Page 223 of Wild Card 13

Ty went still. The porch held its breath around us. Morning sun cut across the lawn, too bright and too clean. A sprinkler clicked somewhere down the street. Birds called from the maple near the driveway. Ordinary sounds. Cruel sounds.

His brows drew together. “What do you mean?”

The last fragile piece of me snapped. “Don’t play dumb with me, Burns.”

His face flinched like I had slapped him. “Lucy?—”

“I went to the party.”

His mouth parted.

“I wasn’t going to. My mom canceled, because of course she did, and Naomi said I should go find you instead of sitting in my room feeling sorry for myself.” My laugh scraped out thin and ugly. “Really solid advice, actually. Very clarifying.”

The color drained slowly from his face.

I kept going because if I stopped, he might speak, and if he spoke softly, I might fall apart before I finished. “I saw you takeherinto that bedroom.”

Ty’s eyes closed for half a second. That was all. Not shock. Not outrage. Not immediate denial fierce enough to make the porch shake. Just his eyes closing like he understood exactly how bad it looked.

My throat burned. “So don’t stand here asking me what happened like I misplaced my mind somewhere between the driveway and the guest hallway.”

“It wasn’t?—”

“No.” I held up one hand. My fingers trembled. I curled them into a fist. “Do not.”

He stopped.

Some desperate, stupid part of me had wanted him to fight the interruption. To step forward. To say my name like it mattered more than my anger. To tell me I was wrong with enough conviction that my heart could grab onto it.

Instead, he stopped.

His jaw flexed once.

I stared at him. “If this is what you do at a party when I’m not there, how is any of this supposed to work?”

His eyes came back to mine, blue and wrecked. “Shortcake, come on.”

“No, answer me.” My voice broke on the last word. I hated that. Hated the tear that slipped down my cheek before I could stop it. “You’re going to Fargo. I’m going to Aldenmere. We’re supposed to trust each other across time zones and schedules and new peopleand months apart, and I couldn’t even trust you for one night at Mason Keller’s house?”

He looked like every word had hit somewhere soft.

“Say something,” I demanded.

His throat worked. For a second, I saw the boy from prom night. The boy in the ridiculous suit. The boy who had pulled over because he could not hear about Aldenmere while driving. The boy who had looked at me with so much certainty I had been foolish enough to borrow some.

Then something changed. His shoulders lowered by an inch. His face went quieter. I watched him leave me before he moved.

“Maybe,” he said, voice rough, “this is for the best.”

The world narrowed to the porch boards beneath my bare feet. “What?”

He looked down.

I waited for him to take it back. I waited for the correction. The explanation. The fight. The frantic, messy Ty Burns refusal to let silence win because silence had never once known what to do with him.

Nothing came.

My lips parted, but no sound followed. There were too many things inside me now, shoving against each other.