“Somehow.”
“Did you purchase our insurance package?”
“Yeah.”
She exhales like I just saved her from a legal nightmare. “Then everything should be covered.”
I end the call and sit there, blinking.
“Well?” Tish asks, one brow raised.
“I think I just survived a full-on natural disaster and came out with zero debt.” I pause. “Emotionally? Still wrecked. But fiscally? Not bad.”
Tish grins. “Hell yes.”
But even as we laugh, it doesn’t reach all the way down. Not when my heart’s still stranded somewhere in Wyoming with a man who doesn’t even know I’m gone. Or maybe he does know by now. Maybe he just doesn’t care.
“What’s next?” Tish asks, gently nudging me with her elbow.
I stare down at the laptop like it might bite. “I guess now’s a good time to see if there’s a contact email.”
“You’ve got this,” she whispers, but I feel the tremble in my fingers as I type his name.
The second I hit enter, his photo floods the screen.
God, he looks so good. The image is new. He’s standing on the ranch, wind tousling his hair, flannel rolled up at the sleeves, guitar case in hand. The kind of photo that makes you pause mid-scroll and feel something.
I can’t breathe.
I shove the laptop away like it just burned me. “I don’t think I can do this.”
Without a word, Tish pulls it closer to her, humming under her breath as she navigates the site.
“No email,” she murmurs, squinting at the screen. “But there’s a mailing address.” She blinks. “Who the hell lists a mailing address in this century?”
“Sam,” I say, voice hollow. “That’s who.”
“You want me to write it down?”
I nod, even though my stomach knots just thinking about it. “It’s better than nothing.”
She grabs a pen and scribbles it down on a sticky note in her neat, looping handwriting, then places it gently on the coffee table like it’s something fragile.
Her eyes catch on the site again. “Says here he finished an album. A single’s dropping next week.”
That’s what undoes me.
Not the mailing address. Not the photo.
But that.
The world is moving on.
He’s moving on.
And I’m still here, stranded in a grief I made worse by leaving.
The sob hits so hard and fast, I can’t stop it. My shoulders shake as I cry like a child who just lost their way in the dark. Tish pulls me into her arms, holding me like she’s trying to stitch me back together.
