“Nothing,” she said. “It was just...a fling. And then... Now it isn’t a thing.”
“Did he dump you on Christmas Eve?”
“No. I dumped him.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said to her little sister.
“Why are you insistently emotionally constipated?” she asked. “Like, come on.”
“You come on,” she said. “You barely remember what life was like with Mom and Dad. But I do remember. And it’s been hell without them. And it was hard to lose them. And...”
“So you all go and make your own lives more lonely. Look at Levi... He’s... He’s basically a grumpy old man and he’s just in his thirties. You were wearing baggy clothes, all ready to be an old maid because Damien wouldn’t give you the time of day, and now he is, and what? You want him to go back to being an untouchable object because it was easier? Easier than admitting that you want him? That you love him?”
“Well, he didn’t say that he loved me,” she said. “What he said was that he wanted to try. And I don’t... I can’t do it. Because...”
“Because you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I get that. Because we lost Mom, and it was terrible. But we figured we had had our fill of bad things. And then Dad.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“You can’t live that way.”
“You’re a child,” she said. “You literally don’t know anything about anything.”
“That’s what you keep saying. Except I know I’m going to go to college. Except I know that I didn’t choose the bad things that happened to me, and I’m not gonna choose extra bad things just because.”
“You make it sound easy. But you don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what he makes me...feel. What he’s always made me feel. I have had feelings for him since I was a kid. When I was brave enough to act on them he rejected me.”
“And now you’re rejecting him? It just seems like you’re creating your own issues.”
“No, I just... I wanted to know that I was going to be okay if things didn’t work out between us. I went... I went to that Christmas party. The mask one in Mapleton. I wanted to hook up with a guy that I didn’t know. I wanted to prove to myself that I would be okay if Damien Prince never cared about me. But what I found instead was Damien. So I can’t prove it to myself. I don’t know if I’m going to be okay. And Dylan isn’t done in the military and...”
“I hear what you’re saying,” Camilla said. “But no. You don’t know if you’ll be okay. I’m sorry. But that’s just how it is. You don’t really get to know.”
She stared at her little sister, who said all these things so very matter-of-factly. It was maddening. Infuriating. And she just kept thinking about last night. About the way he had put that shoe on her foot. About the way he had danced with her. Awkwardly, with that one shoe and the one boot and...
She turned away from Camilla and found herself drifting toward the entryway, where her other high heel was still sitting, laying oddly in a pile of shoes in that doorway.
And it hit her then. She had the other shoe. She was the one holding it. And there was something about that revelation, that realization, that gave her a sense of power. A sense of determination. She was waiting for the other shoe to drop like she had no control over any of this. Like she had no control over what she did. How she changed and what she learned. What she decided to fight for. As if the other shoe was simply fate. That would fall from heaven one day and crush her beneath the weight of it, because that was how it had felt to lose her father after her mother when she’d been just a child.
But it wasn’t a trend. It was just life. And there were things that had happened since then that were...up to her. This was up to her. “I’m an idiot,” she whispered.
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Camilla said.
“I mean... I really am.”
She picked up the shoe by the door, and without bothering to put on her coat, she ran outside. She ran all the way down to Damien’s cabin. And she knocked on the door. He didn’t answer. She opened it, and she found it empty. “Dammit,” she whispered. She looked around and didn’t see his truck anywhere. He was gone. He was gone.
She went back into the cabin and looked again. His belongings were gone and so... So was her shoe.
And she stared down at the one in her hand, and she realized then and there, it was up to her to put that pair back together.
And so she went back up to the house and got in her own truck, and took off down the road with her glittering high heel in the seat beside her.
She was on a mission. And she was going to find Damien.
CHAPTER TEN