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“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I guess I thought you might stay.”

“I…I can’t. I mean, I could, but it wouldn’t be fair to you and especially to Scout. I know myself. Even if I think I can hang in, it’s just a matter of time before I feel that panic closing in. And I feel trapped. And I leave. It might not be next week, but it could be next month or next year. I’ve been this way my whole life, and I can’t do this to your family. I need to go now before anyone gets hurt.”

“Fuck, Callie, do you really think we won’t be hurt, even now?”

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t mean to get attached.”

“But are you? Attached?”

I take a step closer, and he doesn’t back away. I nod and take one more step. He nods slowly and folds me into his arms. “I am. I feel so much for you.” I feel a sob bubbling up, and I let it choke me until I can suck in a breath of air. “But I know how it ends.”

I slide the ring off my finger and hold it out to him. He looks at it, looks at me. After a beat, he reaches for it and closes it in his fist.

Now I’m really crying. All the pent-up worry I was carrying for him over the hearing and all the love I feel for a man I know I don’t deserve. It all comes pouring out until I’m a sobbing mess in Luke’s arms. He basically holds me up and lets me cry myself out until I can stand on my feet and back away enough to look at him.

“Okay, then,” he says.

I swallow hard. I don’t know what I expected, that he’d fight for me or something? Demand that I stay?

But those are just selfish thoughts to make myself feel better about falling in love with him. I have no claim on him when I know myself. And I guess he knows me too, which is why he walks me to the door.

He kisses me gently on the lips.

He says goodbye.

And he lets me go.

I’m not a crier. At least, not when it comes to my own life. I save my tears for blatantly manipulated TV ads where the dog finds his way home after being lost in the urban landscape for a month and races into the arms of a family who never lost hope.

I’m a sucker for a shy, unassuming reality show singer who’s onstage for the first time and knocks it out of the park. For his mother, always his biggest fan, who stands there wide-eyed, emotional, and shocked at her son’s beautiful voice.

But breakups? Job rejections?

Pfft. They barely register a blip on my cry-o-meter because I don’t invest emotionally. At least, I never did before.

So why, on the fifteen-minute drive from Luke’s house to Loveland Ranch, am I sobbing so hard that I can barely see through the windshield?

It’s probably not even safe to be driving since I can barely see. Still, fortunately, these country roads are barely populated at this time of day, save for the occasional tractor moving from one area of farmland to another. And tractors are big enough and slow enough that I can avoid them.

When I get to Loveland, I call Tessa immediately. “You can bring Fitz too,” I blubber. “He’ll help fill the space. The more the merrier.”

“Okay, now I know this is serious,” she says. “When you’re crying and still curating the setting in the same sentence.”

“Just come,” I plead.

I’ve showered and composed myself slightly by the time Fitz and Tessa show up with a little sleeping Charlotte, whom my sister carries to the guest bedroom. Fitz holds up a bottle of scotch. “Sounded like the situation required the good stuff.”

He bumps around in the kitchen looking for rocks glasses and slicing oranges while I sit at the kitchen table with my head in my hands, unable to do much other than sit here like a lump.

“Oh my god, you brought cheese.” I stare at the platter Fitz holds out to me like a religious offering. “What did Tessa tell you? That I was on my deathbed?”

“Heartbreak. Same difference.”

“Yeah, when the Camembert comes out, it’s serious.” Inexplicably, I’m hungry. Stabbing at the wheel of cheese, I remove a wedge and spread it onto a cracker. The ratio of cheese to cracker is all wrong, but I barely have time to notice before I’ve shoved it into my mouth. “Thank you, sweet brother-in-law.”

“Don’t mention it.” Fitz pours the scotch into three glasses and slides one into my hand. “Now this.”