Page 88 of On the Rocks

In that moment, I was.

“Don’t do this,” he finally whispered, shaking his head. “Please. Don’t do this.”

“I’m not doing anything,” I said, crying harder. “Youdid this.” I shook my head, swiping the tears from my face as I made my way toward the treehouse door. “This was all a mistake. I stepped out on my fiancé after one stupid misunderstanding without even talking to him. And I’m sorry I did that, I’m sorry I went to you, but this?” I gestured to the air between us. “Thisthingthat you’re trying to make happen between us? It’s just a fantasy. It’s not the real world.”

“Stop it!” Noah said, crossing the treehouse and stepping in my pathway to the door. “Stop pushing me away because I’m the first person in your life to actually give a damn about you.”

I covered my mouth with my hands, closing my eyes and willing myself to calm down, to stop crying — but I couldn’t.

“Look at me,” he said, framing my arms, but I kept my eyes shut. “This isn’t a fantasy and you know it. This? Whatwehave? It’s real. It’s that bullshit man who only wants you to play a part that’s not real. It’s your parents who want you to be a prop in their life instead of an actual daughter that’s not real.”

I couldn’t respond, not with my heart ripping itself to shreds inside my rib cage with every word he spoke. All I wanted was to wrap my arms around him, bury my face in his neck and tell him everything. I wanted to hear him say I didn’t owe them a thing, that this wasn’t my mess, and more than anything, I wanted to believe that myself.

But as much as I wanted those things, I wanted to be there for my family more.

I loved them, no matter what had transpired between us, and I couldn’t let them go down in flames. Not when I knew I held the fire extinguisher in my hands.

“Look at you,” he said, squeezing my arms as another sob ripped through me. “You feel it, too. You don’t want to leave right now. You don’t want to fight with me.”

I shook my head, pressing my hands into my face more to soak up the tears as they fell.

“What are you not telling me, Ruby Grace?”

Another wave of sobs tore through me, and when I could finally force a breath, I let my hands fall, creaking my eyes open to look up at him through my damp lashes.

I still couldn’t speak.

“What is it?” he whispered, hands framing my face as he searched my eyes.

I shook my head. “You don’t understand,” I whispered.

“So help me,” he begged.

My face twisted, more tears breaking loose as I shook my head over and over again. “But, that’s just it,” I said, pulling free from his grasp. “You don’t understand. And you never could.”

“Ruby—”

“I have to go,” I said, sniffing back the last of my tears with a new resolve. I skirted around him, flinging the door open and climbing down the ladder on the tree without another glance in his direction.

Noah called out to me the entire way down, calling my name and telling me to wait —beggingme to wait. I swore my chest would explode any moment if I didn’t put distance between us, and the cool rain splattering against my hot skin was the only welcome relief I found in the meantime.

“Wait,” he said again when we reached the bottom. His hand caught the inside of my elbow and he spun me around, his eyes wild now, frantically searching mine. “Please. Don’t do this. Don’t leave, don’t walk away from this, from…” He swallowed. “Don’t walk away from me.”

I let out an audible sob at that, ripping away from his grasp.

“You can’t walk all the way back,” he said when I turned. “It’s raining. It’s at least a mile.”

“I’m fine,” I said through my tears, through the rain, through the rolling thunder. I took out my phone, using the flashlight app on it to light my way.

“Damn it, Ruby Grace!”

Noah ran to catch up to me, blocking my path as the rain pelted down on us. His hair stuck to his forehead, his eyes transitioning to my favorite steel color as a crack of lightning sprawled across the sky.

“I love you.”

The words knocked the breath from my chest, and I shook my head, trying to move around him.

“You love me, too,” he said. “And you don’t have to say it for me to know it. But what you do have to do is stay. Right now. You have to be brave, and you have tostay.”