big thing. Say it like it’s something that needed saying.
I could do that. I was fairly sure I could do that.
I got in my truck. The drive home was quiet, the town settled and still at this hour, the occasional lit window passing in the dark. The radio was low. I didn’t change the station. I was thinking about what Jude had said earlier—settled, in a way you haven’t been for a while—and turning it over, testing it against whatever was actually true. It was true. Something had loosened in me over the past few weeks, pressure I’d been feeling for so long I’d stopped noticing the weight of it, and I knew exactly where it came from, and I wasn’t quite ready to say it out loud yet, even to myself, but I knew.
The trailer park came into view, the gravel drive pale in the headlights. I pulled in slowly and cut the engine. The park was quiet, the river audible beyond the tree line, low and steady. A few windows still glowed. Becca’s was one of them.
I sat for a moment in the dark of the truck and looked at it, the warm light, the faint shadow moving behind the glass that meant she was still up, still awake, still there, and felt somethingsettle in my chest that I was getting better at not talking myself out of.
She was in there. We were talking tonight. She’d promised, and she didn’t make promises she didn’t mean; she never had. That was one of the most specific and reliable things I knew about her.
Whatever had been sitting between us unfinished and unsaid—tonight was when we were going to get to it. I could feel it the way you felt a change in the weather before it arrived, in the quality of the air.
I got out of the truck quietly, the gravel soft under my boots, and stood for a moment in the cool dark.
I thought about what Cade had said.Don’t make it a big thing. She already knows how you feel. She just needs to see that you’re not going to make it harder than it has to be.
Chapter 19
Becca
“Welcome back toSomebody Said in Sweetbriar… There’s a difference between being scared and being aware. One makes you shrink. The other makes you pay attention.”
