Nico squeezes my hand, her laughter fading into something fiercer. “He’s scared, Snow. You won.”
I did win. I walked out of that house with my head held high. I stood up to him. I got my stuff back. And now he’s the one trying to settle quickly, trying to make this go away before it gets messier.
“So here’s what I need you to hear,” Nico says, and her voice shifts to something fierce and loving. “Preston spent six years convincing you that you were fragile. That you needed him. That you couldn’t trust yourself. But you were never fragile, Snow. You walked away from a cheating husband. You stood up to him in that house. You’re building a whole new life from scratch. None of that is fragile.”
Her eyes lock on mine. “The only power Preston has left is making you too scared to try again. Don’t give him that.”
The words hit me in the chest, sharp and true. I’ve been so focused on protecting myself from getting hurt again that I haven’t considered the cost of never trying. Of building walls so high that nothing good can get in, either.
“You’re right,” I whisper.
“I know I am.” She grins. “Now, let me be clear. You take your time. You make Mr Cardboard Cutout show you, with his actions, not his words, that he’s the real deal. And if he’s not? If he turns out to be just another pretty, empty box?”
She pauses, and her Brooklyn accent thickens with a protective rage that makes me love her more than ever. “If he hurts you, I know where to hide bodies. And I have three very loyal brothers who will be more than happy to help me dig.”
A real, genuine laugh bursts out of me. “I love you, you know that?”
“Of course you do. I’m amazing.” She refills both our wine glasses. “Now. When are you seeing him again?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “He said he’d wait for me to be ready. So I guess… whenever I reach out?”
“And are you? Ready?”
Am I? I think about the way he looked at his photographs. The way he listened when I talked about my business plan. The way he held my hand and didn’t push for more. “Not ready foranything serious,” I say slowly. “But ready to see where this goes.”
“Good.” Nico raises her glass. “To trying.”
“To trying,” I echo, and we clink our glasses together.
Chapter 14
Wyatt
The Sunday after the art gallery is a quiet one. I spend the morning in my workshop, the familiar, grounding scent of sawdust and wood stain filling my loft. I’m building a bookshelf, a simple, sturdy piece made of solid oak. The work is methodical, precise. It requires patience and a steady hand. It’s a physical manifestation of the way I’m trying to approach this thing with Snow. One careful measurement, one perfect joint at a time. But my mind isn’t on the bookshelf. It’s on her. On the look in her eyes when she saw my photographs. On the way she felt so fragile and so strong, in the moment before the teenagers shattered our quiet world.
By the afternoon, the restlessness is a physical thing, a buzzing under my skin that the familiar work can’t soothe. I clean up the workshop, wipe the sawdust from my hands, and initiate the Sunday ritual. A video call with my family.
Their faces pop onto my laptop screen, a chaotic, loving collage of my life back in Texas. My mama is in her favorite armchair. Her smile is the first thing I see, a warm, genuine thing that has been the anchor of my life for as long as Ican remember. My dad gives a thumbs-up from his workshop, a smudge of grease on his cheek, and a pair of safety glasses pushed up on his forehead. And my younger brother, Tyler, calls in from his own apartment in Austin, his hair a mess, a half-empty coffee cup in his hand.
“There he is,” my dad says, his voice a familiar, comforting rumble. “How’s the bookshelf coming, son? Did you use the dovetail joints we talked about?”
“Of course, I did,” I say, a real smile spreading across my face. “Wouldn’t want the woodworking police to come and arrest me.”
“Did they make you say ‘Ahoy, matey’ this time, or just ‘Arrr’?” Tyler chimes in, his voice thick with sarcasm. He’s referring to my latest modeling gig, a pirate-themed cover that has become the new running joke in our family.
“No dialogue this time,” I say, playing along. “But I did have to pose with a live parrot. It kept trying to take a chunk out of the giant clip-on earring they gave me.”
Tyler laughs so hard he drowns out whatever Dad is saying for a bit.
“—and once I get the new carburetor in, she’ll sing,” Dad is saying, mid-thought about the ’69 Camaro he’s restoring, when Tyler finally stops laughing.
“Will she sing loud enough to drown out the leaky faucet, David?” Mama asks from just off-screen, before her face pops into his frame in the workshop, smiling sweetly.
Tyler laughs again. “Don’t hold your breath, Mama. He’s been ‘getting to it’ since the Cowboys were good.”
“Hey!” Dad protests, genuinely wounded. “We had a good fourth quarter!”
Mama just shakes her head and looks into the camera at me. “How are you, honey? Really? You look thin.”
