Cole.
He’s standing on the grass below, pale as moonlight, a handful of pebbles clenched in one fist. His eyes are bloodshot red, face blank except for the kind of quiet devastation you can’t fake.
“What are you doing out here?” I ask, leaning just far enough over the railing. “Is everything okay?”
His eyes drift past me like I’m not fully real, like he’s not sure I’ll still be there when he blinks.
I push open the gate and descend the iron steps slowly, the chill of the metal seeping through the soles of my feet. The night air wraps around my legs, sharp and biting. He doesn’t move. Not even as I rush to him and press my hands to his cheeks.
His skin is cold. Damp with effort or panic—I can’t tell which.
“What’s going on, Cole?”
“He told me no,” he says, voice low and ragged. “I asked my dad to call off the wedding, and he had the audacity to tell me no.”
He can’t be serious.
“Cole…” I bite down a sigh, holding it like glass between my teeth. “Please tell me that wasn’t your Hail Mary to get him to reconsider.”
The hollow flash in his eyes says everything.
“Okay, look.” I rub his shoulders, slow and steady. “Did you really think he’d cancel the entire weekend because you asked him to?”
“Yes,” he says, his jaw locking tight. “That’s exactly what I thought. I said ‘warned you’ and everything.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he owes me, and the least he could do is call off the wedding because I asked.”
“You didn’t—” I pause. “You didn’t tell him about us, did you?”
“I probably should’ve,” he says. “Maybe that would’ve worked better.”
I sigh. “If someone asked you to let me go, for no logical reason at all, would you?”
“No, but our situation is not the same, and you know it.”
He kisses me before I can argue—hard and bruising—and then he pulls me down into the grass like the ground’s the only place solid enough to hold us.
His lips crush mine, desperate and angry, his hands trembling against my spine. The wet earth presses through the thin fabric of my robe, but I don’t care.
His breath is uneven. His fingers trace the inside of my thigh like he’s trying to memorize grief.
“Leave with me,” he breathes. “Let’s get out of here and start over. Somewhere no one knows our names. Somewhere we don’t have to lie.”
Tears spill down my cheeks before I can stop them.
He kisses them away like he’s trying to erase the decision already forming in my chest.
“Please…” he murmurs again. “Screw both of them. Their love isn’t ours. You know that, Emily. You feel it—you know.”
I shake my head—not out of defiance, but exhaustion. “I don’t want to hurt my mom.”
“She’s happy to hurt you.”
“She’s still my mom.”
I close my eyes for a beat, but his voice drags me back.
