beau didn't realize she'd made up her mind until she was already standing. for the longest time he simply watched her. frank's continued around them with indifference, another explosion of cheers rattling the walls as someone scored in the world cup match overhead. beer sloshed over the rim of pint glasses, chairs scraped against the floor, a waitress squeezed between crowded tables balancing a tray over one shoulder, and somewhere behind him someone broke into laughter loud enough to drown out the commentators on television. the world had the audacity to continue spinning while something that had quietly shaped the better part of his life came to its inevitable end across a sticky wooden table. he hated that she was leaving. no, that wasn't quite true. he hated the way she was leaving.
for years, beau had rehearsed this meeting without ever admitting he'd been rehearsing it. somewhere in the back of his mind there had always existed a version of tonight where dahlia apologized through tears, where she confessed she'd made the wrong choice, where she admitted she'd looked for him in every city she'd ever played, every crowd she'd ever sung to, every hotel room she'd ever fallen asleep inside. he imagined himself finally saying everything he'd swallowed when he was a teenager. he imagined finally winning. instead she had robbed him of the victory before the game had even begun. dahlia had apologized. she had accepted responsibility without making excuses. she had told him she was happy. she had looked at his wedding band with genuine warmth instead of regret. worst of all, she'd looked at him with affection instead of longing. that was the wound he hadn't prepared for. his eyes drifted, almost involuntarily, to the simple gold band resting against her finger. it wasn't extravagant. it wasn't a langford heirloom pulled from some mahogany display case and accompanied by stories of senators, governors, and women whose portraits hung in museums. it wasn't surrounded by diamonds large enough to make the society pages. it was plain. elegant. disgustingly ordinary. and somehow it unsettled him more than any diamond ever could.
he could have given her everything money was capable of buying. houses overlooking the water. apartments in manhattan. vacations without price tags. jewelry insured for more than most people earned in a lifetime. he'd spent years believing those things mattered because they were the language he'd been raised to speak. the langfords apologized with gifts, celebrated with gifts, mourned with gifts. love, in his family, had always arrived wrapped in velvet boxes. cash had handed her a plain gold ring. she'd looked at it like it was the most precious thing she'd ever owned. the realization settled somewhere deep inside beau with all the grace of a knife. it had never been about what he could provide. it had been about what she needed. when she had stood on the edge of leaving willow glen with stars in her eyes and fear in her chest, she hadn't needed certainty that she'd live comfortably. she'd needed certainty that someone would love her even if she failed. even if she came home empty-handed. even if the dream disappeared. he had loved her desperately. but he'd also been terrified. terrified she'd leave. terrified she'd change. terrified that chasing something bigger than willow glen meant she would eventually discover she was too big for him. cash hadn't been afraid. the thought hollowed him out.
he watched her disappear into the crowd, her perfume lingering just long enough to make the empty booth across from him feel haunted. orange blossom. jasmine. the same scent she'd worn as a teenager because she'd stolen a bottle from her mother's vanity and insisted it made her smell like a grown woman. decades later, it still unraveled him with humiliating ease. he remembered the first time she left. he'd come home with the kind of heartbreak only a teenager could survive, and his mother had looked at him like he'd lost his damn mind. "go after her, beau. that's what they do in the movies." he'd scoffed then, too proud to believe love was ever supposed to look that desperate. now, years later, with another goodbye unfolding in front of him, the advice came rushing back. it still felt foolish. it still felt beneath him. but before his pride could catch up, his hand had already reached into his pocket, a few twenties landed carelessly beside the untouched basket of fries. he couldn't have told anyone how much the bill was if his life depended on it. his chair scraped loudly against the floor as he pushed himself upright, weaving through celebrating strangers whose faces blurred together into little more than color and noise. outside, the rain hit him immediately. texas storms never bothered with subtlety. the sky had opened sometime during their conversation, leaving the parking lot shimmering beneath yellow streetlights as warm rain soaked through the shoulders of his jacket almost instantly. the humidity wrapped itself around him like another skin, and for one irrational second he was sixteen years old again, standing behind the bluffs with dahlia laughing as they sprinted toward his truck because neither of them wanted to admit curfew had already come and gone.
he spotted her halfway across the lot. she hadn't hurried. that somehow made it worse. she wasn't running from him. she had simply accepted that there was nothing left to say. his feet moved before permission ever reached his brain. “dahlia.” she either didn't hear him or chose not to. he closed the distance in long strides, water splashing beneath polished leather shoes entirely unsuited for weather like this. when he reached her, his hand found her wrist almost instinctively. his fingers circled the delicate bone with enough firmness to stop her without hurting her, and the momentum of her body carried her gently back toward him. she turned, startled, rain already collecting in loose strands of dark hair, her eyes widening just enough to remind him that there had once been a time when he knew every expression she could possibly make. his other hand settled carefully around her upper arm as though he needed something solid to keep himself standing. he had chased her into the rain without the faintest idea what he intended to say. now that she was standing in front of him, every speech he'd painstakingly built over the last decade abandoned him all at once.
beau looked at her face, really looked at it, and saw every version of her layered together. the girl who climbed into the passenger seat of his pickup truck barefoot after football games. the young woman who sang to empty dive bars before anyone knew her name. the stranger whose face stared back at him from times square while he pretended not to stop and look. the woman standing in front of him now, wearing another man's ring with complete peace in her eyes. his throat tightened. his mouth opened … nothing came. he'd spent years believing what he wanted was an explanation. now he understood explanations had never been the thing he'd been chasing. he had wanted time to reverse itself. he had wanted seventeen again. he had wanted one more chance to become the man she needed before someone else did. there were no words capable of asking for something so impossible. his grip loosened without him realizing it had. rain rolled from the end of his nose as he laughed once beneath his breath, though there wasn't anything humorous about the sound.
"you know..." he said quietly, his voice rough around the edges, “i used to imagine this conversation all the time.” his eyes never left hers. “i always thought if i ever saw you again, i'd finally know what to say.” a tired smile touched his mouth before disappearing almost immediately. “turns out i don't know a damn thing.” silence settled between them again, but this time it wasn't hostile. it wasn't even uncomfortable. it felt like mourning. "i spent a long time thinkin' if you'd just called me..." he admitted, barely above the rain now. “if you'd written. if you'd looked back one more time... maybe we'd have been different.” his gaze dropped to the ring on her hand before returning to her face. “i don't think that's true anymore.” he swallowed hard. “i think we loved each other exactly when we were supposed to.” the words surprised even him.
"there are people who spend the rest of their lives wonderin' what would've happened if they'd met sooner. or later. maybe we're the opposite." his smile returned, smaller this time, sad enough to hurt. “maybe we were just born into each other's lives at the wrong chapter.” he looked at her for another long moment before slowly letting his hands fall away completely. beau took another step back, putting the distance between them that he knew he should. his eyes wandered instinctively across the parking lot, searching for headlights, a waiting driver, anything. there was nothing. a familiar knot settled in his stomach. people mistook dahlia's refusal to drive for entitlement, another eccentricity from the wealthy delgado girl who always expected someone else to take the wheel. beau had never corrected them. he knew it wasn't vanity. he knew it was fear. he'd seen the way her fingers tightened around a steering wheel until her knuckles turned white, heard the excuses she'd make just to keep someone else behind the driver's seat. some things a person only ever showed to the ones they loved. the words he'd chased her outside to say disappeared completely. instead, what came out was something far simpler, almost instinctive. "how're you gettin' home?"
