Chapter 48 WHAT HE PLANNED
POV: OMAR
He had been planning this for three days.
Not in a complicated way. Omar didn’t do complicated. He noticed the distance between them, thought through his options, and picked the one that felt most direct and honest: get up early, grab hot chocolate before the dining hall opened, ask the night shift guy who owed him a favor, bring two thermoses, and head to the dock.
Simple.
He carried the thermoses down to the dock at six in the morning and sat alone for twenty minutes, watching the mist roll across the lake. He thought about the space that had opened between them, the gap he didn’t have a word for yet.
He wasn’t great at naming things before he understood them.
But he was good at showing up.
The mine thing had been wrong the second it left his mouth.
He knew it. He could feel her attention snap sharp around that word, like it hit something that didn’t sit right. He said it, watched her face, and immediately knew he’d chosen the wrong word. The right words were harder to say, and he wasn’t sure he had the language for them yet.
What he meant was this: you are the person I’ve built my whole idea of the future around. And I can feel that foundation shifting beneath me. I don’t know how to talk about this without sounding like I think I own you. But I don’t. I never have. You are the least ownable person I’ve ever met. That’s what I love most and what scares me most.
What came out was mine.
She said she wasn’t something he owned, and she was right. He said that’s not what he meant, and he was right too. Neither of them was wrong. Somehow that made everything worse.
He loved her.
Specifically and truly. The way he’d loved her since seventh grade when she walked into English class and charmed everyone in forty minutes. Then she turned to him during the break and said something honest and funny that made him laugh for real—not the social laugh. She looked surprised by his laugh and smiled like it was a gift she hadn’t expected.
He’d been showing up for that smile ever since.
He watched her look at the lake while he talked about colleges and spring visits and his mother who already called Piper her daughter-in-law. He felt the distance sitting between them like a third person on the dock.
She said that sounds wonderful.
She said it the way she said things when she was careful. He knew the difference. He spent three years learning to tell Piper’s real voice from her performance voice. Right now he was hearing the performance voice, and he chose not to say that because he didn’t know what he’d do with her answer if he said it out loud.
He kissed her temple.
Said the thing about always knowing her.
He watched her go completely still.
For a second, something crossed her face that wasn’t quite pain and wasn’t quite recognition. Maybe both. Definitely something he put there by saying the wrong true thing.
She recovered.
She said yes to the college question he couldn’t remember asking.
He pulled her closer.
She picked up the thermos cup and drank. He watched her drink the cold hot chocolate without saying it was cold, without asking him to fix it. Just drinking it because it was there.
He thought about Joel’s voice at Tony’s Pizza.
He doesn’t let go of interesting.
They’d been talking about George Morrison. Omar hadn’t asked who Morrison had decided was interesting. He moved the conversation somewhere else because he wasn’t ready to sit with that question.
He still wasn’t.
He looked at the lake.
He’d planned this. He’d done it. She was here. She’d said yes to the future he described. Her hot chocolate was cold, and she drank it anyway. He loved her. Something felt wrong in a way he could feel but couldn’t see yet.
He was good at showing up.
He was going to have to get better at looking.
The dock creaked beneath them. The mist finished lifting. Thornfield’s spires caught the early light behind them. The lake went flat and still, showing their reflections looking back at them. Neither said what they were thinking.
That was the problem with knowing someone.
Sometimes you know them well enough to feel exactly where the gap is.
Not well enough yet to know what’s on the other side.
Author’s Note: Omar Carter planned the dock. He got up at six AM, carried two thermoses, and sat there alone for twenty minutes watching the mist because he noticed the distance and decided to fix it. That’s who Omar Carter is. The mine thing was the wrong word for the right feeling, and he knows it. That’s going to matter later. Drop a like if Omar just broke your heart. Save this one. He’s going to have to get better at looking, and the looking is going to cost him. — J