Page 44 of Ash Fall

Right, so he isn't letting that one go. Penny looks up at the change in his voice, then lays her chin across my boot. I turn my attention toward the windshield as fields pass on both sides of us, green and lush with the start of summer. Above them the sky still looks wrong, no matter how many times I see it.

"No," I say. He doesn't answer, so I look over. "No, I'm not getting back together with him."

His shoulders drop slightly. It's tiny, and if I hadn't spent years watching him, I probably wouldn't notice it at all.

"Oh my God."

His brows pull together. "What?"

"You're relieved."

"No, I'm not."

"Gage."

"I'm not happy he's hurting."

"That wasn't what I said."

His jaw shifts, and I drill into the side of his face with my eyes until he finally releases a long breath. "Fine."

"Fine what?"

"I'm relieved."

"Thank you."

"I didn't know if..." He stops, adjusts his hands on the wheel, then starts again. "After everything came out last night, I didn't know if hearing the truth changed things for you."

"It did."

His gaze cuts toward me.

"Not that way," I tell him quickly. "It changed how I feel about why he left. I thought he just left, and that everything he'd said to me was bullshit the second life got hard."

My fingers pick at a loose thread on the hem of my dress while the conversation from my bedroom runs through my head again. Mars's face when he heard Atlas's voicemail. The relief and the pain in him when I told him the truth about the accident. The apology he gave me afterward.

"I believe him now. I believe he thought they died because of their fight, and I understand why that broke something in him. Forgiving him for believing a thing that was never true is easy enough."

Gage nods slowly.

"But he still left me. He still decided for me that I would be better off without him, and he never gave me a choice in it. Not once did he let me know he was alive." I look down at my hands. "I needed everyone so badly after the accident, and he should have known that. He made promises to me, then disappeared when I needed him most. I told him I forgive him, but I can't trust him. Not like that."

The silence inside the motorhome doesn't feel uncomfortable. Gage gives me room to finish without interrupting.

"I don't hate him anymore," I add. "I don't want him gone. I want him with us, because he's part of this too, even if everything about it is a mess now. But getting back together with him? No."

"Okay."

I look at him again, waiting, and that really is all he has to say.

"Okay?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know. You asked."

"And you answered."