With my parents, there’s finality; I grieve the phone calls I’ll never make, the grandkids they won’t meet.
With Chloe, it’s a selfish choice I made—the farm over her—and the hurt I put in her heart. It was a reckless mix of poor timing and the inability to stand up to my father. And I broke us.
Owen’s voice threads through:You’re getting the one thing most people don’t. A second chance.
“I don’t know what to say,” I admit, my voice unsteady. “That moment is my biggest regret.”
She turns toward me, her beautiful green eyes glossy with tears. “It’s funny. I used to rehearse speeches. I thought that maybe I’d scream at you, or we’d do the whole dramatic ‘meant to be’ thing like in Abby’s romances. And here we are.” She gestures at the quiet kitchen. “I don’t know what to say either.”
I keep my hands at my sides because my instinct is to yank her to show me and show her exactly how I feel about her. But we can’t kiss this away. Band-Aids don’t heal old scars.
We owe ourselves this conversation, especially if we want something lasting.
“You know what? I do know what to say.” She squares her shoulders. “I want arealanswer about why you did it. Not a bunch of mumbled excuses. Was I not enough? Was there someone else? Was it really the farm?”
Her chin quivers with emotion, but she stays ramrod straight, like an old tree in a storm. I wish she knew how strongshe is, just as much as I wish I didn’t have a hand in how she got here.
It cracks open my chest. She’s carried these questions for a decade.
“There was never anyone else.” My voice breaks on the last word, so the rest comes out quieter. “And there hasn’t been since.”
Her eyes close, and tears finally slip free. With the fight gone out of her, she droops, and I take a step forward.
“So which is it, then?” she whispers. “Was I not good enough, or was the farm more important?”
No version of this comes out pretty. I’d made a decision based on pressure from my Dad, not from the heart. And no amount of apologies can undo that.
But I’m willing to try.
I never wanted to add to the voices in her head that told her she didn’t belong or that she didn’t measure up. I want to be the voice that tells her no one comes close. That she’s so valuable, she belongs in a safe.
There’s no one like her.
“I was a dumb kid,” I say. “That doesn’t excuse anything, but it’s the honest truth. You mattered so much to me; I think that’s why my dad made me think I had to choose. Maybe he saw how afraid I was that I couldn’t love you and keep this place at the same time.”
Her eyes latch onto mine, the greens of her irises like emeralds against the red rims, dark lashes fanning around them.
She’s beautiful even in the tough moments.
Especially in the tough moments.
She exhales. “What about now?”
“I’ll die trying to do both. I’ve lived a decade without you, and I don’t want to do it again.” It’s a scary, raw truth. But shedeserves that from me. “If I ever had to choose, I would pick you.”
A beat passes. Then she steps closer, her palm cupping my cheek. I lean into it immediately as all the tension goes out of me all at once.
“I’d never ask you to choose, Aiden,” she whispers. “I know how much you love this place. That’s why I’m here, remember?”
We got married to save this place, not fall in love again, and create a whole new future. But I think I’m failing at that, because I don’t think I ever stopped loving her.
I draw her to my chest, closing my eyes in relief.
“You’ve always had a place in my life, Chloe,” I murmur. “Not because you worked for it or checked all the boxes. It was yours from the first time we talked, and every moment between. Because you’reyou. Don’t let the fact that I let my Dad win reflect on how valuable you were to me. You still are.”
She tucks herself closer to me, like maybe she believes everything I’m telling her. I hope she does.
“I don’t know what to do with you being this honest,” she whispers. “You weren’t ever this open before.”
