Page 53 of When the Smoke Clears

She smiles without looking at me, small and crooked. “I was eighteen. All I was interested in was you.”

“Touché,” I murmur.

We share a low laugh that trembles in the warm air. I taste the sauce and add a pinch of salt.

“Thank you, Luke,” she says quietly.

I set the spoon down and wipe my hands on a towel. “For what?”

She presses her palms against her stomach, like she’s holding something in. “For cooking for me. For…being nice. You could’ve hated me. It would’ve been justified.”

Hate would’ve been easier. Cleaner. You can box up hate, shove it into a corner, and call it done. Whatever this is refuses to stay put.

“I never hated you,” I say, voice rougher than I intend.

She exhales, shoulders dipping. “I hurt you.”

I step closer. “You broke me.”

A single tear slips down her cheek. I reach up on instinct and brush it away with my thumb. It’s hot against my skin, proof that I’m not the only casualty in this story I’ve told myself.

She turns toward the window, where dusk is staining the sky in bruised purples and gray. “Can we…postpone dinner for a bit?”

I glance at the clock above the fridge. “Now?”

She nods, voice barely there. “I want to go to the lake.”

Of all the places in this town, she picks that one. The place where everything used to make sense.

I pull the bread out and wrap it in a towel to keep it warm. “Let’s go.”

Twenty minutes later, we’re at the lakeshore just as the sun sinks behind the trees. The water’s turned to dark glass, small ripples catching the mauve light. No-see-ums float in the air like dust motes.

I park under a pair of pines. Isla slips off her shoes and walks barefoot through the grass to the water’s edge. I follow, boots soft in the damp earth.

We stand side by side where the lake meets land, the old dock to our left, our reflections fractured in the dying light.

She takes a breath that shakes on the way out. “I want to tell you what happened all those years ago,” she says. “You deserve to know.”

I’ve scripted this moment in my head a hundred times—different truths, different lies, different versions of her walking away. None of those rehearsals feels big enough for the weight in her eyes right now.

She steps where a small wave laps at her toes. I stay close, ready, not sure I actually want to hear any of it, but knowing I need to.

“What made you change your mind?” I ask.

Her gaze lifts to mine. Her eyes glisten, full and bright. She swallows hard. “I can’t keep allowing you to think that I ran away from you. From us. Like I just chose not to love you anymore.”

I stare out over the lake, at the line where water disappears into the sky. “Can I ask you something first?”

She nods, lips pressed into a tight, white line.

“Did that car try to hit you on purpose?”

“I think so.” The words are so soft I almost miss them. “Yeah. I think it did.”

I don’t miss the way her hands curl into fists, the way her shoulders hunch like she’s waiting for impact all over again.

“I’m trying to find the car,” I say. “I need everything you’ve got.”