Page 88 of Wreckage and Rain

"What do you want to do?"

"Nothing. If he wants to talk, he can face me."

"You're not the woman who left Charleston. Whatever he came expecting to find, she isn't here. You meet him where you are. Don't shrink. Don't soften. Don't make yourself small."

"I won't."

***

I walk out of my building with coffee and my laptop bag. Heading to the coffee shop where I write on weekends.

He's across the street.

Leaning against a rented car. Looking terrible. Thinner than I've ever seen him. Beard grown past trimmed into wilderness. Dark circles. His clothes are clean but not pressed, which for Colt Bennet is the equivalent of a distress signal. He sees me and straightens up off the car getting ready to cross over to me. I put my hand up to stop him. This is on my terms.

His eyes are clear. The fog I left him in is gone. The man I last saw was deep in his father's orbit, deep in the deal, deep in whatever Cheyenne was in the process of pulling him into. He had been disappearing slowly for a long time, and he had done it to himself. The man across the street isn't that man. Whatever held him under, it doesn't have him anymore.

I cross the street. My heart is a fist inside my chest. I stop three feet from him.

"You look terrible."

He almost smiles. The ghost of the grin from back then. "You look incredible."

I do. I know I do. The dress has nothing to do with it. Two months of classes and walking and learning to take up space again has done something visible. I stand in my body. I move like I belong in any room I enter. The woman he left at that gas station could be pushed to the side. The one in front of him is the goddamn main event.

"I'm not inviting you in."

"I wouldn't expect you to."

"How long have you been here?"

"Five days."

Five days. And instead of ambushing me, he sent flowers and a book and waited for me to come outside on my own terms.

"Walk with me."

We walk. Not to the coffee shop. I can't have this conversation in a place with other people's lives happening. We head toward the park.

"You have thirty minutes. Talk."

He talks.

The PI. The headhunter email. Cheyenne's quarterly payments. The phased strategy. The deleted calendar entries, including my birthday. The Rohypnol purchase. The Venmo trail. The security footage. The embezzlement.

I don't want to glaze over this. "I had an affair, Summer." His voice cracks on the word. He doesn't soften it. "an emotional one. I want to call it what it was. Every late night. Every cancelled dinner. Every time I chose her company over yours. Every time you stood in the living room and told me what was happening and I said..." He stops. Swallows. Tries again. The words aren't coming smoothly. He's not delivering a speech. He's trying to get the truth out through a throat that doesn't want to cooperate. "I called you insecure. When you were being perceptive. I told you it was stress. When it was me. Choosing wrong. Every day."

This isn't the Colt who forgot my birthday.

"And when I was drugged that doesn't erase any of it. My affair happened first. It happened because I opened the door. My father's plan only worked because I gave them the material to work with. I want to be clear with you about that. The drugs are what was done to me. Cheyenne in my office, Cheyenne at my elbow, Cheyenne in your seat at every dinner for so long, that was a choice I made every day I made it. I am owning it, Summer. I am not hiding behind it."

We're standing at the edge of the park. The lake is gray and choppy. The wind makes my eyes water. I let it.

"Your father tried to erase me like a line item."

"I know. And I'm going to destroy him."

"Cheyenne?"