“Then tell me.”
“I have nightmares.” The words come out like bullets. “Bad ones. The kind where I wake up not knowing where I am. The kind where I’ve hurt people trying to fight off enemies that aren’t there.” I watch her face for the flinch, the withdrawal. It doesn’t come. “I have panic attacks in crowds. I can’t do parties, concerts, anywhere with too many people and not enough exits. I haven’t been to a restaurant in three years because the noise and the strangers and the?—”
“Finn.”
“I’m broken, Marcella. Fundamentally. And you deserve someone who can give you a real life. Someone who can take youto dinner without having a breakdown. Someone who doesn’t wake up screaming at 3 AM.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. The fire crackles. Outside, the wind whispers against the windows, gentler than it’s been in days.
“My ex told me I was too much,” she says finally. “Too loud, too passionate, too everything. And I believed him, for a long time. I made myself smaller and quieter because I thought that’s what love required.”
I don’t see where she’s going with this.
“It took me years to realize that wasn’t love. That was control disguised as concern.” She meets my gaze, and there’s something fierce in her expression. “You’re doing the same thing, Finn. You’re deciding what I can handle without asking me. You’re making yourself less—pushing me away—because you think that’s what’s best for me.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it?”
The question hangs in the air between us.
“I’m not trying to control you,” I say, but the words sound weak even to my own ears.
“No, you’re trying to protect me. From yourself.” She shakes her head slowly. “But I don’t need protection, Finn. I need honesty. I need you to tell me what you’re afraid of instead of deciding for both of us that it’s not worth trying.”
My hands curl into fists at my sides. “I’m afraid of losing you.”
The admission tears out of me like shrapnel.
“I’m afraid of having this—having you—and then watching it fall apart. I’m afraid of being a burden you grow to resent. I’m afraid of loving you and losing you the way I lost them, and I can’t—” My voice cracks. “I can’t survive that again.”
The silence that follows is deafening.
Then Marcella closes the distance between us, takes my face in her hands, and forces me to meet her eyes.
“I can’t promise you forever,” she says softly. “Nobody can. But I can promise you right now. I can promise I’m willing to try. The question is—are you?”
I want to say yes. Want to grab onto this moment with both hands and never let go.
But the fear is there, cold and familiar, whispering all the ways this ends in pain.
“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “I don’t know if I can.”
Something flickers across her face—disappointment, maybe, or resignation. But she doesn’t pull away.
“Then think about it,” she says quietly. “The storm’s not done yet. We have time.”
She releases me and steps back, and the distance between us feels like miles.
I watch her walk to the kitchen, start making breakfast like nothing happened. Like I didn’t just admit I might not be brave enough to fight for us. She moves with the same confidence she always has—cracking eggs, finding the pan, humming softly under her breath—but there’s something different now. A guardedness that wasn’t there before.
I did that. I put that wall up between us.
The ranger station feels colder than it has all week. The fire burns in the hearth, but I can’t feel its warmth. The coffee in my mug has gone cold, but I can’t bring myself to move.
Somewhere in the last three days, this woman became everything I didn’t know I was missing. And now, because I’m too broken and too scared to reach for her, I’m watching it slip away.
The worst part? I don’t know if I want her to stay or if it would be kinder for us both if she left.
