But he couldn’t stop how choked, how wretched he both sounded and felt as he fumbled out, “...Fox left me. Without...without even saying anything, he just...went behind my back and left...”
Lily Hemlock regarded him gravely, settling on the couch next to him and patting his knee. “What makes you so sure he’s gone for good?”
“He packed. He took...he took that shrine to his wife. After everything, he couldn’t even say goodbye, I tried so hard and I just... I just wasn’t enough, and now he’s gone...”
“Summer...” His mother squeezed his knee. “What makes you think you have to be enough to convince someone to stay? That’s not love. That’s trying to buy someone’s love.”
“I wasn’t,” Summer protested. “I just... I hoped he’d just...”
“Open his eyes, if you did everything right?” She sighed. “Darling, someone who doesn’t want to change won’t change until they’re ready to. Fox will open his eyes when he’s ready, but you can’t make him do that. Just as he couldn’t make you open yours, either.”
Summer flinched. “What...do you mean, I’m not...”
Sometimes, his mother saw too much. And she seemed to see right through Summer as she studied him with a sad yet gentle smile, then reached up to tuck his hair back.
“Did you really love Fox Iseya?” she asked. “Or did you just need his approval to feel like you’d finally found yourself?”
Fuck.
That hit like a sledgehammer, smashing the breath out of Summer’s lungs. He stared at her, fingers clutching tight at his tea mug.
“I...oh, fuck.”
“Language,” she said mildly, and he groaned.
“Now is not the time, Mom.” Closing his eyes, he set the mug aside on the end table, then pulled the blankets closer around him. “I... I love him. I do. I just...”
“You just...?” she prompted gently.
“I... I think... I made myself believe I needed his approval to be confident...and then I got addicted to it, when... I should be able to find that confidence myself. I need to find that confidence myself, because...because...” He swallowed. “I do love him. I do. And I know why he’s scared...and if he’s scared, I need to be brave enough for both of us. Because I don’t want to let him go unless he really, truly wants to go.”
His mother’s eyes creased thoughtfully, smile softening as she cocked her head. “You think he would leave even though he didn’t really want to?”
Summer let out a brittle laugh. “The sad thing about loving him is knowing...he’s made an art out of running away while staying in place. I guess this time he just didn’t stay...but God knows the more he wants something, the faster he’ll run because he’s afraid of wanting anything at all.”
“It sounds like you do know him.” She brushed her knuckles to his cheek. “And it sounds like you do love him. Which explains why he was here not an hour ago, telling me goodbye and being entirely evasive about it.” She arched a brow. “He was headed north toward the interstate, when he left. I would be careful driving in this rain, though.”
Summer was going to die of a heart attack if his heart kept stopping like this every few minutes, slamming so hard it just shuddered itself to a halt.
He stared at his mother. “He...was here?” he croaked. “He was here and you didn’t tell me?”
“Well he didn’t come here to see you, now did he?” she tutted, then flapped her hands at him. “Go. Shoo. Go pull that stubborn old fox out of his hole.”
Summer didn’t need to be told twice.
He was already on his feet, darting toward the door, shedding the blanket in his wake.
“Stay dry!” his mother called after him, and he waved a hand back before flinging the door open and bolting out into the rain.
He might just catch his fox after all.
And all he needed was just...
One minute with him, to plead for one last chance.
Fox could hardly see the road ahead of him.
The storm came down in heavy sheets, wind billowing until it made curtain-like patterns in the silver droplets striking down and splashing in waves against his windshield. He was moving at a crawl, keeping a far distance from the dim red spots of the tail lights yards in front of him, barely covering any ground as he took the highway toward the interstate, following the winding roads between the trees.
If it got any worse, he’d have to pull over and wait it out.
When all he wanted was to put Omen behind him and be somewhere, anywhere else.
He squinted through the windshield, though, as the car ahead of him—a silver SUV—slowed, then stopped...then plowed forward, sheets of water pluming up to either side. Fox couldn’t quite make out what they were doing until he drew closer, though.
And stopped at the foot of one of the highway bridges spanning the Mystic river.
A bridge that was currently barely visible under the rising floodswell of the river in spate, the water moving slow and lazy but pouring over the rails.
The SUV had managed to power through, making it to the other side with water sheeting in its wake like some kind of strange boat.
If the SUV had made it, Fox could too.
Don’t, a small inner voice of reason whispered to him. Wait. Turn back. Go back to Omen, go back to Summer, look at why you’re so desperate to run away that you have to leave now and you’re about to do something...to do something...
Dangerous.
Beyond dangerous.
Just because she died in this river doesn’t mean you have to, as well.
But even if that voice spoke so clearly, it was still so quiet. So much more quiet than the roar of his beating heart, the blood in his veins, the sense of desperation that said to get out. To run. To put as much distance between himself
