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“Cole, please.” She grasped his wrists. “Please don’t leave like this. I’m not saying any of the right things.”
“It’s okay, sugar. It’s okay.” He brought his forehead to hers. “But I have to go.”
“No.” She threw her arms around him, kissed his jaw, his cheek, the corner of his lips. “Not yet.”
Sliding his hand under her hair to cup her neck, he pulled her mouth to his and kissed her like it was the last time he’d ever have the pleasure, knowing it very likely was. Breaking the kiss before he was anywhere near ready, the salt of their tears mingling on his lips, and because it was too late now to protect either one of them from the truth, he said, “I love you, Mira.”
Her mouth opened, her eyelashes wet, eyes red and swollen, but then she closed it again. And that was that.
He let her go, then walked away, both desperate to get out of her bakery and also hating every single step that took him closer to her door.
“Wait.”
His heart dared to pause between beats. Would she say it back? Would she make that leap with him? But when he turned around, she wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was behind her counter, grabbing a pink box from the display case, handing it to him.
“What’s this?” he asked, staring at the box with some hope, like it might hold the secret to fixing all the things he’d just broken.
“It’s a cupcake. You need to eat. I need you to eat.” She massaged her throat, working through a swallow, and punched him in the gut with “Please let me know when you get home safe.”
He couldn’t say a word, not a single syllable, because if he did, he’d disintegrate right there in front of her. So he only nodded, wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand, and walked out of her bakery, pulling his hood back up against the cold, gray sky.
Halfway out of town, he asked his Bluetooth to call Becks.
“Dad? Where the hell have you been? I’ve left, like, twenty messages.”
“I know, honey. I’m sorry. I’ll tell you what I can when I get home.”
“You’re coming home? I thought you had another week?”
Squeezing his steering wheel so hard it would leave dents, he said, “Yeah. But I’m not…needed here anymore.”
“What happened? You sound terrible. Talk to me.”
Trying his hardest not to cry alone in his car to his daughter, he said, “Things with Mira, they didn’t…”
“Oh, Dad. Oh, no. I’m so sorry.”
“I gave her my heart.” He cleared the thickness from his throat, staring at the pretty pink box on his passenger seat. “And she gave me a cupcake.”
“Come home,” Becks said. “Just come home, and we’ll work through it all together.”
“Okay, honey. I’m on my way.”
CHAPTERTHIRTY-SEVEN
MIRA
“Zombies are morealive than you are these days.”
Mira would have glared at her son, but he was right, and she didn’t have the energy. “Thanks.”
It had been a week since she’d last talked to Cole. Since he’d texted her that he’d made it home safely, and she’d replied with an inexcusably patheticthank you for letting me know.Deleting the: I miss you. The: I’m sorry. The: Can we please talk?
No wonder he’d left. No wonder he hadn’t reached out again. She’d broken his heart. She’d broken her own heart. But she’d been right. He was offering to give up too much. Even now, even after a week, even after the lump in her throat had gotten so big she’d made Jen look at it with some weird flexible scope she’d shoved down her nose, Mira still didn’t think she’d made the wrong choice. No matter how much she loved him, no matter how much it killed her not saying it back, no matter how hard it was to eat or sleep or, apparently, function more convincingly than the walking dead, she still would never tell him to leave his life for her.
She’d been alone before. It wasn’t like it was anything new. But she never remembered it hurting this bad.
“Cake looks good, though,” Ian said, and she appreciated the attempt to make her feel better. “Is that the one? Or can I eat it too?”
