Blake’s mouth parted slightly, as if he wanted to say something, but the words never came.

Before I shut the door, I looked him n the eye and said the only word that mattered now.

“Goodbye.”

33

BLAKE, 1999

18 years old

I should have gone after her.

I should have said something.

But I didn’t. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I had already run the numbers in my head. I had calculated the probabilities, weighed the outcomes, and tried to predict every possible consequence. There was no equation that ended in anything but disaster. Every scenario spiraled into more problems, no matter how I arranged the variables.

I had told myself a hundred times that this was for the best. That if I let her walk away now, at least I wouldn’t have to watch her learn to hate me later.

But Beverly already hated me. She had looked me in the eye and said goodbye. Not see you later, not I’ll be home soon, not Blake, stop being an idiot and just admit you love me. Just goodbye.

The word shouldn’t have hit as hard as it did. It shouldn’t have felt like a severed artery, like she had reached into my chest with bare, merciless hands and ripped something vital from me.

But it did.

I rubbed my eyes, hard enough to see bursts of light behind my lids, and dragged in a slow breath, but it wasn’t enough to stop the sick feeling in my gut. Shifting into drive, I peeled away from the curb faster than I should have. I should have gone home, but home meant Mom’s watchful gaze and Dad’s silent expectations.

Home meant Beverly’s perfume still clinging to my hoodies.

I drove with no real destination in mind, turning corners aimlessly, running red lights just to feel something. The city blurred past me in a haze of streetlights, but I barely saw any of it. My mind was stuck on one thing. Beverly. The way her voice had cracked. The way she had hesitated for half a second before getting out of my car, as if she had been waiting for me to stop her.

I hit the freeway without so much as a glance, merging blindly into the stream of headlights. The sound of my breathing filled the car, too loud, too uneven, and my fingers flexed against the wheel. I needed a distraction. A fight. A person I could break.

A problem I could solve with my fists instead of my brain.

I pulled off on an exit that led nowhere good. Drove past closed storefronts and rundown liquor stores, past the parts of town that were just dimly lit corners and bad decisions waiting to happen.

I didn’t have a plan; I never did when I was like this.

I barely made it a block before I spotted them.