Page 69 of Love, Morgan

“Easy there. You’ve got a wife,” I said, my voice a million miles from where it should be.

She breathed a laugh. “You lied.”

“Yes. About what, exactly?”

“Insufferable.” She pulled back, keeping her hands on my shoulders, and looked me over. “About when you were getting back.”

I shrugged, looking away. Everything looked the way it had before I left. How was that possible? It felt like I’d been gone a lifetime.

“Explain,” she said when I didn’t speak, and pain lanced my heart thinking about all the times Iona had zoned out, too lost in her own thoughts to realize it.

“My plane landed early, so I just got myself home.”

Ripley narrowed her eyes at me. “Your plane landed early?”

“Yep. What do you know? Must just be my lucky day.”

“Your plane landedfive hoursearly.”

“Yep.” I looked back at her. “If I just keep saying it, you’ll believe me, right?”

“Not at all.” She smiled sadly. “But I can pretend, if that’s what you need right now?”

My throat burned. “I don’t know what I need right now,” I whispered, feeling weak, as though admitting faults.

“Do you want to call her?” she asked, and I hated that she knew. I loved that she knew. I needed her to know, but I needed none of us to know.

I needed not to miss her like this.

“No,” I said firmly. “We agreed until we both left. Now, we’ve both left. That’s it.”

“Are you sure that’s—”

“I’m sure.” I turned away, walked to the familiar chair, and sat down in it, wrapping a blanket around myself. It didn’t help. The chill was bone-deep.

Ripley watched me like she had a million questions swirling in her head, but she knew me well enough not to ask them. “Doughnuts?”

“I don’t have any.”

She rolled her eyes, her smile a little less sad. “Hilarious. Do you want to get doughnuts?”

“Is that even a question?”

“Okay, well, I have a couple of hours left here, but I can shut for a few minutes. We can go grab—”

“No.” Unfamiliar panic shot through me. I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t leave this place, this chair. I didn’t want to be this person, but I couldn’t go out there and be back. I needed more time. I needed to hold onto Iona for a little while longer.

“Yeah, okay,” Ripley said, catching on quickly. “I’ll text Harlow. She’s free. Hopefully, she’ll be able to grab us some and bring them over here.”

I nodded. This was why I couldn’t leave. I belonged here. Ripley was my family. This was my life, the one I’d built especially so I didn’t have to rely on other people, didn’t have to make space for them by shrinking myself. Ripley knew and understood me, and that was enough.

“I can’t believe you just lied about when your plane was getting back,” she muttered as she pulled her phone out, scrolling for Harlow’s number.

“What can I say? I like to make an entrance.”

“Don’t I know it?”

It wasn’t that, not this time. We both knew that, but we both also knew I needed to feel like it was. I couldn’t explain exactly why leaving Iona had required getting myself home from the airport, but I’d known it was what I needed, and that was the life I’d built. The one where I answered to nobody but myself, and I did what I wanted when I wanted.

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