Page 59 of Return To You

I sit back into my couch and tuck my legs under me. “Hey.”

“Somethin’ wrong?”

I take a deep breath. “He’s back, Kyle,” I breathe, tears filling my eyes again.

The line goes silent. A charged, heavy silence. Then, “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

I think back to what everything that is Ethan does to me. To the way I feel alive again. And fragile again.

To the way he makes me feel, the way he does look at me. Like I mean the world to him. And then like he hates me. Wishes I wasn’t there.

To the way he pinned me against the wall like he was about to ravage me and then walked away without emotion. “I don’t know yet,” I whisper. My gaze turns outside my window to Woodbury Knoll.

Kyle clears his throat. “Want me to talk to him?” He chuckles, but I know he’s only half joking. I know, if I asked him right now, he’d jump on a plane and be with me.

I sit upright, my spirits lifted by his half joke. “Tell me what you’re doing right now.”

And he does, without insisting, without asking how I’m feeling. He knows what I need. And what I need right now is to sit with my feelings but not dwell on them. Just let them be. And talk about other things.

When he’s done talking, he says, “You should go out with the girls.”

“You’re right.”

“I’m usually right, when it comes to you.” He is.

“Love you.”

I hang up, straighten my makeup and my hair, then get back to the spa right in time for my first appointment.

sixteen

Ethan

Ichoose to walk on sharp rocks, the sharper the edge, the better. My mind focuses on the knife-like feeling of blade into soft tissue, sending the question of Grace to the back. For later. Once in Lucas’s truck, I leave the pebbles stuck to my socks, and count slowly as I lace my shoes. Breathe in. Breathe out. My fingers don’t shake. My heartbeat is under control.

The door opens, Grace yells something I don’t quite understand, and then the door slams, making me blink.

I focus back on my breath.

I lost it just now. When she said it was all in the past? Fucking lost it. Managed to keep it under control.

Because really? If I’d never known Grace, if I’d just met her a few days ago? Pretty sure I’d be falling for her. But more importantly, I never got over her. Ever. Had her under my skin for over a decade, and I’m pretty sure I was under hers too.

So I’m going to check on this one last thing, and then yeah—she and I are having that conversation.

I pull out from her driveway, avoid looking in the rearview mirror, then drop off the truck at Lucas’s and straddle my bike. To say that I ride aimlessly would be a lie.

I know where I’m going.

But I still make it a point to notice the road, to enjoy the ride, to feel every bump in the handles, every sunray on my skin through the partial shade of the canopy of trees, the cooling of the temperature when I dip toward the river, the pebbles in my shoe as I shift gears. I push my speed as I go uphill, angling in the curves, reeling in the feeling of the powerful engine under me, drunk on its noise.

Then I get to the fork in the road. I take the dirt road, until it turns into a path. And then the path ends, and I continue on foot.

And I find it.

The tree is still there. And in a way it’s not.

It was hit by lightning. What remains of the trunk stands eight feet tall, the top part split in half. Charred limbs still lay on the ground in this remote part of the forest. There’s no trace of the treehouse, of course. It’s been over a decade. Although… as I trudge through the broken branches and undergrowth, there it is. The remnant of a pallet I’d used for the flooring.

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