Page 21 of The Jealous Girl

And now…

She had that.

8

THEN

Mid July

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t even look at Ryan.

His words looped in my head, over and over.

I never said what really mattered.

Part of me wanted to ask what he hadn’t said. I wanted to hear it. I needed to. But something held me back. Because, if it mattered so much, why hadn’t he said it before?

He’d had time. When we were together. After. Even today, at the airport. In the taxi. He’d had so many chances to say whatever it was he thought would change things. And yet he hadn’t.

So why now?

I dragged my fingertips through the sand beside me. Maybe it wasn’t important now. Maybe it wouldn’t change anything. It couldn’t – and yet the question lingered.

Finally, he shuffled. ‘I miss this place,’ he said softly.

I swallowed. That couldn’t have been the thing he’d never said. The thing that mattered.

Had he sensed my apprehension and changed the subject? Or had he ever really intended to tell me what he wished he’d said?

That was the thing about Ryan, being with him meant learning to read between the lines. The pauses. The silences. The things he left unsaid.

Dad had been the same. Quiet. Careful. Never quite saying enough, leaving me to piece together what he had meant. How he felt.

I always believed I was good at it. Reading the meaning beneath their words. Reading the silences.

I frowned. Then again, maybe I’d just been filling them.

‘I miss the life we had here,’ Ryan continued. ‘The plans. The possibilities.’

My chest tightened. They might not have been the words he’d wanted to say. But they still tore at my heart.

‘I’ve often wondered what would have happened if we’d stayed,’ he added.

I nodded slightly. I’d wondered the same thing. ‘Or if we’d never come here at all,’ I suggested, voicing the alternative that had circled in my head for the last two years.

‘No.’ Ryan’s voice was sharp and firm as his head snapped towards me. ‘Coming here wasn’t the mistake. Leaving was.’

I held his gaze for a moment, before shaking my head. ‘You were always going to leave at some point.’ That had been the difference between us. Coming here had been my dream. My plan. My escape.

But, for him, it had just been a summer adventure before real life began.

Two Years Ago – Early June

Ryan frowned as he read the text message on his phone. ‘Mum’s asking about graduation again.’

I paused, my spoon of yoghurt hovering halfway to my mouth.

Graduation.