“It is.”
She shifted then, just enough that her back pressed fully into my chest, her head tipping until it rested against my jaw. Her warmth was steady, grounding.
“I understand,” she whispered. “I wasn’t enough for him either. I tried to be, but—” she stopped herself, shaking her head. “He made me feel like the worst version of myself. You know?”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “I know.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty this time. It was full — of what we’d lost, what we’d found, and what neither of us had been brave enough to name.
Her heartbreak fresh, her wounds still bleeding. Mine older, scarred and puckered.
After a long moment, I tightened my arm around her waist. Not to possess. Just to stay. And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I was running.
She didn’t say anything else, and she didn’t have to. Every breath between us said what words couldn’t. Just for a moment, it felt like the world was small enough to hold in my hands.
Then my phone buzzed against the floorboards.
Not a little buzz, either. The kind that echoed in the quiet, like a reminder from somewhere far, far outside the cabin walls — that other life, the one with deadlines and expectations and people who didn’t care if I’d bled myself dry to escape them.
Colette stiffened just slightly, pulling back just enough to glance over her shoulder.
“Was that…?”
I cursed under my breath and reached blindly toward the edge of the mattress, fingers brushing cold metal. One look at the screen was enough to ice the inside of my lungs.
PAGES DUE — FIRST HALF
Of course it was.
Of course the moment I tried to breathe, the universe reminded me I wasn’t allowed. Colette’s voice was small, curious in a way that felt suddenly dangerous. “Are you gonna get that?”
I hesitated. There was a whole practiced speech I should give — an explanation about deadlines or revisions or the new contract everyone kept pretending I cared about. But all I could feel was thewarmth where her back had been pressed against me, already fading.
“It can wait,” I said.
And it could. But the world outside was already clawing its way back in — threatening to make everything in here feel temporary.
Even her.
CHAPTER 21
Colette
It wasn’t eventhe ringtone — just that horrible, insistent vzzzzt, like the sound of a zipper being torn open in the dark, exposing a truth nobody was ready to see.
I felt it in him before he even moved. The way his body went still. The way his arms loosened around me like he was worried he was holding on too tight to something that didn’t belong to him.
I rolled onto my back slowly, glimpsing the phone in his hand.
PAGES DUE
The calendar notification blinked across the screen like a reminder: Silas Reed, beloved author, 51 years old, proper adult with a real life you know nothing about.
Reality slapped me so hard I nearly laughed.
“Everything alright??” I asked lightly, tucking the tangled hair behind my ear in a way I hoped looked casual. Like I wasn’t suddenly too aware of the fact that I was lying under a blanket with a man I barely knew — a man with a mortgage, and probably cholesterol medicine, and a body thatstillfelt like a damn miracle against mine.
Silas ran a hand down his face, the other still clutching that rectangle of intrusion. “Deadlines.” His voice was rough, like he’dscraped it off the bottom of a well. “Not that I can send anything out, though.”
