Page 46 of The Embers That Remain

“So?” Apparently she wasn’t going to let it go.

“So what?” I asked, even though I knew exactly where this was going.

She gave me a look. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Play dumb,” she said, rolling her eyes and picking up the box to place it on a side table. Her hand found her hip.

I exhaled slowly because I knew we were both going there. “I figured you’d come find me,” I said. It was inevitable. That had always been the pattern. If something was off, Landry didn’t let it sit.

“Well, are you going to make me bring it up?” she shot back. That almost pulled a genuine smile out of me. Almost, but it faded just as fast as it came.

“Is she okay?” I asked because that was the question that felt like it pressed in from all sides.

No point pretending. Landry raised a brow. “Define okay.”

My molars ground together. “Landry.”

“She’s shaken,” she said. “And that’s putting it lightly.”

I nodded once, slowly because that made sense.

“For what it’s worth,” she emphasized, “she didn’t shut down completely.”

That got my attention. “No?”

“No. She ran. Hard. But she talked too.”

Something in my chest loosened just a fraction. “That’s . . . good,” I said.

“Yeah,” she replied. “It is.”

I scrubbed a hand over the back of my neck, trying to work out the tension that had been sitting there since yesterday. The scene replayed in a loop of all the things I should have said and done differently.

“Did she say anything about me?” I asked.

Landry arched a dark eyebrow. “You really want the answer to that?”

“Yeah.”

“No, you don’t,” she countered.

“Landry.”

“She’s hurting.”

It suddenly felt harder to breathe. Maybe part of me had wanted her to hurt. But now, all I wanted was to take that hurt away. My gaze dropped to the floor.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “I figured.”

“You should’ve seen her,” Landry went on, quieter now. “The second she saw you? It was like everything in her just . . . cracked open.”

I closed my eyes briefly. I didn’t need to imagine it. I’d seen enough. The way she’d gone still, the way her breathing had changed. The way she looked at me as if I were something she’d buried that had no business standing in front of her again. Would it be like this every time we saw each other?

“That bad?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

“Yes.” The thing about Landry was that she was always honest, even to a fault.