Unbroken Rules (Rules 3)

A beat of silence.

“It’s his,” I add.

“Oh,” he says in realization.

“Do you have any idea where he could’ve gone? Can you, I don’t know, remember any of the places he went to while looking for Marcus? If you could just give me something, I’d—”

“Wait… he didn’t tell you?” He sounds surprised.

“Tell me what?”

“For crying out loud, Adams, you can be so slow sometimes,” he mumbles under his breath.

“What, Vic? What didn’t he tell me?” I press him.

“He’s not looking for Marcus, Winter. He hasn’t been looking for a year now. He stopped when you broke up with him.”

My heart drops to my stomach.

“What?”

This makes no sense.

“Then why did he stay in Canada?”

He scoffs. “What do you think?”

It hits me.

He stayed for me, didn’t he?

Because he thought, one day, we’d find our way back to each other.

“But… why didn’t he just tell me that? That’s all I ever wanted.”

“He said it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

I’d love to deny it, but deep inside, I know he’s right. Even if he had come up to me and said he was going to stop looking for Marcus, would I have been able to believe him? To trust him again? Would I have taken him back after my father’s accident, the lies, the letter, the toxic behavior? We were broken beyond repair. Not to mention that, if I hadn’t left him for good, he might’ve never stopped looking in the first place. Maybe he needed that push, to really lose everything to want to change.

“He said one day he’d be someone who deserved you, but first he had to get his shit together. He couldn’t do that if he lived in the past.”

Judy’s sister’s speech crawls back inside my brain. You don’t find love—love finds you. Even if you don’t want it to, even if the timing isn’t right, even if the odds aren’t in your favor. What’s meant to be yours will always find you, so you might as well stop running.

I’ve been running from this, from us, for so long. I don’t want to run anymore. I want to let him catch me.

“Did he say anything weird to you recently?” I’m grasping at straws at this point.

He stops to think.

“He did say one thing yesterday.”

“What?”

“I think it really hit him that you weren’t getting back together last night. He got drunk and said if he’d really lost you, he had some unfinished business to take care of. He talked about a lead he never followed up on. Something about a motel, I think.”

The motel. Of course.

“Thank you.”