“How long have you been thinking about this?”
He looks so tired, propped up against the table. He drags his palm over his face. “What?”
“How long have you been expecting me to leave? After our date?” I swallow hard and will the hum in my blood to settle. “After we had sex?” He’s too still, over by the windows, the shadows twisting around his ankles and cloaking him in darkness. “You really thought I’d just leave, without a word? You think I could do that?”
He shrugs and averts his eyes to the floor. “I don’t know what you want me to say here, Evie.” He rubs his palm against the back of his neck. “I’m just—I’m just trying to hold onto what I can. Do you understand?”
I shake my head, a pressure behind my eyes. “I don’t understand.”
His hands fall limply by his sides. “I don’t know a better way to explain it to you.”
I take a step closer. “If I had waited for you to get back … if you saw my note … would you have believed me when I told you I was coming back?”
He doesn’t say a word. He sighs and closes his eyes tight and then meets my gaze. I see the answer in the lines of his face. In the sad, sad blue-green of his eyes.
“Why can’t you believe me?” I ask, my voice cracking at the edges “I want to be here.”
With you. With everyone else. Where I can breathe and rest and think. Where I can be whoever I want to be.
His mouth opens and closes. I wait for him to say something, anything. But he doesn’t. He snaps his mouth shut and looks at a spot over my shoulder.
“That’s it then?”
He glances at the empty pot on the table, the seed packets next to it. Everywhere, it seems, except for me. He sighs and scrubs his hand against the back of his head. A small shrug.
“You can—you can stay as long as you want. You’re always welcome here. I just think—I think maybe we should go back to the way things were before. I complicated it and I’m sorry about that.”
Like it would be that simple to untangle all the feelings in my chest. Like I could sit down in the seat next to him on that porch and not love him with all of my heart.
“You’re sorry.”
I don’t bother phrasing it as a question. He’s sorry for how he complicated things. My chest cracks right open. He hesitates, and then, “Yes.”
All of the fight drains right out of me. He thinks I’ll be giving something up by staying, not getting everything I’ve ever wanted. The flame of hope that was burning bright in my chest as I drove back from Durham flickers. Embers, really—cooling in the circle of ash that’s taken up residence in the open space between my lungs. Every breath burns.
“Beckett Porter,” I sigh out his name and blink too quickly. I don’t want to cry. Not here. Not right now. “Are you letting me down easy?”
I hate the way my voice wobbles at the edges. He notices and his eyes snap to mine. I watch his fingers flex, the small oak leaf on the inside of his wrist dancing as his arm turns.
He huffs a laugh but it doesn’t sound funny at all. It sounds sad, a thousand unspoken things tucked into a single sound.
“No, honey.” He watches me with those serious eyes, looking for all the world like he’s trying to memorize the curves of my face. His mouth twitches to the side. Not quite a smile, not quite a frown. Something resigned, right in-between. “I’m letting myself down hard.”
I could tell him about my job offer.
I could tell him about Theo’s cluttered desk and the pictures on the wall. The schedule he gave me before I left, all of my travel planned out for the next year. I could tell him about my phone call with Josie and how I have a plane ticket in my name for two days from now, a one-way ticket back.
I could tell him I plan to stay.
But I’m tired, and my heart feels bruised.
So I press up on my toes and brush a gentle kiss to his lips. I tell him I’ll see him soon and squeeze his hand in mine. I turn and leave him standing there in the greenhouse, with the flowers and the herbs and the spilled soil on the table.
My body moves without my mind needing to check in. I go to the spare room and pack up my things. I fight with the door of my car and toss my suitcase in the trunk. I stomp back up the stairs and leave the stupid gas station t-shirt and koozie sitting by his door.
I gather all of the parts of me that are unraveling and hold them tight in my shaking fist, two deep breaths and my hands on the steering wheel. I stare at the house and exhale slowly.
I back out of the driveway and rumble down the little road that leads back to town.
Tomorrow.
I’ll make a plan tomorrow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
BECKETT
I stare at the duck.
The duck stares at me.
One of the kittens meows from behind the makeshift fence I’ve made in the kitchen. Not that it would stop them if they truly wanted to get out. I still have no idea how Prancer manages to leave the house every morning for her tractor rides. I’ve looked over every square inch of the perimeter and can’t figure out where she’s leaving from, short of opening the front door herself.
I sigh and glance at the cat family waiting patiently behind some chicken wire. They came running as soon as I elbowed my way through the front door with our new addition. It’s the first time they’ve acknowledged my existence since Evelyn left two nights ago. They haven’t forgiven me yet for chasing her away.
Haven’t quite forgiven myself either.
I found her note crumpled and half-torn in Prancers’ bed by the couch, next to a hair tie and an empty tube of chapstick. I stared at that little piece of paper for a long time, the flowers scribbled along the bottom edge, the three exclamation points.
It doesn’t matter that she left a note. It doesn’t matter that she had every intention of coming back. Keeping all her light for myself still feels like the worst kind of selfish. I won’t do it.
I tell myself that, anyway. And I put the note in the drawer next to my bed. Next to the damn dried-up blue flower and a crumpled receipt.
I sigh and scoop the duckling up in my hands, bigger already than the last time I saw him. Dr. Colson had called this morning and let me know there was no place for him at the local wildlife center. It likely had been too long anyway, for the little guy to make a successful transition back to the wild.
He hadn’t needed to say much more than that.
I didn’t want the little duck to be alone.
“Alright, everyone,” I shoot a stern glance at the cats lined up in a row behind the makeshift wall. “We’re going to be on our best behavior, yeah? No nibbles or anything teeth adjacent.” I swear Prancer frowns at me, a pout on her tiny, furry face.
I sit down on the floor and carefully—slowly—extend my hands out. With Dr. Colson’s recommendation in mind, I keep one hand hovering over the top of the ball of yellow fluff in my palm, ready to protect him if I need to. But all four cats seem calm enough to meet their new housemate, faces turned up in interest.
The duck pokes his head out from between my outstretched fingers, a tiny chirrup of greeting.
Prancer stares in avid concentration and then meows in response. She rises from her prone position on the floor and nudges gently at my hand, her pink velvet nose brushing my thumb and then the duckling. She meows again and the three kittens echo in kind. The duckling offers the beginning of a quack.