Page 21 of Ghosts Don't Cry

Then he lifts his head.

And the world stops breathing.

My heart slams against my ribs. Once. Twice. The air turns thick and hard to pull into my lungs. My vision narrows until all I can see is him, backlit by a streetlamp. He looks nothing like the boy from my memories, but I recognize him all the same.

He’s broader than I remember. Harder looking, if that’s even possible, with shoulders that carry muscle, instead of the lean wiriness of someone who survived on too little food. This man is carved from stone instead of drawn in sharp lines.

But the eyes. God, those eyes. I know them better than I know my own name.

Not possible. It’s not possible.

Except it is. It’s him.

Ronan.

The world tilts sideways. My stomach drops. Years collapse between one breath and the next.

His steps falter. His shoulders lock. Something flickers across his face, gone too fast to read before the mask slams down—that careful blankness I remember too well. The one that says,I’m not here.

Everything drops into silence. The teenagers’ laughter fades. The sound of traffic dulls. Even the air feels thinner, as though all the oxygen has been sucked out of the space between us. My pulse hammers in my ears, each beat a countdown to something I’m not ready for.

I should turn around and walk away. I should doanythingbut stand here while my heart tries to escape from my chest. Instead, I step off the path.

The logical part of my brain, the part that survived college, and building a career, and learning how to exist without him, screams at me to stop. To leave this alone, and protect myself from whatever fresh damage this is going to cause.

But my body doesn’t listen, and my feet carry me forward—eighteen again, and still believing I can reach him if I just try hard enough.

Cars pass between us, masking him from sight for a second each time, and some distant part of me notes that I should look before I cross, and check for traffic. But I don’t stop moving, because there’s another part of me that’s scared he’ll disappear during one of those seconds when I can’t see him.

His jaw tightens as I get closer, but he stays where he is. The muscle there jumps—an old tell, one I used to catalog.

Jaw tightens when he’s fighting to stay in control.

Fingers clench when he’s overwhelmed.

Eyes dart to exits when he needs to run.

I stop when there’s three feet of space between us. Close enough to see the changes prison has carved into him, and far enough that I can’t give in to the desperate urge to reach out and confirm he’s real.

Words rise up in my throat. Questions. Accusations. All the things I never got to say. Why he pushed me away, why he didn’t fight, why he gave up.

Nothing comes out when I open my mouth. No sound. Just air and the ghost of his name.

He doesn’t move. Maybe he’s hoping I’ll walk past and pretend I haven’t seen him, so he can go back to whatever life he’s made for himself since being released.

But it’s too late for that.

“Lily.” His voice is rougher than I remember.Deeper. Gravel and smoke turned into sound.

At the sound of my name in his mouth, something inside me cracks wide open, and splits down the middle. I try to speak, but nothing comes out, just a wounded sound that doesn’t belong to any language I know.

What do you say to someone who broke your heart? Someone who took pieces of you with them when they left and never gave them back?

A car passes by too close, horn blaring and he flinches. A slight move, almost hidden. It’s the kind of reaction most people wouldn’t notice. But I see it. I’m still watching him the same way I used to—noting every micro expression, every shift of muscle, every tell that might give me access to what he’s thinking.

“You’re back.” My voice is a stranger’s. Thin, tight, and wrong.

The words are stupid. Of course he’s back. He’s standing right here in front of me. But I can’t seem to access any of the dozen speeches I’ve rehearsed over the years. Angry speeches, sad ones, the ones where I’m cool and collected and show him exactly how well I’ve done without him.