I kept going, my voice steadier than I felt.“For a while, he was… everything.He said the right things.Promised the right future.And I believed him because I wanted to.Because I wanted to believe someone could wantme, not my family, not the Morgan name, not the idea of me.”
A bitter laugh slipped out before I could stop it.“Funny, right?People used to want me for my last name.Now I’m the name they whisper behind their hands.”
Brody’s jaw tightened, his eyes dark.“Cass… you’re not the whispers.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I shook my head and skated away a little, letting the cold sting my cheeks.
When he caught up, his voice was lower, softer.“You know I get it, right?”
I glanced over, skeptical.
He smiled faintly, the faint indent of his dimple showing itself under his scruff.“Not the Andrew part.But the pressure.The need to prove yourself.I went to college because I thought I had to, thought I had to be more than the farm, more than Adam’s kid brother, more than a Palmer.I picked a girl, whom I realized too late that I didn’t even love, because she looked right on paper.Did everything I thought I was supposed to.”
His breath came out in a soft laugh, tinged with regret.“And now?I want none of it.I came home, started working with Adam, and am working on building my woodshop from the ground up.Turns out, the quiet life I ran from is the one I wanted all along.”
"Isn't it crazy how we fight so hard not to be who we were supposed to be all along?"I mused.
Brody hummed, then laughed, "I majored in fucking accounting, Cass."
I laughed so hard that I snorted, thinking about Brody sitting in a grey, sterile office.Embarrassed by the sound that had just escaped me, I tried to cover my face, which I knew was red and not because of the cold.
Brody tugged my hand down and held it, staring at me with a grin that reminded me so much of when we were just kids.
Something unknotted inside me, the same thing that always did when I was around him, like he saw past the noise and straight into me.
We skated until our feet ached, until our cheeks burned from the cold, until laughter replaced the heaviness pressing between us.
Then we sat on the back of his truck, sipping hot chocolate from the thermos he’d packed.The silence stretched, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.It was… easy.Nice.
I pulled my knees up, resting my chin on them.“I don’t know what I want next,” I admitted softly.“I’ve been ghostwriting so long it feels like my voice doesn’t matter, that it is no longer my own.I don’t know if I evenhavea story worth telling.”
Brody leaned back enough so he could see my face, his shoulder brushing mine just enough to ground me.“Then write it anyway,” he said simply.“Write it for you.Not for anyone else.Find your voice again.”
I turned to him, searching his face, but he wasn’t looking at me.He stared out over the frozen pond as if he were discussing more than just writing.
For the first time in months, I felt the slightest flicker of something I hadn’t dared let myself feel.
Hope.
It wasn’t much, just a flicker.But after months of drowning in shadows, even a flicker felt like fire.
Chapter 33
January was an exercise in quiet healing.
Some mornings, that meant I made it as far as the kitchen table and sat there in my dad’s flannel, sleeves swallowed over my hands, while Mom slid a mug toward me and pretended not to count how many sips I took.Dad worked his crossword, pencil tapping in that steady rhythm that has always meantwe’re okay,and every time I looked up, he was already looking back at me with that soft, steadyI’m herelook that doesn’t need words.
Other mornings, I didn’t make it past my room.I curled up on top of the duvet with a wool blanket and my journals, and I wrote until my fingers cramped and the pages buckled under ink.My therapist had given me homework: third-person, objective.A timeline with no romance, no excuses, just dates and evidence.When we met, when he said this, when I believed that, when he pushed, when I folded.Seeingher...me, on paper like that, hurt in a clean, necessary way.It made the truth unavoidable: he had always known how to pull me back.It had always been a manipulation.
The house moved around me like a slow tide.Clara began to stand a little straighter.She and Mason went to therapy, initially separately, then together.I helped where I could: I worked on spreadsheets, reconciled accounts, and made calls to vendors he was too embarrassed to face, so I could untangle the mess Mel had left behind.Every small win felt like oxygen.A reversed charge here.A client who agreed to try again because 'theassistantwas the problem', not the work.Mason would textthank you at1:13 a.m., and I’d stare at it too long, hating that gratitude had to live alongside the wreckage.
But isn't that life sometimes, you have to go through the bad times to recognize the good ones for what they are.
Chase barged in most weekends like an avalanche on purpose.“Get up, we’re driving,” he’d announce, tossing my boots at me and pretending not to hear my protests.He’d take me to the lookout above Hawthorne Ridge with two coffees and a bag of still-warm donuts, and we’d sit on the tailgate in the kind of silence that let the sky do the talking.When he finally spoke, it was always small, ordinary things; Mrs.Hanley’s cat got stuck in a dryer vent; he stitched up Dean’s hand when he lost a fight with a hay baler; Dad cheated on the crossword (he didn’t), until I forgot to be braced for the big things.
Dad and Chase were concerned with my lack of appetite and nausea, so they strongly suggested I get a physical, which included a pregnancy test.I knew I wasn't pregnant or sick, not really.I was just...I don't even know how to put it into words.Disappointed in myself, sick over what I avoided, what I missed, what I let him do...take.
My body had to go through healing, just like my mind and heart.
