Ruby's POV
I didn’t look at him.
But I could feel him beside me,warm, close.
And when we stopped at the edge of the ridge, I couldn’t help but say, “You’ve changed.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re… different now. Calmer. Still stubborn as hell, but…”
“But what?”
I exhaled slowly. “But I like this version of you.”
The silence that followed was filled with wind.
Carter turned to me, face unreadable. “I’m not trying to win you back, Ruby.”
I looked at him sharply.
“I mean it,” he said. “I’m just trying to be the person you deserved back then. And maybe now too. But mostly… I just want you safe. You and her.”
That did it.
My hand brushed his by accident.
He didn’t move.
Neither did I.
And in the quiet, in the space between everything we’d been and everything we still were, I
