“On a two thousand mile road trip to Wyoming?” My eyes are wide and my jaw is hanging open. He has to be joking. Then again, I’ve been noticing lately that he’s started seeking more in our relationship.

He cracks his knuckles against the steering wheel then grazes his thumb over a black and silver, diamond-studded ring he sometimes wears. “Look, I know what you’re thinking, but before you start listing all the reasons why you can’t go just hear me out.” He pauses, giving me a chance to protest. Even though I want to, the plea in his tone keeps my lips fastened. “I need to go back and at least try to find my mom. The cops aren’t going to do anything—no one will—and I really need you there with me. Just as friends. In case I lose my shit or something… because, being back there,” he swallows hard, “it’s going to be hard.”

Jax has told me enough about his past that I understand. But going with him on this trip feels dangerously intimate.

“I get where you’re coming from. I really do. I couldn’t imagine not knowing where my mother was…” I bite on my fingernails. “But I don’t think I should be the one to go with you. Avery would be a way better choice.”

“Avery isn’t ready to go back there.” His grip tightens around the shifter, his knuckles whitening. “Honestly, I’m not sure I am, either.”

“Isn’t there anyone else who can go check up on your mom? Like your aunt?”

“I called her the morning after I got the voicemail. She doesn’t want anything to do with this.” He slows down the Jeep to turn into the parking lot of the college, then parks near the front and pushes the shifter into neutral, leaving the engine idling. “I know this is a lot, but I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need your help. And the Teton’s are really close to my hometown. We could swing up there and scatter your father’s ashes.”

A lump wells in my throat at the idea of standing with Jax on the mountain as I say a final goodbye to my father. The real kicker is how easy I can envision him there with me. But then what? After it’s all over, we’d return here, and I’d have to go back to my hectic life.

“Please don’t ask me to do this,” I whisper, grasping the door handle.

He swallows hard at the crack in my voice. “Okay, yeah. You’re right. I shouldn’t pressure you like this.” His smile is fake and his eyes radiate pain.

I don’t relax at all as I open the door and hop out of the car. I start to shut the door, but pause. “Are you still going?”

He sucks in a gradual breath while staring at the trees in front of the car. The sunlight reflects in his hazel eyes and highlights the pain in them. “I have to; otherwise, I’ll never stop worrying about her.”

“Are you leaving right now?”

He nods, his gaze gliding to mine. He looks so vulnerable that I just want to hug him. “I’m heading home to pack, and then I’m hitting the road.”

“You’re going to take someone else with you, though, right?” The idea of him doing this alone makes me want to cry.

“Sure.” He’s lying.

I want to help him, but instead I close the door and watch him drive away, picturing him all alone in that car heading to a place that’s always caused him pain.

As the car vanishes out of sight, the image of him shifts to me at eighteen years old, handling funeral arrangements by myself. Taking my mother to doctor appointments. Handling the will. Bills. How my life crumbled. How I lost most of my friends. How my boyfriend broke up with me, said my life was too complicated for him.

“I don’t think I can do this anymore, Clara,” Mack told me two weeks after the funeral, right when bills and responsibilities had really started to pile up. “Our lives are too different now. You’re always so busy and you have a ton of responsibilities.”

“I’ll make time for you.” I felt like I was being strangled, as if the last piece of my world was about to be ripped out from underneath me.

He scratched uncomfortably at the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I just don’t see this working out. All those plans that we had to travel are gone. Well, for you anyway... I can still go.”

Looking back at that moment, I’d felt such hatred for him. But at the time, I couldn’t process my feelings because I was too terrified of being alone. I had just lost my father. My mother was only mentally half there. My sister had bailed out. I had no one.

“But I thought you loved me?” It was what he told me when I lost my virginity to him: ‘Clara, I love you, so, so much.’ Maybe I’d been naïve to believe him.

“I’m sorry,” he said with a shrug.

Tears had stung in my eyes and I loathed myself for being so weak. After just watching my dad die, the pain of a breakup should have seemed insignificant. But all I kept thinking was: alone, alone, alone. “I know I’ve been kind of distant lately, but I just need some time to get stuff together.”

“Clara, this isn’t a problem that’s just going to go away.” He looked at me with pity. “If I stayed with you, it’d mostly be because I felt sorry for you. We’d eventually end up ruining each other.”

“Please, don’t leave me… If you love me you’ll stay,” I pathetically begged, clutching onto him.

He gave me a kiss on the cheek and his lips achingly burned my skin. “I’ll see you around okay.” Then he walked away, leaving me alone with responsibilities I wasn’t ready for, but had to deal with.