My fingers traced the dedication again, lingering over the words as if touching them might somehow pull him closer, across time and space.
The snow outside had long melted, but inside my chest, it was still winter. And for the first time since that week in the cabin, I felt a little flutter of hope.
Maybe… just maybe… I would run away again.
This was stupid.
Ludicrous.
Fanciful and dumb.
It had been three weeks since the book release as my car chugged up the hill to the cabin.
Almost four months since I’d seen him.
Heard him.
And here I was, absolutely stupid for following a dedication in a book like a goddamn treasure map.
The gravel crunched beneath my tires, the sound startling in the quiet mountain air.
For a second, I just sat there, engine idling, hands locked on the steering wheel like maybe that would stop me from shaking. My chest ached with something I couldn’t name — hope, maybe. Or fear. Maybe both.
The cabin looked different in the spring light — less like a secret and more like a promise. Wildflowers had started to sprout near the steps, little pockets of color pushing through where the snow had once been.
I cut the engine. The silence that followed was deafening.
And then — before I could even reach for the handle — the front door flew open.
Silas burst out onto the porch, bare feet, flannel hanging openover a threadbare T-shirt, hair a wild mess like he’d been pacing for hours. For a heartbeat, he just stared — eyes wide, unbelieving — and then he started down the steps.
He didn’t say my name. He didn’t need to. It was written all over his face.
I stepped out of the car on legs that barely wanted to hold me. The air between us crackled, heavy and sharp, like the seconds before a summer storm.
And then he was running.
I barely had time to breathe before his arms were around me — solid, desperate, trembling. He hauled me off the ground, spinning me once, twice, until the world blurred and all I could do was laugh and cry and hold on. My hands fisted in his shirt, his face buried against my neck, and for a moment everything just… stopped.
When he set me down, his palms framed my face, thumbs brushing tears I hadn’t realized were falling. His voice broke on a whisper. “I thought you wouldn’t come.”
“I almost didn’t,” I breathed. “You broke my heart, Silas Reed.”
“I know.” His forehead pressed to mine, eyes squeezed shut. “I’ve been trying to write my way out of that moment for months, and I couldn’t. I didn’t have the words. I just — God, Colette — I thought leaving was the right thing. That you’d be better off if I didn’t stay.”
“And?”
His laugh was a wrecked, beautiful thing. “And I was wrong. I’ve never been more wrong about anything in my life.”
I reached up, tracing the scar at the edge of his jaw, the one I’d memorized with my lips that night. “Then say it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for leaving. I’m sorry for being a coward. I’m sorry for every morning I woke up and didn’t have you next to me.”
Tears burned my throat. “You don’t get to fix this with pretty words.”
“I know,” he whispered. “I’m not asking for forever. I’m just asking for another chance to try.”
And maybe that should’ve made me angry. Maybe I should’ve walked back to my car and driven away. But his eyes were the same lost I’d felt for months — aching and afraid and wanting so badly to believe we hadn’t imagined all of it.
