Foster shakes his head like he doesn’t believe me.

“Is that the reason you shut me out that night? Because you saw his texts?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says dismissively. “None of this matters.”

My embarrassment flares along with the hurt. “It fucking matters if that’s the reason you left me there.”

I glare at him, but Foster’s scathing look puts my indignation to shame.

“Why? Did it feel shitty to have someone abandon you?” The air thins as he steps toward me, readying words tipped in the worst type of venom—the truth. “For someone to disappear with no warning. To have them there and then not?”

Tears sting my eyes, the past deafening and raging. “Foster⁠—”

“Come on, Remi. Let’s compare notes. Tell me how much it fucking hurts to believe everything you have with someone is real only to find out it never was.”

The last part cuts me as deep as it appears to slice him. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

Foster’s expression fills with disgust, and he backs away. “Great fucking talk,” he mutters.

Then he whips around, leaving me reeling and wanting to scream at him to stop. Only he pushes through the curtain without me moving or finding my voice.

Because my Foster scar’s been ripped wide open, the edges jagged and raw. One wrong move, and all the others twisted with it tear open too.

The threat immobilizes me. But then the curtain falls between us. I can’t see him anymore, and for a shaky breath, it feels like he might not even be on the other side at all.

Somehow the possibility of him being gone again frightens me more.

18

FOSTER

All I wanted was an hour of sleep before switching it on tonight. Instead, nothing feels safe as I break through the curtain to the bunks.

The air’s laced with her, and my chest throbs and burns. It accompanies my thoughts as they play a game of what-ifs in my personal brand of torture.

And I just fucking trapped myself at the back of the bus.

Not that I had much choice unless I wanted to physically move her.

I couldn’t trust myself to touch her.

The space has never felt smaller, with nowhere to go and nothing but a thick, velvety fabric separating me from what I need to stay away from most.

“Fuck.” I’m forced to a stop by the bathroom door, a closet closing in on each side of me. “Fuck.”

I scrape both hands through my hair, willing myself to distance from the deluge of emotions clawing toward the surface. They’re so mixed up, tangled worse than ever. I’m the closest I’ve been to dredging up the corpse for a postmortem. I have this pounding desire to set it all ablaze, reduce it to ashes and ask her every single why that holds me prisoner.