Page 111 of Your Place or Mine

And tell her to leave.

At the same time.

I stood abruptly, brushing off my jeans, my jaw clenched so tight it hurt.

Drew stood too.

“She doesn’t belong in this,” I said, not taking my eyes off her.

He didn’t answer.

And that silence said more than any words.

Because maybe she did.

Maybe she belonged here more than I wanted her to.

And maybe that’s what scared me the most.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Lydia

I should have stayed back.

I knew that.

I’d seen Callum from the tree line, kneeling at the grave like something inside him had come undone. Even from a distance, the weight rolling off him was unmistakable.

And then I saw the name etched into stone.

Lucy Lynn Carter.

His wife.

The truth of it hit harder when it wasn’t just whispered in a coffee shop or told secondhand by someone who cared. It hit when it had a birth date. An end date. A patch of ground carved out of the world where a love story once bloomed and died.

And he was still kneeling in it.

Still breathing it.

I stood frozen, my hands trembling, my chest so tight it barely let the air through. When he looked up, just for a second, and saw me, his eyes darkened like I’d stepped into someplace sacred without permission.

Maybe I had.

Drew said something low to him and stood up, brushing his hands off on his jeans. When he passed me, he gave me a small, tight nod. The kind that saidgood luckandbe gentle,andthis might hurtall at once.

And then it was just me and Callum.

Still kneeling.

Still not saying a word.

I hesitated at the edge of the path, my feet digging into the soft earth.

Then I moved.

Not quickly.

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