Do what you always do.Don’t invite risk.Don’t want too much.
But my heart, all traitorous and reckless, leaned toward him.
“Okay,” I heard myself say as I blinked hard while swallowing down the fear of making a wrong choice.“But only if you promise to get me to the airport.Tomorrow.My flight leaves at two.”
He nodded once.Controlled.Calm.
But something in his eyes flickered like I’d handed him sunlight he wasn’t sure he deserved.
“Tomorrow,” he agreed.
I exhaled through a tremor.
Because tomorrow felt far too close.
Chapter Eleven
The falls disappearedin the rearview mirror, all white noise and mist.
Tristan drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting easy against the console.He looked settled.Unbothered.
I was anything but.
I had said yes, or something close enough to it, and now the weight of that choice pressed in on me, heavy in a way that surprised me.
Did I tell Josh and Allie?Make a 411-group chat?
The question landed and wouldn’t move.
If I didn’t, it would feel like lying.Not in words, but in omission.In choosing silence where honesty usually lived.
But if I did...what then?
Questions I didn’t have the answers to.Hope I wasn’t ready to offer.The possibility of disappointment, not necessarily mine, but theirs too.
I’d built our life carefully.Intentionally.A structure made of routines and reliability and showing up, every time, no matter what.
