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I don’t know how long I sit outside before I hear the door open behind me. I look over my shoulder and see Creed with two mugs of coffee in his hand.
I place my empty juice glass on the floor near my feet and take the mug he offers me. “Thanks. Is she still asleep?”
“Yeah,” he answers, sitting in the chair beside mine.
We sit quietly for a minute before he sighs. “I fucked up. I might have been asleep when it started, but I woke up way before it went too far. I should have stopped. I should have—”
“It was both of us, Creed. I was as much a part of it as you were. And honestly, even if she hates us for it, I don’t regret it. It made me realize something.”
“What’s that?”
“That I missed her. I missed us. I missed how we were together. I came here wanting a clean break. Yet here I am, trying to think of all the ways I can put us back together again.”
“I’m not sure we can do that unless we figure out what we broke in the first place. I’ve been going over and over it in my head, and I keep coming back to the same sticking point.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“That Avery wouldn’t just leave us like that. She’d give us a chance to apologize or explain, even if we hurt her badly.”
“What are you saying?”
“Fuck. I don’t know.” He scrubs his hand over his face. “We need to talk to her. Find out the truth without our anger getting in the way.”
“I’ll admit, I don’t know what the fuck to do here, Creed. We keep demanding answers, but the louder we yell, the more she wraps herself in silence.”
“She doesn’t trust us.”
“But why? What the fuck did we do?”
“I don’t know, but I think pushing her for answers will only backfire on us. We need to change tactics. Build the trust between us again.”
I blow out a breath and look away. “What’s our end game here, Creed? We set out to gain her trust and then blow it all apart once we have her answers and walk away?”
“Or maybe we think about not walking away. I know there are a lot of issues to work through. But tell me you’ve been happy since she’s been gone and I won’t push it. I know I, for one, have just been going through the motions. I’m not sure I truly understood how important she was to me until she was gone. But if the four years without her have taught me anything, it’s that no other woman has held a candle to her since. And I don’t think they ever will.”
“Maybe it’s just because we consider her the one that got away.”
“You’re right. It might prove once and for all that what we had belongs in the past. But…”
“But?”
“But if that were true, then we wouldn’t be here now, would we? We wouldn’t care what her reasons were for doing what she did. We would’ve cut her out and moved on.”
“And yet here we are.”
“Yeah, here we are.”
* * *
After spending some time repairing some of the broken decking, I head inside for a drink and a shower. The heat is getting to an unbearable level, and though I’m out of the sun’s harsh rays once I step inside, it’s like walking into an oven.
“Jesus,” I mutter, grabbing a glass and filling it to the brim with water before gulping it down and refilling it once more.
I turn and lean against the counter when I spot Avery curled up in the corner of the sofa with a book in her hands. For a second, I think she’s so engrossed that she hasn’t noticed me, but then I notice how white her knuckles are from squeezing the pages so hard.
With a sigh, I walk over to her and take the seat beside her on the couch, careful to keep some distance between us. “What are you reading?”
She turns the book over so I can see the cover. It’s one I remember reading years ago about a town that mostly disappears into a huge hole in the earth, leaving the few remaining people fighting for survival.
