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“It was his mom. I saw her name pop up multiple times.”

I reach for my phone. I have to know if he’s okay. Because if he’s not…then I don’t want to be angry. I just want to understand.

“Do you think Rowan could check on him?” I ask softly. “Just to make sure everything’s alright. Not for me. I mean, it is for me, but it’s not about me. Something was wrong. I could feel it.”

Violet doesn’t answer right away. Then she nods once, slow and sure. “Yeah. I’ll text him.”

I nod, but inside, I’m a puddle in a dress, melted down into something unrecognizable. Something love shaped and hollow.

What if he meant it? What if that really was all I ever was to him? A good time, a distraction, a temporary pulse of light before he went crawling back into whatever darkness he calls home?

I try to shake the thought, but it’s stuck to me now. I can still hear his flat voice, like he was trying to cut himself loose from me and make it hurt enough that I wouldn’t follow.

Mission accomplished, asshole. I’m not following. I’m just…sitting in the crater you left behind. With ice cream and a friend who keeps pretending not to notice I haven’t blinked in three minutes.

I press the back of my hand to my eyes. I am not crying again. I’ve hit my tear quota for the next decade.

And still, underneath all of the embarrassment and the ache and the fury, there’s this stupid, stubborn sliver of hope. Maybe he didn’t mean it. Maybe he said it to protect himself. Maybe he thinks he’s doing me a favor, which would be hilarious if it didn’t feel like he took my rib cage with him when he drove away.

I look down at the half-eaten pint of ice cream. “Do you think I could weaponize this? Like if I froze it solid enough and threw it at his head, it might make him act more logically?”

Violet looks up from her phone, lips twitching. “Only if I get to help aim.”

“Deal.”

thirty-five

. . .

Beau

Mom’s off her bipolar medication again. I don’t need a doctor to confirm it. Don’t need a bottle on the counter or a calendar filled with crossed-out days. I could hear it in the way she said my name the moment I stepped through her door last night.

Her tone was sharp and clipped at first, then stretched into something raw and desperate. Her laugh came too fast, too loud. Her hands shook slightly as she poured tea, fingers trembling around the mug.

She couldn’t sit still, bouncing between the sofa and the kitchen, rearranging things that didn’t need moving.

By the time Rowan pulls up to my place the next morning, I’m sitting on the front porch step, elbows on my knees, breathing in the damp, thick air.

“You look like shit,” Rowan says as he slides out of the truck with two coffees in hand.

“Feel worse,” I mutter, taking the cup he hands me when he approaches. “Didn’t sleep.”

He doesn’t press. Just sits down beside me on the concrete and indulges in his morning caffeine.

Finally, I say it. “Mom’s not okay.”

Rowan nods once, eyes on the horizon. “I figured.”

“She’s not taking her meds,” I tell him, swallowing around the words. “Keeps saying they dull her. Make her forget who she is. And then she swings. Up, down, sideways. I never know who’s gonna be on the other end of the call.”

“She asked you to come over?”

“Yeah.” I rub the back of my neck, the shame sitting sticky and thick in my throat. “Said if I really cared, I’d be there. That it wasn’t safe to be alone.”

“Was that true?” Rowan asks.

I shake my head. “She wasn’t in any real danger. Just doing what she always does. Again.”