Page 170 of Pucked Around and Found Out

“I love you, Harp.” My voice cracks around the words. “Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for never judging me. Thank you for staying even when I gave you every reason not to.”

She squeezes tighter. Neither of us speaks for a moment. Neither of us needs to.

“Your ride's here.”

Carn's voice is quiet from the doorway. Gentle. We pull apart, both of us damp-eyed, both of us refusing to let the tears actually fall, smiling through it because that's the only way to survive a goodbye like this.

He lifts my bags without being asked and carries them out. Harper and I follow, stepping out into the pale morning light together.

I pause on the threshold and look around. I came back to this place a different person than I left it. I arrived cracked, searching and convinced I knew what I was doing. I'm leaving with more questions than answers, more scars than I arrived with, and a life growing inside me that I didn't plan for.

But I'm also leaving with something I didn't have before.

Clarity.

As I say my goodbyes, a small and treacherous part of me… a part I'm not proud of, a part I've been trying to silence for days keeps glancing down the street. Keeps hoping. Some ridiculous, romantic, foolish sliver of my heart had constructed an entire scenario, that somehow he would know. That he would come. That he would appear at the end of that street and give me the one reason I'd been begging him for on that beach, and I could stop pretending I was okay with leaving.

The street is empty.

Of course it is.

I swallow the disappointment—all of it, every sharp edge of it—and climb into the back of the car. I wave at my friends through the window, keeping my face composed until they disappear from view.

Then I stop pretending.

The tears fall quietly, without ceremony. I press my palm against the small swell of my stomach and try to anchor myself in the only certainty I have left. I may not have him. But I will always, always have a piece of him with me. Growing. Becoming. Entirely and impossibly real.

It doesn't make the ache go away. It doesn't stop my heart from reaching back toward a beach where a man stood and let me walk away without a word.

But it's enough to keep moving.

I can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved. And I can't keep drowning in water I waded into willingly, hoping he'd eventually pull me out.

So I face forward.

And I let myself grieve him in the back of that car, in the quiet and the dark, where no one can see.

Because some loves don't get a happy ending.

Some loves just make you brave enough to go find one somewhere else.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

XADEN

The past week has dragged on, days moving slowly like time itself has lost the will to continue. Cas convinced me to head back to school and part of me wants to break his jaw for it but another, quieter part is grateful for the distraction. I walk through the halls feeling every set of eyes tracking me, cataloguing me, waiting for something. Not the eyes I want though.

I know she's not here. I can feel her absence the way you feel a missing tooth with your tongue constantly, compulsively, unable to stop pressing against the empty space.

Both towns sit in a state of limbo. I should claim her territory, absorb the cartel, consolidate everything into one clean empire. It's the logical move. The strategic move. Every instinct I've honed over years of ruthless calculation is pointing in that direction.

I haven't moved an inch.

I haven't even removed the divide from the school. The guards are still in place, keeping the two worlds from intersecting, because dismantling what she built feels like admitting something I'm not ready to admit.

I'm forced to a stop when Maddy steps directly into my path. She looks up at me with her signature scowl, no fear, no deference, just irritation.

“You owe me a new intern.”