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“I don’t understand.”

“It was so hard to face all of you after the accident. After everything you’d done for me since I moved here. I knew I was letting you all down acting a fool like I did,” he says. “But maybe part of me wanted to sabotage it, you know? To prove to your family that they should forget all about me.”

“Why would we do that?” I say. “We all love you.”

“Hattie—” He blows out a breath and closes his eyes. “Hunter’s accident? It was my fault.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Noble

Iopen my eyes and look at Hattie. There was no way to have this conversation and not get into this. I knew it the second I wrote her name on my list.

This is what making it right with her looks like. Telling her the whole truth about that night. And it’s going to hurt.

The line across her forehead deepens. “What . . . what do you mean? Hunter was killed by a drunk driver.”

I nod.

“Noble, you were nowhere near there. What are you⁠—”

“He never would’ve even been on that road if it weren’t for me,” I say.

Hattie takes a step back, but she searches my eyes—it’s like she’s got a window straight into my soul and I just ripped down the curtains.

“I don’t understand.”

“That old truck I used to drive broke down. It was in the shop, and I was supposed to hitch a ride home with someone from work.”

The words are sour on my tongue.

“The guy was a no-show. I called Hunter to swing by and pick me up. It was completely out of his way, but . . .” my voice hitches. “That’s the kind of guy Hunter was. He didn’t care about being inconvenienced.”

I turn away. “But when he got there, I was already gone. A girl I worked with had offered to take me home.” I grit my teeth and squeeze my fists. This is the unforgivable part. The part that makes the memory burn.

“I was making out with some girl I barely knew at the exact time Hunter was in a head-on collision.” I chew the inside of my cheek to keep my emotions from surfacing because I don’t want pity. I’m not the martyr here. I’m not the victim. I’m not trying to make her feel sorry for me.

I fight to find my voice, clamp my jaw tight to stop it from quivering.

“It’s my fault.” My voice breaks. “And I should’ve told you right away. It’s just—” I shake my head, hating this. “Look, I get it if you never want to see me again. I never should’ve been part of this family. I mean, he would still be here if⁠—”

Out of nowhere, Hattie reaches for me. She wraps her arms around me, lays her head on my chest, and all the fear inside me crumbles. The emotion I’ve been hiding away pushes through like a swollen river against an aging dam.

My body wracks with emotion as I grab onto Hattie, a life preserver, and cry until it hurts.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” she repeats over and over.

I don’t say anything. I just hold her like it’s the last time I’ll get to hold her, because she’s obviously not understanding what I’m saying.

“This is why you spiraled so badly,” she says, pulling back and looking at me.

“Hattie, you don’t get it. It was my fault,” I say, a little firmer this time. “If I’d gotten a hold of him or waited around until he got there—he wouldn’t have even been on that road.”

Because this is what I do. I screw up. My mom drilled that into my head when I was a kid—and there was a moment in time, in the years I was around Hattie’s family—that I started to think maybe my mom was the one who was wrong.

Until that night.

Who was I trying to kid? I was a ticking time bomb, and I’d just gone off.