Page 91 of The Story Between Us

She’d flinched. He’d seen it—the way her whole body had absorbed the blow, the way her face had crumpled for half a second before she’d smoothed it over. And then she’d just stood there, arms wrapped around herself, and let him walk away.

She hadn’t argued. Hadn’t pushed. Hadn’t done any of the things he’d expected.

She’d just let him go.

Six minutes. Seven.

He paced back to the desk. Sat down. Got up again.

The panic was still there, thrumming under his skin, but something else was creeping in alongside it. Something that felt like shame.

Eight minutes.

She’d made a mistake. A big one. But she’d made it trying to help him, trying to manage the pressure so he wouldn’t have to feel it. That was wrong, but it wasn’t malicious. It wasn’t betrayal, not really.

And he’d treated her like she was just another shark. Another person trying to squeeze words out of him for someone else’s benefit.

Nine minutes.

For a second there, I thought you came to help.

She had come to help. He knew it in his bones and had thrown it in her face anyway.

Okay. I was a jerk.

The admission sank like a brick in his chest. He’d been scared and he’d lashed out, and now she had likely fled back to her aunt’s house, probably crying, definitely hurt, because he couldn’t handle his own fear without turning it into a weapon.

He could stay in here. Let her leave. Build the wall higher and pretend it didn’t hurt.

He’d done that for three years. And what had it gotten him? An empty house. An unfinished book. A life that wasn’t really a life at all.

He grabbed his boots from beside the door. Pulled them on over bare feet. Snagged the flannel shirt from his desk chair and shrugged into it without buttoning.

The whole house was quiet—that particular silence of a space holding its breath.

He opened the front door.

She sat in the wicker chair on the porch. The one that used to be Emma’s.

The sunrise had turned the world to gold and rose, the lake reflecting the colors so perfectly that sky and water merged into one. The air was cool—that September chill that lingered before the sun had fully climbed—and she’d pulled her cardigan tight around her shoulders. Finn was lying at her feet, head on his paws, tail thumping once when Nate stepped out onto the porch.

She didn’t look at him.

Her hair was loose, falling around her face in a way that made it hard to see her expression. But her shoulders were set—tight, braced.

She’d been crying. He could tell even before he saw her face. Something in the way she was holding herself. Something fragile underneath the stillness.

He’d done that. He’d made her cry.

His chest twisted.

The boards creaked under his boots. She still didn’t turn, but her shoulders tensed further.

He sat down in the other chair, the wood cold through his jeans. He looked at the lake, not at her, because, well, that might destroy him.

And he needed to get words out.

Somehow.