Page 164 of Ly to Me

I got back in my car and fled the facility, dialing his phone over and over, wishing he’d pick up. Each time the line went to voicemail, my heart sank to my stomach.

Worry clogged my throat, mixing with emotions that were too much. It was all too fucking much.

I put my hand flat against my temple, shielding the oak with our initials and a heart carved into it from view while Carver’s words replayed in my head—

It’s more than a tree. It’s us.

My chest burned, faint rays of sun guiding me over the stream across the bridge. His voice continued like a broken record—

Every inch of you has always been mine.

“Pick up! Pick up!”

“What if I don’t need you for anything?”My stupid reply to him adding his number to my phone circled my head, cutting through the reasons he still wasn’t home as I drove by the busted up truck and remnants of a bonfire. When my eyes finally landed on the wrap-around porch surrounding our home, my heart sank to my stomach. His truck still wasn’t there. The horses were still in the barn.

None of the memories made the hurt go down any easier. None of them stopped the tears from escaping my burning eyes, rolling down my cheeks, splashing on my bare thighs. I reached down to my knee, rubbing the faint scar.

I shook my head and tried a new number. After several attempts of calling Grant, I flipped through the call logs, and that’s when everything around me faded from view. I slammed on the brakes as I saw the time from this morning when Alliston Springs Hospice Center had called.

How’d I miss that before?

I threw my phone onto the passenger seat, shouting like it was the reason my husband wasn’t with me. But that wasn’t the case, and I knew it. It was me. He realized why I’d come back. Laughter I didn’t feel escaped as I looked at the gas gauge. Thefullgauge. Carver even had Hayes fill the tank and return my shitty car earlier than expected.

Leo was right. Carver was capable. He was capable of making me see how much I loved him and needed him, which made him even more capable of ripping that right from beneath my feet when he decided enough was enough.

He couldn’t want me. I was too damaged. Too fucked up for anyone to ever really want.

This is what I deserved.

This is what I’d done to him.

I made his heart hurt like shards of glass under my knees never would.

And it hurt to hurt him.

The pain of what I’d done dragged me through the town I’d abandoned as a teen, scouring every parking lot and store I could find. It forced me through the streets where we grew up—so vastly different yet not so far from each other. When those were both empty, it pulled me back to the field where we first met.

Where he’d kissed me for the first time.

The yellow flowers that should have been long forgotten by now at the edge of the field were mocking me, maintained with a plaque beside it—a dedication with the wordsto the girl who dreamed in fieldscarved into it.

But that girl was dead. My dreams were never meant to see the light of day, and my only dream now was him. It had always been him.

I fell to my knees in front of that plaque as the sun warmed my back, sobbing uncontrollably.

If he planned on coming back, and had wanted me to know everything was okay, he’d leave a note.

He’d leave a note.

The sun grew hotter along my back, scorching through the fabric of Car’s shirt. I wrapped my arms around my waist, breathing in the oak and leather as I settled into the grass.

This was it.

He was gone.

He wasgone.

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