“Well, let me make you a snack for the road.” She looks at me, then Dad, then scurries to the kitchen.

Dad exhales sharply once we’re alone and paces around the room. Must be where I get the pacing thing from.

“All shit aside, are you okay?” He comes to a stop. “Tell me the truth.”

I look at him. “No. I’m not. Not even a little bit.”

He sighs.

“I don’t know what hurts more—the diagnosis or leaving Palmer,” I admit.

He grips my shoulder. “You’ll get some distance between you and her, and you’ll know what to do.”

“I already know what to do. I did what I have to do.”

“We’ll see. We’ll see how you feel when you get a treatment plan locked down and it’s manageable and the rest of your life isn’t.”

I shrug. “How? It won’t change anything. Whether I can manage it or not doesn’t mean she can.”

“I’ll tell you what, Cole. I couldn’t live without your mother. And I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she would rather walk through fire beside me than live on a beach without me. That’s love. And if you figure out that you love Palmer Clark, you’ll come home. You won’t have a choice.”

I wish he were right. But, for the first time in his life, Dad is wrong.

I love Palmer Clark, and that’s why I don’t have a choice.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN PALMER

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

PALMER

Keep going. Put one foot in front of the other.

I take a deep breath and plaster on a smile that doesn’t read truthfully. It doesn’t feel bright or happy, and my face is still swollen from crying myself to sleep. But hopefully it comes across to Ethan like I’m fine. Like everything is going to be fine.

Even if my heart might not be.

“Hey,” I say, poking my head in his room. “Are you about ready?”

He looks over his shoulder with his gaming controller in his hand. Sandbox’s mom dropped him off earlier this morning, and he went straight to his room. No retelling of the night’s events, no request for chocolate chip pancakes. No anything except a smile that probably mirrors the one I’m giving him now.

“For what?” he asks.

“For practice.”

He furrows his brows. “It’s Saturday. We don’t practice on Saturdays.”

“Ted sent a group text this morning and asked everyone to be at the field at two this afternoon.”

Ethan’s face falls. “Tell him I’m sick.” He turns back to his game.

I sag against the wall, defeated.