Page 110 of Off-Limits as Puck

“I should go,” I say finally.

“You should.”

“Take care of yourself, Chelsea.”

“You, too.”

I turn and walk toward my rental car, keys heavy in my pocket,already planning the text to Matty about visiting tomorrow before my flight. Anything to make this trip feel less like romantic suicide and more like geographic coincidence.

I’m almost to the car when she calls my name.

“Reed.”

I turn, hope and terror warring in my chest.

She’s still holding the sunflowers, still crying a little, still looking like every mistake and miracle I’ve ever made.

“I missed you too,” she says quietly.

And then the world shifts, just slightly, but enough to change everything.

40

Reed stands there like a dream and nightmare wrapped into one. When he waves and turns around, I take a step forward.

“That’s it?” I ask.

He nods, checking his phone. “I gave myself an hour, and the drive is twenty minutes, so I need to go. So, yes, that’s it.”

“But–”

He shrugs. “I didn’t know how you’d react, so I didn’t want to interrupt everything you have here.”

My heart plummets as he walks backwards. I look at the driver in the vehicle he’s walking to. He caught an Uber.

My lungs feel tangled as I watch him get into the car.

“I’ll see you later,” he says, closing the door and facing forward.

Shit.

I watch him drive off. Is he serious? This has to be a joke.

“Everything okay?” Frank asks, standing next to me.

A tear falls from my eye. It feels like I’m watching my heart drive off. But I suck it up and wipe my face.

“Yes,” I say to Frank. “I’ll be okay.”

For the first time since this has happened, I finally understand what it feels like to be walked away from. This entire time I’ve been the one running, and now that I’m standing here watching his Uber drive off, I feel like my heart has been torn from my chest.

Time really doesn’t heal all wounds.

The rest of the day passes in distraction. I muddle through sessions with clients who deserve better than a therapist whose mind keeps wandering to sunflowers and handwritten notes. Every time my office door opens, my heart jumps like maybe he’s come back. Like maybe one gesture wasn’t enough and he’s here to complicate my carefully constructed peace.

But it’s just clients. Just the steady parade of people working through anxiety and relationship issues and the small tragedies that make up ordinary life. Problems I can actually solve, unlike the Reed-shaped complication that’s apparently still lodged in my chest like shrapnel.

By evening, I’m exhausted from hypervigilance. From listening for footsteps that don’t come, for knocks that never happen, for phone calls from numbers I know by heart. I order takeout and sit on my couch, staring at the sunflowers while CNN plays background noise about things that don’t matter.

---