Page 126 of The Best Shot

He straightened. “No.”

I’d known it was coming. Hell, I’d known it for days, probably. But knowing a thing in your head and taking it in the chest are two different countries, the border between them longer and meaner than it looked.

My brain kicked into gear, scrambling for solutions like it could fix this if it just thought fast enough.

“If it’s about taking too much time away,” I said, “I’m sure Grant wouldn’t mind taking on an extra hand to cover temporarily. You said yourself you’ve been easing back for months⁠—”

“Darlin’—”

“And the NSF stipend covers a companion, or at least helps. If it doesn’t, I can⁠—”

“Yaz.”

“—cover the rest. It’s not even that much, I checked. Flights to Christchurch, then the transport down to⁠—”

“Yasmine.” His hands closed around mine. Firm. Steady. Stopping the words.

I stopped.

The silence rushed back in.

“It’s not about work,” he said.

“Then what?”

“I can’t leave Whitlock Hills.” He exhaled slowly. “Not right now. There are things here I’m responsible for.”

He said it like that should be enough. Like the sentence ended there. Like there wasn’t supposed to be anything after it.

I waited anyway. Gave him room. Kept my face still and my mouth shut—but nothing came after it.

No because. No here’s why. Just the town’s name and the word can’t.

I sucked in a breath and told myself it was fine, and it should have been. People had reasons. Lives were complicated. This wasn’t a promise he’d made or a commitment he’d broken.

And yet.

I wasn’t angry. Not exactly. It was quieter than anger. Sharper. Underneath it sat my father, choosing to leave. My mother, choosing Shaun. Shaun, choosing whatever void he’d always been feeding.

I knew Hale wasn’t doing that. I knew, in the part of me that operates on evidence and not wound, that this was different. That he was different. That there was something he wasn’t saying, not something he didn’t feel.

But the older part of me, the part that learned its lessons before it had words for them, didn’t give a damn about the difference. It only saw the outline. The same old silhouette of being second.

“Please come with me, Hale,” I whispered.

His grip tightened around my hands.

“I can’t.”

I nodded once and tried to keep my face still, but whatever I was feeling slipped through before I could stop it.

He saw it anyway. His whole body shifted toward me before he caught himself.

I took my hands back. “Okay.”

“Yaz, hold on.”

I was already walking.