Page 59 of The Grand Rise

“But I should have been here.” His throat bobs, eyes searing through me.

I can’t argue with that. He should have been here. Because as much as I believe in justice, I’ve not known injustice quite like seeing my daughter blow out her birthday candles, wishing for her dad to be home, year on year.

“You’ve done incredible. With her, the house, your job. I’m not shocked, but to see it—”

I look away, hating the way my chest blooms at his praise. Hating how it makes me feel like a fraud. “I did the best I could.” Which was nowhere nearincredible.

“Scarlet.”

I grit my teeth, my feet slipping on the mental grip I’ve learnt to cling on to. Nina told me to speak to him, to tell him, but I can’t. I can’t tell him all the ways I failed her, no matter how hard it is to sit and listen to him tell me what he thinks he knows. How incredible I am.

“Scar,” he tries, and the need that one word carries makes my heart physically ache. I turn to face him. “I don’t want to make you sad. I’m sorry.”

I shrug, staring down at the wood separating us. “I’m not sad. I’m just… confused. I feel reluctant to tell you things you deserve to know, and I don’t know why.”

“You don’t owe me a thing.”

That’s not true. “You deserve to know her,” I correct. “At the very least.”

“And I’ll get to know her,” he assures me. “So long as that doesn’t cross any boundaries for you.”

I sigh, wishing everything could be a little simpler. I swallow past the rising lump in my throat, asking it to hold off, to let me have a second to say what I need to say. “Ave is everything that I am. All I have. Giving you the parts of her I’ve experienced—no matter what I think you deserve to know—feels like I’m opening up parts of myself I left in the past. And I can’t give you any of those parts right now.”

I tried for the truth, not overthinking the words as they fumbled past my lips but… “I sound like a bitch.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I put a lot in the letters,” I tell him, offering him something. “If you want to know anything, I’d start there. Just, please… please don’t tell me I’m incredible, or that Ave is perfect—which she is, she’s beyond perfect. But that’s not on me.” I frown at my thoughts. The harshness of them. “You’ve known her for a day. I don’t expect you to get it all yet, but please don’t put me on a pedestal and thank me. You just… you have no idea.”

“I don’t,” he mutters, the trees gently rustling at his back. And something passes between us then. An understanding, maybe. A silent conversation where I tell him I’m falling apart at the seams, and he tells me he knows, and that it’s okay and that so is he. That we can be something. Not friends, not lovers—but something. For Ave.

His head drops to his shoulder as he stares over at me. “I’m sorry for being a presumptuous witch.”

I close my eyes, desperately wanting to disappear. And then I chuckle. “No, I’m sorry.” When I open my eyes again, they burn a little. “I’ve left you with nothing.”

“Not completely true.”

“No?”

His eyes drop to my hands, and I frown, glancing down. I catch myself and freeze, my fingertips featherlight against the pale purple stone on my right ring finger.

He shakes his head. “No… I have a question. If that’s okay.”

I try to control my heart, slowly slipping my left hand over my right to cover the ring. He saw it, there’s no way he didn’t. “What’s that?” I ask, pretending he didn’t.

Vulnerability seems to fill his chest with a deep inhale. I tilt my head, forgetting about his ring on my finger as he asks, “Did she really not call? My mum.”

My heart sinks, the lump in my throat getting impossibly thicker. “No. But I’ve been in touch—”

“She knows about Waverley?”

I nod, pinching my lips into a thin line as I contemplate how I explain this to him.

His jaw locks tight, eyes fixed on the house in the distance.

“She’s working. The girls, too.”

“I don’t care.”

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