“I didn’t just lose you. I lost myself. For a long time.”
I moved closer, careful with every step. “I know.”
“I stopped hanging out with my friends. Threw myself into school and took the first job I was offered because I thought that’s what moving on looked like.”
“I didn’t want that for you.”
“But you caused it anyway.”
Silence stretched. I looked into the fire like it might hold the answers she craved, or at least a path forward.
“I know this doesn’t fix anything,” I said. “But I thought about you every day. Every night. I pictured your laugh, your voice. You were my light in a place that had none.”
She closed her eyes.
“And after I got out, when I started building again… I did it all with you in mind. The scholarship, the bookstore, the diner… Everything I helped this town rebuild, I did because I needed to believe you were still here. Still whole.”
Her breath hitched. “I wasn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought I was doing the right thing by leaving you alone.”
She opened her eyes, and something raw burned there. “You weren’t. But maybe—” She paused, biting her lip. “Maybe you can start now. By not hiding anymore.”
I knew what she meant. The town. My name. The legacy of secrets I’d kept.
“Scarlett—”
“You don’t have to make an announcement on the steps of town hall,” she said. “But if you want us to be anything again, you can’t keep hiding from everyone and everything. You can’t keep being a ghost.”
My heart thundered. “Okay,” I said.
Her brow arched. “Okay?”
“I’ll tell everyone that I’m the investor. That I’m the one who helped rebuild. I’ll stop hiding.”
She studied me like she wasn’t sure she believed me yet. “Even if some people hate you for it?”
I nodded. “They already do. But I won’t hide anymore, because you’re right. If we’re going to be anything again… I have to show up.”
Scarlett’s shoulders relaxed a little. Then she looked down at the letter in her hand again. “This doesn’t fix it.”
“I know.”
“But it’s a start.”
She walked past me, heading toward the bedroom and paused in the doorway. “Thank you for the sandwich,” she said, her voice so quiet I barely heard it.
“Anytime,” I replied.
Then she disappeared into the room, and the door clicked shut behind her.
I stood there, my heart still racing, wondering how the hell I was going to survive another night under the same roof without telling her how much I still loved her.
CHAPTER 4
SCARLETT
The storm had easedup a bit, but the ache in my chest hadn’t. By late afternoon, it was still snowing, a lazy, drifting kind of snowfall that looked pretty but didn’t hide the fact that I was trapped…. in this cabin…. with him… with everything I thought I’d buried suddenly staring me in the face.
