Page 18 of Broken Cedar

My throat tightens. “Colt.”

“I’m serious.” His jaw twitches.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.” He looks away. “You got to leave once. You got to build something else. You got to move on.” His voice drops. “I stayed.”

There it is. The thing he never says. The thing he has never held against me. But the thing that has always been there.

I step closer. “I’m sorry.”

His eyes close for half a second. “Don’t be.”

“Why not?” I reach out and touch the edge of the workbench instead of his arm.

“Because I don’t want you apologizing for having a life, Hallie.” The answer hurts more than anger would have. He picks up a rag, then sets it back down.

“I just want one week,” I say weakly.

He sighs deeply, then looks at me. “One week.”

“Yes.”

“And then you go.” He picks up the rag again.

“Yeah.” I nod.

“And we pretend this didn’t happen.”

I hesitate. Because we both know that’s impossible. But I nod again anyway. “If that’s what we have to do.” The silence stretches, then I add, “No one has to know.”

His eyes stay on mine and he swallows. “No one.”

I look down at my hands. “Mom obviously can’t find out.”

“Especially not your mom.”

A small, guilty smile pulls at my mouth. “Right.” The smile disappears almost immediately.

He turns the rag over in his hands before setting it down on the bench. “No expectations,” he says. The words catch slightly.

“Okay.”

“No promises.” He takes a step toward me.

I swallow. “Okay.”

He looks away for a moment, then back at me. “When you leave next Sunday…” He stops. Like even saying the rest would make it too real.

I finish it for him. “We go back to normal.”

His jaw tightens. “Yeah.”

Normal. The word feels impossible, but I nod anyway. “Just this week.” I take a step toward him, until I’m only an arm’s reach away.

He looks at me for a long moment. Like he’s searching for a reason to say no. He doesn’t find it. Because there isn’t one. It’s reckless. It’s selfish. It’s probably going to hurt. But neither of us moves away.

Finally, he exhales. “Fuck it. We’re really going to do this?”