“And you knew I wanted to get married.”
I’m struck speechless.
His voice drops low. “How many times did I ask you when I could propose? When I could ask you to marry me, and you would say yes?”
“You asked me that when we werekids.”
“And you said, when you finished university. And I took that to mean your undergraduate program. So you get your degree, you have graduation, and it’s a big fucking moment. And I know better. I know not to make that moment about us, because that moment is entirely about you. I know that, and I am so fucking proud of you, but there was a small part of me that, deep down, was like, yes, fucking finally, now we can talk about the future. Except when I tried, you said, ahhh,maybe after medical school. Do you remember? And then we had the same conversation again when you were looking at residencies. There was never any space in our relationship to talk about how fucking earth shattering it felt formewhen every conversation about marriage was pushing it off into the future?—”
“But I didn’t say,” I interrupt him, because this isn’t fair. “I didn’t say, you couldn’t ask me to—I never said I didn’t want to get engaged. It was just a wedding that I thought we should wait on. And I don’t remember fighting about any of that.”
“We didn’t.” He growls low under his breath. “We fought about other stuff, and then you would get into the groove of a new program, a new rotation, a new placement, and it would all be forgotten.”
“By me, but apparently not by you.” My chest hurts. “Is that why we never got engaged?”
The question catches at something inside me. Because, yeah—maybe we weren’t officially engaged, but we felt engaged. We wereus. All the way through med school. And when I got my residency in the same city, it felt like the universe was finally giving us a clear path to a home and a future for our little family of two.
“Garrett… I didn’t know.”
“Yeah. That’s on me. I never told you. Because the time was never right and the goalposts kept moving. But most of the time, I was happy and so it was fine.”
My heart lodges in my throat. “So what changed?”
“At some point this past year… I realizedyouweren’t happy. And that was unbearable.”
Chapter 8
Garrett
The rest of the drive is completely silent.
I know I shouldn’t have said all of that, but especially the part about her not being happy. As the words tumbled out, she practically crawled inside herself, getting smaller inside her puffy winter coat, turning her face to the dark window.
There’s such a thing as too much honesty.
Fuck.
But what’s done is done.
I need to find a way to salvage the holidays for her. Rory loves Christmas, her whole family loves Christmas and goes over the top for it. I forced her into my truck and made her to talk about something that should be left as water under the bridge—done and dusted months ago.
As we pass the sign on the highway that Pine Harbour is ahead, I say, “I’ll come in with you. I’ll tell them that we’re not together anymore, and I’ll one hundred percent take the responsibility. I won’t leave until they accept that.”
“Oh, great,” she says, staring out the window. “Just how I want my Christmas holidays to begin—with an awkwardand frustrating conversation.” She pauses. “But it’ll be good to rip the Band-aid off, and then go our separate ways.”
Rip the Band-aid off, I repeat to myself.
We turn off the highway. Mac’s Diner is lit up, and the parking lot is full. Maybe I’ll loop back there to grab dinner after I drop Rory off.
Main Street is quiet, all the stores closed now for the night.
At the end of the main drag there’s a hill that separates the town from the harbour itself. During the day, we’d see the wild, frigid waves of Lake Huron crashing against the shore, but now that it’s dark, the lake is just an endless stretch of darkness.
Like we’re driving to the edge of the world.
Growing up, that’s what it felt like for sure.
At the bottom of the hill, at the T-junction of Main Street and Old Whiskey Harbour Road—officially just Harbour Road now but nobody who grew up in Pine Harbour calls it that—is my cousin Josh’s garage. Across from it is the marina, and behind that is a long-abandoned motel that features a new “Re-opening soon!” sign. A spark of progress in our little hometown.
