“Is this for me?” she asked.
“It was.”
“Can I read it?”
My heart twisted at the thought of her reading the words I’d written so long ago. Not because I didn’t mean them, but because I did. She deserved to move on and leave me in the past. Unsealing that letter would rip open wounds that had already healed.
“I don’t think you should. It’s too late.” I would have reached for it, but I didn’t want to move closer. Didn’t want her to see the man I’d become.
She didn’t open it. Just held it in both hands, like she wasn’t sure whether to tear it apart or tuck it into her coat and run.
“I don’t know what this is going to say,” she whispered. “But I want you to know that whatever you think you protected me from, you didn’t. You just broke me from a distance.”
Then she turned and walked out into the night, the letter clutched in her hand, and for the first time in eight years, I wondered if maybe I’d made the wrong decision after all.
I could have gone after her, and I almost did. Her tires spun on the snow-covered gravel, trying to catch. There was still time to pull open the door, run out, and tell her everything I’d been holding inside since the last time I saw her. But what good would that do?
She might be mad now, but it would pass. The shock and anger would give way, and she’d realize what I’d done was for the best.
I watched from the front window and waited. Her SUV fishtailed, then lurched forward, the headlights jerking sideways across the falling snow. The wind had picked up and was pushing the storm up the mountain like it had a personal vendetta against me. A smarter man would’ve opened the door. A braver one would’ve run after her.
Instead, I stood there like a coward, my palms pressed to the cold glass, watching her taillights wobble toward the bend in the road.
She’d make it. Scarlett always made it. At least, that’s what I told myself as her vehicle crawled forward another few feet. The tires spun, totally ineffective against the gathering snowpack. My chest tightened and my breath stuck. Every instinct in me screamed to move. To fix it. To help her. To not let her slip out of my life a second time. But she was safer without me. She always had been.
The back end of her SUV slid again, harder this time. She over corrected. A spray of snow shot up from her tires as the vehicle slid sideways toward the embankment.
“Shit.” I grabbed my coat, throwing it on as I barreled out the door.
The cold hit like a wall, but I barely felt it. Snowflakes stung my cheeks as I sprinted across the porch and down the steps, my boots sinking instantly into fresh powder.
“Scarlett!” I yelled, though the storm swallowed my words.
Her SUV lurched forward one last time. Then the engine revved and sputtered, the wheels cutting uselessly through the white.
I reached the driver-side door right as she shoved it open. Wind whipped her curls around her face, snow settling onto her coat and hair.
“Don’t,” she snapped before I could speak. “I’m fine.”
“You’re stuck.”
“I can get unstuck.”
“And go where?” I gestured toward my drive where her tire tracks had already been filled in with snow. “You’re not going anywhere tonight.”
She glared at me like I’d cut a deal with Mother Nature and summoned the winter storm myself. “I can walk.”
“It’s five miles to town.”
“I’ve walked farther.”
“Not in a storm that’s supposed to dump two feet overnight.” I stepped closer, gripping the edge of her door to keep it from swinging shut in the wind. “Don’t be stubborn.”
“Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do,” she bit out. “You lost that right a long time ago.”
Her words cut me to the bone, but I couldn’t afford to let my feelings show. “Come inside,” I said.
“No.” Her voice didn’t waver, even while her cheeks pinked from the cold and her teeth chattered so hard I could hear it over the wind.
