“I thought I could,” I say finally. “I wanted to. But the roads are clear now, and you’re about to drive back to your real life, and I—” I stop. Swallow. “I can’t follow you there, Marcella. I can barely handle going into town.”
“Then I’ll come here.”
“And give up everything? Your apartment, your friends, your community? For a man who might never be able to take you to dinner without having a breakdown?” I shake my head. “I won’t let you do that.”
“It’s not your choice to make.”
“Someone has to make it,” I say. “Someone has to be realistic about what this is and what it isn’t. And I’d rather break bothour hearts now than watch you slowly grow to resent me over months or years.”
She stares at me for a long moment. The tears are falling now, sliding down her cheeks, and every drop feels like an accusation.
“You’re not protecting me,” she says quietly. “You’re protecting yourself. You’re so afraid of losing someone else that you won’t even try.”
The words hit like bullets. Every one of them true.
“Maybe,” I admit. “But at least this way I know how it ends. At least I’m in control of something.”
“Is that what you want? Control? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re just alone.” Her voice breaks on the last word. “You built this beautiful life up here, Finn. This sanctuary. But it’s not a sanctuary—it’s a prison. And you’re the only one with the key.”
I don’t have an answer for that. She’s right. She’s completely, devastatingly right.
But being right doesn’t change anything. Being right doesn’t make me brave enough to reach for what she’s offering.
“Goodbye, Marcella.” The words taste like ashes. “Drive safe.”
She stands there for a moment longer, searching my face for something. A crack in the armor. A sign that I’m going to change my mind.
She doesn’t find it.
Or maybe she does, and she’s finally seeing me for what I am: a coward dressed up in soldier’s clothing, too damaged and too scared to fight for something that matters.
“Goodbye, Finn.” Her voice is barely audible. “I hope someday you realize what you’re throwing away.”
She gets in the car. Closes the door. Starts the engine.
I stand there as she backs up, turns around, begins the slow drive down the mountain road. I stand there as the SUV grows smaller, navigating the first switchback, then the second. I stand there until her taillights disappear around the final curve and there’s nothing left but tire tracks in the snow.
She’s gone.
The silence that follows is absolute. No wind, no birds, no radio chatter. Just me and the mountains and the crushing weight of what I’ve just done.
I walk back to the ranger station on numb legs. Open the door. Step inside.
It smells like her. Bread and vanilla and something warm that I’ll never be able to scrub out no matter how hard I try. The couch where she sat, the kitchen where she cooked, the bedroom where we?—
I can’t think about that. Can’t let myself remember the way she looked in my arms, the way she said my name, the way she made me feel like maybe, maybe I could be whole again.
She’s gone. I made sure of it.
The ranger station stretches around me, empty and silent. The same walls I’ve lived inside for four years. The same furniture I built with my own hands. The same isolation I chose because it was safer than risking loss.
It doesn’t feel safe anymore.
It feels like a tomb.
I sink into my leather chair, the one I sit in every night, and stare at the dying fire. The cold is already creeping in, but I can’t bring myself to add more wood. Can’t bring myself to do anything except sit here and feel the full weight of what I’ve just destroyed.
Three days. That’s all it took for her to change everything. Three days of her warmth filling these walls, her laughter echoing off the rafters, her presence making this place feel like something other than a monument to my isolation.
