I slide my eyes shut.

“Will?”

Chills spread across my neck at the sound of my name breaching his lips for the first time in over ten years. Because unlike earlier, where it was dripping with derision and scorn, this time...this time, I can hear the past in his voice.

This time, it feels real.

Nodding to myself, I think, You win, Way. You always do, don’t you?

“Okay.” I open my eyes and tilt my head back to find him watching me with an unreadable, yet tense expression. I shrug. “Let’s start over.”

Gratitude and relief have his posture easing up, and I suddenly feel like a piece of shit for even trying to dig up the past when he so clearly has moved on.

That small part of me that was holding on for this once impossible chance to obtain answers—closure—wilts as I finally acknowledge what I know now to be the necessary course of action. For Waylon and, more importantly, for me.

Because for almost a year now, I’ve been a spinning top, lost in a trajectory to nowhere but the edge. I’ve fallen, and I’ve gotten back up, and then I’ve fallen again. Grief is this mountain I’ve been climbing since that awful, rainy afternoon back in January. No rope. No harness. Just my bare, battered hands.

Time and time again, I’ve lost my footing. Grappled for some kind of handhold with hardly a moment to breathe in between. Breathe and just fucking feel anything other than the pressure to hold on. Anything other than the terrible numbness that has clung to me over these last seven-plus months like a second skin.

Because that’s the thing about life. It doesn’t have to make sense. It doesn’t have to come full circle.

We just like to believe it does.

And sometimes, chasing those damn circles only does more harm than good anyway. Take that song Waylon sang earlier. The song I swore he was singing to me, and for me only.

It’s about doomed love.

Doomed love and the unwillingness to let go.

A never-ending nightmare of your own making.

“I heard you,” Waylon says abruptly, drawing my attention. “Before. Downstairs.”

“Oh, yeah?”

He grimaces. “I’m sorry. For tonight. For making you think...well, you know.”

I raise a brow. “I don’t know.”

He glares at me, and a short laugh bursts out of me.

I raise my hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I’ll stop. It’s cool, okay?” I smile, and this time, it’s soft. Hesitant, but genuine. “We’re cool.”

Waylon nods. “Cool.” He cringes.

I bite down the urge to laugh. “Cool.”