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His jealousy pulses hard enough that I nearly miss Hannah saying my name again.
“Lucas,” she repeats, softer now. “Can we talk inside?”
“No.” The word lands between us with satisfying weight.
She blinks. “N-no?”
“No,” I say again, and step onto the lowest porch step, not enough to join her, just enough to claim the space she’s borrowing. “We can talk out here.”
Her mouth tightens. “Are you serious?”
“Pretty serious, yeah.”
“It’s getting cold.”
“It’s spring.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t.”
She looks at me like I’m being cruel. I might be, but I find I don’t much care. The cabin is mine. My den, Onyx would say. My threshold. She doesn’t get to cross it because she drove all this way.
Hannah exhales, glancing around the clearing like the trees might side with her. “I made a mistake.”
I don’t answer right away. In the trees, Onyx’s presence expands. Not visibly. Not to her. But I feel it, the forest holding its breath around him, every bird and insect suddenly aware of what waits beyond the clearing.
She hurt you, Onyx sends. She should not stand.
I press my thumb against the porch railing until the wood digs under my nail. Reel in your possessiveness, Wildheart. The bond bristles, but I send the clearest feeling I can: this is mine to handle.
Hannah takes my silence for an invitation, which is just like her. “I ruined everything,” she says, her voice trembling in the exact place it needs to. “I know that. I’ve had to live with it every day since you left. I keep thinking about the wedding, about our apartment, about how stupid and selfish I was. I miss you.”
The words pass through me and don’t catch on. That’s the strangest part. I spent months imagining this conversation in different forms. I thought it would hurt more. I thought I’d rage or fold or ask questions that could never have answers good enough to matter. But standing here now, with Onyx in the tree line and his mark beneath my collar, all I feel is tired.
“You miss what I gave you,” I say. “That’s not the same thing as missin’ me.”
Her eyes shine. “That isn’t fair.”
“No,” I say, and a humorless laugh leaves me. “Fair was tellin’ me you didn’t want to marry me before you slept with my best friend for six months. We’re way past fair, Hannah.”
She flinches, and some old reflex in me twitches with guilt before it dies on arrival. Good. Let it stay dead.
“I was scared,” she whispers. “We were leaving the city, and everything felt like it was changing.”
“So you fucked Adam?”
Her eyes widen. “Lucas—”
“No,” I say, and my voice drops quieter, not louder. “You don’t get to make my reaction uglier than what you did.”
She sucks in a breath and wipes at her eyes. “Don’t say it like I’m a monster.”
A strange laugh almost breaks out of me at that, because “monster” has a very different shape in my life now, and Hannah wouldn’t last ten seconds under that comparison.
“I don’t think you’re a monster,” I say. “I think you’re someone who made choices and hated the consequences.”
Her tears spill then, and once, that would’ve wrecked me. Once, I would’ve stepped closer, lowered my voice, tried to make the room less sharp for her even while I was bleeding. Tonight, I stay where I am.
