Page 59 of Ashes of Us
But the words stuck in my throat.
"Take care, Piper."
He walked toward the locker room, flip-flops slapping against wet tile. He didn't look back. Instead, he just… left.
I stayed there at the wall, hands gripping the edge, staring at the space where he'd been.
The lifeguard was scrolling his phone again. The water was still. Everything was exactly the same as it had been five minutes ago.
Except it wasn't.
I tried to push off for another lap. Made it halfway across the pool before I had to stop, treading water, my chest too tight to breathe properly.
Forty-one laps. That's all I'd managed.
I pulled myself out and grabbed my towel, hands shaking as I dried my face.
He was different. The way he'd looked at me… or, really, the way hehadn'tlooked at me. The way he'd just... left. No explanations, no apologies, no asking how I'd been or if we could talk.
He'd respected what I'd said months ago.
He'd left me alone.
I sat on the bench, staring at the pool, and tried to figure out why that made my chest ache.
CHAPTER 24: PIPER
The Italian place on Oak was packed for a Friday night.
Warm lighting, checkered tablecloths, the smell of garlic and fresh bread heavy in the air. The conversations hummed around us, the sound of it like a blanket of sound.
Daniel had gotten us a table by the window. He was already there when I arrived seven minutes late, tie loosened, sleeves rolled up from his shift. He'd ordered a bottle of Chianti that sat breathing on the table between us.
"Sorry," I said, sliding into the booth across from him. The leather was cracked and warm. "Last-minute cake emergency. Woman wanted fondant flowers that matched her grandmother's wallpaper from 1987."
"Did you manage it?"
"Close enough that she cried happy tears, so yes."
He smiled, that easy smile that had made me feel safe when we first started dating. "That's my girl."
Except I wasn't, was I? Not really. Not in the way that mattered.
The waiter appeared and handed us menus. We ordered breadsticks, made small talk while we pretended to read aboutpasta options we'd both seen a dozen times. His shift this week had been brutal—three car accidents, one cardiac arrest. My new hires were working out well, but one of them kept forgetting to check the oven timer. The weather was turning colder. We might get frost next week.
Easy conversation. The kind you had when you knew someone well enough to fill silence without effort.
I reached for a breadstick and tore off a piece, letting the steam escape. I should have been enjoying this—the food, the company, the Friday night date we'd been trying to schedule for weeks.
Instead, I couldn't stop thinking about the pool.
It had been a week since I'd seen Liam. Seven days, and I'd replayed that encounter so many times I could see it frame by frame. The water streaming down his face. The careful way he'd looked at me—or hadn't looked at me. The apology for interrupting my workout. The way he'd pulled himself out of the pool and walked away without hesitation, without looking back.
He was giving me space, respecting what I'd asked of him.
I should have been relieved.
Instead, I felt like something had shifted and I couldn't figure out how to shift it back.
