to him about that day, to tell him what Morgan had confessed to me, I couldn’t just leave it alone. I couldn’t just stop at let’s be friends. Instead, I’d pushed him. I’d forced myself into his space and demanded to know what he would have done had the circumstances been different.
And the answer had fucked us both.
I hadn’t been able to go even one minute without thinking of the way his hands felt in my wet hair, or the familiar scent of his breath on my lips, or the way his voice had trembled when he told me he would have run to me, held me, and never let me go.
I would have never let you go.
It was torture — absolute masochism. I asked him what he would have done in another life, and his answer showed us what could have been.
But it couldn’t be — not now. Not when I had Jacob and he had Azra and so much bad blood had passed between us over the last several years. There were so many ways I didn’t even know the man he was now, the man he’d grown to be — and he certainly didn’t know much about who I was.
That was then, and this is now.
Still… it felt like he did know me, like I knew him, like no matter how much time and distance had passed between us, we would always be connected in a way that nothing would ever be fully hidden from the other.
And after what he said, after knowing what could have happened had circumstances been different… could we really be friends?
I sighed, watching him walk across the yard and jump in his truck, firing it to life without a glance in my direction. He was avoiding me like the plague, because he knew as well as I did that any time we were together, it was trouble.
He was doing the right thing.
And yet all I yearned to do was the wrong one.
I shook my head, angry with myself as I trotted over to the Escalade just as Morgan and Oliver climbed in. But when I opened the back door, the overflowing box leaning against it nearly tumbled out and flattened me. I caught it just in time, and Morgan gasped, hopping out to help me shove it back in.
“Uh,” I said when we had it contained, pointing to the completely full car. “Where am I supposed to sit?”
Morgan pointed across the yard, and I didn’t have to look to know that little finger was pointing at Tyler’s truck. “We left the front seat open in the truck,” she said, as if it were obvious. “No reason to have three in one car and only one in the other. Besides,” she said, lowering her voice a little as worry etched itself on her face. “I know after what I told you, maybe you guys are trying to be friends again. And I really, really want that. Maybe the drive will help.”
I had to fight every urge in my body not to roll my eyes up to the sky, or sigh, or huff, or grab my best friend and shake some sense into her. Instead, I smiled, nodding and squeezing her shoulder before I made my way to Tyler’s truck.
He seemed just as surprised as me when I climbed into the passenger seat, and all I had to do was shrug and point to his sister for him to understand.
Still, his hands gripped the steering wheel like he wanted to break it as I strapped my seatbelt on, and when we all pulled out of the driveway, I knew it would be a long road trip to the Cape.
An hour passed by torturously slow, with an old Eagles’s album playing on the radio and the New England summer landscape flitting by. I watched out the window as the rolling hills and thick, lush green trees slowly gave way to the city, and only when the buildings stretched up around us did I chance a look at the driver.
Tyler still wore the look of frustration that had settled over him when I climbed in the truck, his brows bent, two perfect lines creasing his forehead and his knuckles all but white now with how they gripped the steering wheel. He seemed to sense me watching him, because he tried to relax, but failed, glancing at me before his brows furrowed even deeper.
“So, this is just how it’s going to be for the remaining two hours