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“I should probably give you my number, just in case you have any vet-related emergencies.”

“Well, I have your dad’s—oh, yeah. Yeah. I definitely should keep it just in case.”

He writes his number on a sticky note, and I decide it’s my time to slip back to save myself from any more torture.

Through the curtain, I walk over to the cat bed. “You tried to warn me not to go out there, huh?” I scratch Frederick’s ears and slide to the ground next to him, long legs stretched out for him to crawl onto my lap. “You’re not the only bad listener apparently.”

When Felicity comes to the back where I’m sitting, she looks almost guilty, and I feel bad that I was so dry.

“Turns out you didn’t even need lessons, huh? I told you you were more than capable on your own.” I sound so bitter it’s borderline whiny and a tad pathetic.

“I still needed them.” She ducks her head and joins me on the floor by Frederick. “Sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?”

“I…don’t know. Did I do something wrong?”

I shake my head, no hesitation. “You’ve done nothing wrong, Felicity.”

“It feels like I might have.”

“You’re fine, you’re perfect, all right? Don’t go saying sorry over nothing. Especially to me.”

“Okay,” she whispers, and her phone buzzes in her lap. She glances down at the notification, and my stomach twists at whatever text she received that makes her face light up.

I couldn’t read the text, but I definitely could see her lockscreen: It has the picture of us from Saturday, my lips on her cheeks and her hands holding on to my arms.

And that’s going to have to be more than enough.

Chapter Twenty-Three Flick

At ten o’clock that night, I still have yet to text Cal at all.

I have, however, texted back and forth with my mom multiple times.

At the shelter, as soon as I got back, she sent a picture of her and Robert Downey Jr.’s makeup artist, all but shouting about how she got to “touch the hands that have touched his face.” Stuff like that has never interested me, but I take any and every excuse to talk to her as much as I can, so I asked a bunch of follow-up questions about Mom and her busy life—questions I know she’ll always answer.

There’s a little, tiny, insurmountable seed of sadness in my chest that she didn’t ask me any questions about my life, but then again, what would I have to say? “Rowen is good”—she hates Rowen. “Knox is good”—she might hate Knox even more.

After all, he was the reason she left without me in the first place, wasn’t he?

I can still hear her voice, after all this time, ringing around my head like one of those sound baths.

“One of these days we’re going to leave this town, doll. We’ll run for miles and miles and find ourselves somewhere new.”

“But I like it here. Knox is here.”

“You’ll like other places better. Other people better.”

It was the closest we ever got to an argument—her insistent muttering of better things out there, my desperate pleas to not have to leave the few friends I had.

She took me to Riley’s for a sleepover, one of the few bridges that hadn’t been burned by the two of us. The next morning, she was gone, leaving only a note saying she would be in touch soon.

I think it was a few days after I turned twelve when she actually did call, and Riley tried to hang up for me. Then when she called again, Knox tried to hang up on her too.

I don’t know why neither of them have ever really understood why I would still want to talk to her; they act like a simple mistake is worth cutting someone off.

Regardless, when she texted me while I was sitting right next to Knox, I knew he couldn’t find out.