Every pair of eyes on this bus turns toward the wild-haired man standing in the aisle, and I slide down in my seat so fast my spine protests against the scratchy fabric.
My cheeks burn with the kind of heat that starts at the collarbone and crawls upward until it reaches my hairline. The elderly woman across the aisle has stopped knitting, her eyes traveling from Finn's disheveled hair to my burning face.
"Let me guess," she says, loud enough for half the bus to hear. "This is the man who was too good for your mess?"
I just cover my face in my hands instead of giving the obvious answer.
What in hell is he doing here?
"Sir, you need to get off my bus immediately!" the driver barks, but Finn does not move.
"Hey, buddy, this isn't a soap opera," a man three rows ahead shouts, twisting in his seat to glare at the commotion. "Some of us have places to be, you know that?"
"Aubrey, I know you are on this bus," his voice fills every corner of the enclosed space, "so get your things and come out here. Now."
I press myself lower against the seat, willing my body to become invisible. He cannot see me from where he stands. The angle is wrong, and there are too many heads between us.
If I stay quiet, if I hold my breath, maybe he will give up and leave.
Maybe the universe will grant me one small mercy.
"Oh, for the love of God, lady, just show yourself and get off the damn bus!" a woman near the front snaps, her voice cutting through the murmurs. "None of us signed up for your personal crisis."
"Yeah, come on, we're already running late!" someone else adds.
The chorus of complaints builds around me, strangers unified in their annoyance, and I feel the humiliation spread through my body like something corrosive eating through my resolve. The teenager across the aisle is filming on her phone.
Of course she is filming.
This is what my life has become—content for someone's social media feed, a spectacle unfolding in real time for the entertainment of people who will forget my face by tomorrow.
I hear footsteps moving down the aisle, and my heart hammers against my ribs with renewed urgency.
Stay hidden. Stay quiet. He will leave if you just…
A hand appears in my peripheral vision, and then Finn is standing beside my seat. The way he looks at me makes my lungs forget their function.
"There you are, firebird." His voice drops low, meant only for me now.
The tenderness in it is worse than the shouting. His fingers close around my wrist gently—so gently, nothing like the grip I have become accustomed to—and he pulls me to my feet before I can formulate a protest.
"Finn, wait, I need to…"
But he is already reaching for my duffel bag on the overhead shelf, yanking it down with one hand while the other maintains its careful hold on my arm.
The passengers watch us pass like we are actors in a play they did not pay to see. The elderly woman catches my eye as I stumble past her row and offers a small, knowing smile that I cannot begin to interpret.
The moment our feet hit the pavement, the bus doors hiss shut behind us. The engine roars, gears shifting with an aggressive grind, and I watch my escape route disappear down the highway in a cloud of exhaust and judgment.
We stand on the shoulder of the road, surrounded by fields that stretch toward the horizon in every direction, and the silence that follows is too loud to stand.
The gravel crunches beneath my shifting weight, small stones pressing through the thin soles of my flats. Somewhere behind us, a truck rumbles past on the highway, its horn blaring once before fading into the distance.
"What is this?" I ask, my voice steadier than I expect it to be.
Finn stands in front of me now, both hands planted on his hips, his chest rising and falling fast. His hair falls across his forehead in disheveled waves, and his shirt is untucked on one side, which is completely wrong on a man usually so composed.
The late afternoon sun catches the sheen of sweat at his temples, and I notice for the first time that his knuckles are white where they grip his own waist. Like he is physically holding himself together.
He does not answer me.
I watch his face and find pure pain there—raw and unguarded. His jaw is tight, his eyes bright with an emotion I cannot let myself believe.
"Look, if this is about the resignation letter, I can rewrite it, okay?" The words tumble out of me, desperate and deflecting. "I did write it in a hurry, so it might contain some mistakes, but…" Finn laughs.
The sound is broken and hollow, nothing like the laugh I remember from college. I watch in stunned silence as tears gather in his eyes without falling. His throat works around a swallow, and I track the movement, my own chest constricting in response.
"You think I made all this way and stopped a bus in the middle of the road because of mistakes in your resignation letter?" He asks the question like he genuinely cannot believe the words came out of my mouth. "That is what you think this is about, Aubrey?"
I stare at him, and I know how stupid it sounds.
I know there is another reason. A reason that lives in the kiss we shared in his office, in the way his hands cradled my face, in the words he said that I have been replaying on a loop since I fled.
But I cannot let myself think about that reason, because wanting it to be true is too dangerous.
"Does Gwen know you are here?" I ask instead.
"Jesus Christ, Aubrey!" His voice hardens, the vulnerability retreating behind something fiercer. "Stop bringing other people in between us like they are shields you can hide behind! Gwen is not the reason you are running, and you know it!"
He is right. Gwen is the excuse I keep reaching for because the real reason is too terrifying to hold in my hands. The real reason is that I have spent ten years burying what I feel for this man, and he dug it up in a single kiss.
"You said you loved me."
The words rip free from some unguarded place I forgot to lock. My voice carries every frequency of terror I have been trying to suppress: the fear that he meant it, the fear that he didn't.
I watch his face for any sign of regret. Any flicker of doubt that might confirm my suspicion that this is all some misunderstanding I can dismiss and move past.
I find nothing.
His expression remains steady, certain, entirely in agreement with the declaration he made in his office.
"Gwen is your fiancée, you are engaged." I press forward because I need him to explain the impossible mathematics of what he is proposing. "How does that work?"
"I told you the engagement was arranged." He says it plainly. "Our families wanted a merger, and I agreed because I never hoped to see you again, Aubrey."
The wind picks up, carrying the smell of cut grass and distant rain, and I feel my hair whipping against my cheeks as I absorb his words.
"But now that I have found you again, I cannot imagine my life with someone else." He takes a step closer, and I do not retreat. "I am going to find a way out of the arrangement, and I am going to spend the rest of my time proving to you that this is real."
I accept his words the way parched earth accepts rain—silently, desperately, with a thirst I did not realize had grown so severe.
I want to confess that I have loved him too. For years, through a marriage I should never have entered, through every moment I spent pretending otherwise. But the fear is still there, and I cannot make the words leave my throat.
"I was going to see my mother," I say finally, because it is the only truth I can manage right now.
Finn holds out his hand, palm up, an offering without demand.
"Then I will take you there."