Page 93 of What Remains of Grace

He’d stepped so carefully and said nothing when she ghosted him. He held back every time she needed space. Let her dictate every inch of the distance between them, even when it hurt, because he’d sensed the same thing everyone else had, that she could vanish if pushed even an inch too hard.

But the truth was uglier than that.

She hadn’t just been protecting herself.

She’d been protecting the people she loved from the burden of her grief, her panic, her fear. Or at least, that’s what she told herself.

It wasn’t working.

Her dad’s voice echoed in her mind: You don’t have to carry all of this alone.

She inhaled, slow and shaky.

Maybe staying didn’t mean reinventing herself. Maybe it just meant letting people be close. Her parents. Emmie. And maybe, cautiously, stupidly, terrifyingly, Cole.

It didn’t fix anything.

It didn’t erase the fight, or the hurt, or the mess of what they’d become. But the thought no longer made her want to run.

It made her want to try.

She wiped her cheeks with the heel of her palm, cleared her throat, and opened her messages. Her fingers hovered for a long moment over his name, long enough that her phone dimmed once and she had to tap it back awake.

Then she typed slowly, carefully:

JENNA: Hey. I know it’s been weird, but the grand reopening is Friday. Please come. It wouldn’t be right if you weren’t there after everything you did.

She stared at the words, feeling the tremor of vulnerability under them. Then she hit send before she could talk herself out of it.

* * *

Cole was halfway through his second bottle of water and still felt like his head was full of wet sand when his phone buzzed.

He glanced at it, expecting a message from Travis checking in or gloating about his state. Instead, Jenna’s name lit up the screen.

He froze.

Then opened it.

JENNA: Hey. I know it’s been weird, but the grand reopening is Friday. Please come. It wouldn’t be right if you weren’t there after everything you did.

He read it once.

Twice.

Three times.

Relief hit him first, sharp and bright. Then confusion.

Then a fresh wave of embarrassment at the disaster of messages he’d sent her last night.

But threaded through all of that humiliation, through every tangled emotion, was something he hadn’t felt in days: hope.

Real, stupid, dangerous hope.

He looked at the Pedialyte. At the aspirin.

At Travis’s note: