Page 113 of The Moon & His Tides

My laugh was a bitter little cough. “Does it matter anymore?”

She shrugged, sitting on the bed I rarely used in the carriage house folding my clothes. I liked her casualness. Being friends was easy because she made everything easy. No judgement, no games, just the offer of a friendly chat over tea when we had the chance or a stroll to the park when it was a rare lovely day. Even freshly torn in two with heartbreak, she acted like everything was okay, or at least, that it would be.

In an odd way, I appreciated that over sympathy.

I needed to get this done and get the hell out of there before I imploded in on the black hole Adam and Savannah had left in my gut.

“I don’t think they ever loved any of the others. If that helps. It was also very businesslike and proper. They certainly never slept over in the big house.” She bit her lip, smoothing the folds of one of the suits Savannah had bought me. “I’ve worked with Adam for five years, and I’ve never seen him so at ease with himself. I’ve worked with Savannah for five years, and I’ve never seen her act human with anyone, not even him until you. I think you made themreal,and I think they’d forgotten how to do that.”

I swallowed convulsively, trying to rid the stone lodged in my throat. “It doesn’t matter now,” I reiterated, trying to convince myself.

“You’re a kid,” she pointed out even though she was only a few years older than me. “You’ll find love again.”

“No,” I whispered because I knew myself well enough to know the mechanics of my heart. It was the one constant in my life of inconstancy. “Even if you can’t always see the moon and the stars in the night sky, they still exist.”

“Poetic, but don’t be so dramatic. You’re nineteen. There will be others. People who actually have the emotional capacity to love you back.”

My smile was a thin slice across my face, sharp and painful. She didn’t understand like I did that the Meyersesdidlove me back. In fact, I knew in my bones they loved me just as desperately as I loved them.

The difference between us wasn’t love.

It was courage.

Something the nineteen-year-old Italian had in spades that the much older, wiser, and famous duo seemed to be utterly lacking.

Even though rage flickered at the edge of my sorrow, a small part of me was convinced it was something more than that for Adam. The way he’d reacted had been too acute, a trigger for past trauma more than a fresh response to the scandal.

Something like this had happened before, maybe.

Something worse.

If he’d let me, I could have carried some of that weight for him. I could have helped him lay it all out on the floor to organize it properly and painfully piece by piece until it didn’t hurt him so badly.

But he didn’t trust me enough, or maybe himself enough, to do it.

And so here I was.

Packing up my shit only hours after he’d finally told me he loved me.

After he’d inscribed my watch like a fucking blood oath, promising me to be there at the end in all the ways we both wanted to be there for each other.

Pain sliced through me like a blade cutting through butter, top to toe.

I swayed, and Chaucer caught me by the elbow.

Her wide eyes were filled with concern in her freckled face as she stared up at me.

“Are you going to be okay?” she asked softly. “You don’t look good.”

Heartbreak didn’t look good on anyone, I thought.

“Eventually,” I said.

“Where will you go?”

As if on cue, which wouldn’t have surprised me given who I knew waited outside for me, a honk sounded.

“Andrea’s. He doesn’t know the details, so I’m not sure he’ll let me stay. If not, I’ll get a hotel. The Meyerses did pay me to be their driver.”