For a hopeful second, I thought she might soften. That we’d hug it out, promise to talk later, do what we always did.
But she only tilted her head, her expression closed.
“Until you’re ready to be honest with me,” she said quietly, “I don’t know what to do with you.”
The words hit harder than any shouted accusation.
I swallowed the lump in my throat, pulled my coat on, and opened the door.
“Fine,” I said, without looking back. “Then maybe we take a break from each other. Since I’m so much work.”
“Don’t twist my words,” she said sharply.
“I don’t have to,” I replied. “They’re already tangled.”
I stepped outside.
“Liora.” Her voice followed me, thin and strained.
I hesitated, hand on the knob.
But whatever she was going to say, she didn’t.
The silence between us yawned wide.
“Be well, Z,” I said, and closed the door gently behind me.
The cold air outside slapped my cheeks as I stepped onto the street. Automatically, my eyes were drawn to the loch where icy wind kicked up waves, and the circle of trees on the island shifted in the wind.
For the first time since I’d come back to Loren Brae, I didn’t feel like I had a home base. No sofa to collapse on with tea and Zara’s dry commentary.
Unsettled, and questioning myself all over again, I headed home.
Not home.
To Torin’s house.
Because I didn’t really have a home I could call my own. And right now, when I felt so untethered, so…alone, I feared I’d just lost my safest place.My person.My sister who I’d always relied on.
“And maybe I’m tired of feeling like the only thing standing between you and your next disaster.”
My sister who was tired of me… of seeing me fail.
And the scary thing was I wasn’t sure her intuition wouldn’t be proven right.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
TORIN
By the end of the week, I’d talked to more trees than people.
Didn’t matter much, all things considered—trees were better listeners, and they didn’t look at you with wide blue eyes and say “I’m fine” in a voice that very clearly meant “I am absolutely not fine, but I’m also not going to tell you why, so good luck with that.”
But it was getting to me.
The week after Liora’s row with Zara—I didn’t know the details, only that she’d come home tight-jawed and quiet—felt like someone had swapped my bright, humming housemate for a ghost that still left crystals everywhere.
She still slept in my bed, mostly. She still laughed at Bracken’s antics and read through her gran’s books. But there was a new distance there. She was guarding herself, holding back somehow, and I didn’t really know how to reach her.