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His phone pinged a third time. His jaw flexed almost imperceptibly. Almost.

“You can take care of whatever you need to,” I said quietly. “Seriously. If someone is texting this late, it’s probably important.”

“Nah, it’s nothing,” he said. Whatever warmth had lived on his face all evening vanished. The screen lit up. I didn’t mean to look. I really didn’t. But when the phone was sitting right there in front of us, the words caught my attention before I could stop them.

Bryant: Heard you were back with that whore?

My stomach dropped. For a second, I wasn’t sure I’d actually read it correctly, but there was no way you could miss a word like that. The warmth from a few moments ago vanished so quickly it left me unsteady.

Lane saw where I was looking.

“Cali?”

I looked away.

“Who is that?” My tone was stiff.

The softness in his eyes disappeared as he clenched his jaw.

“Don’t worry about it.” The words cut between us with the finality of a slammed door.

Don’t worry about it. Yeah, that was not going to happen.

I nodded, even though my chest suddenly felt constricted.

“Right.”

Lane reached for my hand. “No, that’s not what I meant.” I let him hold it, but I didn’t lean into him as I had been.

“Then what did you mean?”

He sighed and looked down at our hands.

“It’s Bryant.” I’d always thought it was strange that Lane called his father Bryant instead of Dad. In our small Midwestern town, where everyone called their parents Mom or Dad and families showed up for one another, it had always seemed oddly formal. Looking back, the signs had been everywhere. The way Lane’s shoulders always tensed when his phone lit up with Bryant’s name. The way he’d gone quiet after certain calls. The way he’d apologized for things that had never been his fault. I’d seen all of it. I just hadn’t known what I was looking at. Every time I’d asked to meet Bryant, he was suddenly away or too busy. Lane always steered me somewhere else. I’d never questioned it then. Now every memory flashed like a warning light.

I swallowed. “Your dad?”

He nodded.

“Your dad doesn’t like me?”

His thumb grazed the back of my hand.

“No.” The answer came so fast it almost startled me. “No, Cali. This isn’t about you.”

I gave a small humorless laugh. “I mean . . . he literally just called me a whore.”

His face hardened.

“He doesn’t get to talk about you like that.” The anger in his voice stole my next breath. Not anger at me. For me. But somehow that made the confusion worse.

“How long has he felt that way?”

Lane looked away. And that pause hurt.

“Lane.”

He rubbed a hand over his face. “Since before.”