Page 233 of Wild Card 13

Just the quiet house, the dark lake, the fire burning low, and the first rule I had ever set for myself that actually mattered.

CHAPTER 30

LUCY

NOW

The only thing I wrote in my journal that morning was:

The facts changed. The hurt did not.

I stared at the sentence until the ink blurred.

My eyes stung, but no tears would come. Enough had already fallen in the three hours I spent pretending sleep was something my body remembered how to do. I had gone home after leaving Ty’s lake house and stood in the middle of my apartment with Dottie’s leash still wrapped around my wrist, my coat still buttoned, my boots leaving little half-moons of melted snow on the floor.

In a daze, I took off my coat, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and changed into the softest clothes I owned because my skin felt too tight for anything else. I had gotten into bed. Dottie had climbed up beside me. She had pressed her warm body along my thigh, rested her chin on my hip, and sighed like both of us had survived something inconvenient but manageable.

I had stared at the ceiling. My brain kept taking the new information out, turning it over, holding it against the old wound like maybe the edges would line up if I forced them hard enough.

By five forty-eight, I had given up on sleep and opened my journal.

By five fifty-two, I had written one sentence.

By five fifty-three, I hated the sentence for being true.

Dottie whined softly from the bed. I looked over. She had her head lifted, one ear flipped inside out, watching me with solemn brown eyes and absolutely no respect for my emotional privacy.

“I know,” I whispered.

Her tail thumped once against the blanket.

I closed the journal before I could write anything else. Before I could make a list. Before I could turn Ty Burns into a column of problems and possible solutions, as if any of this could be organized into something less devastating.

The facts changed.

The hurt did not.

Alder Lake Parklooked like it had been remade overnight by someone who believed winter deserved forgiveness.

Fresh snow covered the lawns in smooth white sheets, untouched except for a few narrow tracks from early runners, a set of bird prints near the plowed path, and Dottie’s immediate, chaotic attempt to investigate every visible snowbank with her whole face. The trees wore powder along their branches. The lake beyond the walking path sat quiet beneath a pale gray morning sky, its frozen surface softened by snow until it looked less like water and more like a secret the city had agreed not to disturb yet.

My chest had the raw, hollow ache of crying too hard and sleeping too little. My eyes burned behind my glasses. The cold air should have helped. Usually, winter cleared me out. Usually, a morning like this made the world feel sharper and calmer, as if snow could muffle every unnecessary thing and leave only what mattered.

Naomi was already in the parking lot when I pulled in. She stood beside her little blue Subaru in a long rust-colored coat, a cream scarf wrapped twice around her neck, her dark-blonde hair shoved into a messy bun that looked one breath away from structural failure. She had two coffees balanced in a cardboard carrier and the expression of someone who had seen me across the lot and immediately begun revising her level of concern upward.

I got out of the car. Dottie launched herself after me, thenremembered there was snow and began hopping through it like joy had personally called her name.

Naomi’s gaze moved over my face. “Oh, Luce,” she said.

“Do not make that noise.”

“What noise?”

“The one where you’re nice and I die.”

“I brought coffee,” she said. “That is as close as I can get to emotional neutrality.”

I shut my door and took the cup she offered me. Paper Lantern’s logo was stamped on the sleeve, a little gold lantern with curling black lines around it. The cup warmed my fingers through my gloves. “Thank you.”