"Why did you really come out here? What made you leave?"
I don't talk about this. Not with anyone. The few people who visit—family, old friends passing through—know better than to ask.
But Demi isn't asking out of idle curiosity, she's asking because she wants to understand, and somehow that makes it harder to deflect.
I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees, staring into the fire like it might give me the words I need.
"I didn't leave to run away," I say slowly. "At least, I didn't think I was. I came out here because I wanted something different. Something real. I was tired of the noise, the expectations, the constant pressure to be someone I wasn't."
"So you built this."
"Yeah. I built this." I glance around the cabin, taking in the rough-hewn walls, the simple furniture, the life I've carved out with my own hands. "And for a long time, it was enough."
"But?"
I exhale, long and slow. "But I wasn't always alone."
Demi doesn't say anything, but I feel her shift slightly, turning more fully toward me.
"I had someone. For a while. She tried to make it work out here." I pause, the memories surfacing despite my best efforts to keep them buried. "But the isolation got to her. She said she felt like she was disappearing."
"What happened?"
"She left. She told me she couldn't do it anymore, that she needed more than I could give without leaving this place. And I understood. I didn't want to, but I did."
Demi is quiet for a long moment, and I can feel her processing, weighing what I've said. When she speaks, her voice is soft. "Did you love her?"
"I thought I did. But looking back, I think I loved the idea of her more than I loved her. I loved the idea of not being alone. Of having someone to share this with." I scrub a hand over my face, feeling the roughness of my beard, the exhaustion that's been building all evening. "When she left, I decided it was easier to just accept that this life isn't meant to be shared, that loving someone meant eventually being left."
"So you closed yourself off."
"Yeah. I did."
"And you've been alone ever since."
"Yeah."
I expect her to argue, to tell me I'm wrong, to offer some optimistic platitude about how the right person wouldn't leave.
But she doesn't. She just nods, her expression thoughtful and a little sad, like she understands exactly what I'm saying because she's felt it too.
"I get it," she says quietly. "The closing off part. I've done it too, just in a different way."
I look at her, and she's staring at her hands, fingers twisting together in her lap.
"After enough times of being left," she continues, "you start to wonder if maybe the problem is you, if maybe you're just not the kind of person people choose to keep. And it's easier to stop trying than to keep putting yourself out there and getting hurt."
She's right. That's exactly what I did, I stopped trying, I told myself it was a choice, that I was protecting myself, but really I was just scared.
"You deserve better than that," I say, and I mean it.
She looks up at me, her eyes wide and a little glassy, like she's fighting back tears. "So do you."
The silence that follows is thick with things neither of us knows how to say. The fire crackles. The wind howls. And Demi shivers slightly, pulling my flannel shirt tighter around her body.
I move closer without thinking.
She doesn't pull away. If anything, she leans slightly toward me, and that small movement feels like permission.
