He’s wearing a dark dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows.
He looks like someone who’s had to be impressive in rooms full of dangerous people and figured out how to do it effortlessly.
And his eyes.
They’re the same blue. Still that vivid blue I used to catalog every shade of.
But the warmth I remembered is buried deep.
Not gone—I think if it were truly gone, this would be easier. He’d feel more like the stranger I expected.
Instead, it’s as if the warmth is locked behind walls that weren’t there ten years ago.
I swallow hard.
“And I came to say goodbye to you. Properly, like you always deserved.”
“The goodbye I always deserved?” he repeats, and there’s a quiet edge under the words that makes my stomach flip.
It’s not angry. But… quiet is almost worse than angry. Like he decided a long time ago to be calm about this and has never once let himself be anything else.
I blink repeatedly. “I thought?—”
“I know what you thought.”
I pull my hand back from the car door and wrap both arms across my chest. I need something between me and him. Even six inches of folded arms.
“I should go,” I say.
“You keep saying that.” His gaze drops to the keys in my hand and back up to my face. “But you always were, weren’t you? Always running.”
The words hit low. He doesn’t say it cruelly, which almost makes it worse. He says it the way you state a fact you’ve had a long time to make peace with.
The sun rises. Water is wet. Harper Tucker leaves.
“That’s not—” I start.
“I’m not fighting with you.” He takes a single step back and shoves both hands into his pockets.
That gesture—that specific gesture—I’ve seen it before, on a younger version of him, when he was trying to stop himself from counting. From reaching. From doing the thing he’d already decided not to do.
“I actually came out here to tell you that if you want to come back for the reception, you’re welcome. People who knew Helen would want to hear more about how she changed your life.”
I stare at him.
He’s inviting me in.Politely.
Like I’m a—a guest. Just some woman his mother was fond of who drove in from out of town. Then why did he chase me down and put his hand on mine like that?
“What happened to you?” The question pops out before I can stop it.
Something moves in his expression. There and gone in less than a second—a flicker—the way a light will pulse once before a bulb goes out.
“I grew up,” he says simply. “Same as you.”
“That’s not what I?—”
“What did you expect, Harper?”