She said she loved me.
She said I made her believe she wasn’t too much.
And I let her drive away. Pushed her away, with my own two hands, because loving her felt more dangerous than losing her.
The first crack appears in my chest, small but spreading. The careful numbness I’ve maintained for four years begins to splinter. All the feelings I’ve been holding at bay—grief, loneliness, the desperate aching need to be known by another person—come flooding in like water through a breached dam.
I think about Jimmy. About what he’d say if he could see me now.
You’re an idiot, McGrath. You had something good and you threw it away because you’re scared. We didn’t die so you could spend the rest of your life hiding.
He’d be right. They’d all be right.
For the first time since my team died, I feel tears on my face.
And I have no one to blame but myself.
Chapter 14
MARCELLA
The road blurs through my tears.
I shouldn’t be driving like this—vision compromised, hands shaking on the wheel, sobs catching in my throat every few seconds. But I can’t stop. Can’t pull over and fall apart on the side of a mountain road. If I stop moving, I’ll turn around. I’ll drive back up that winding path and beg him to change his mind, and I refuse to beg.
I’m done begging men to love me.
The switchbacks are every bit as treacherous as Finn warned. Ice lurks in the shadows, and my rental SUV fishtails once, twice, before I learn to take the curves slower. My headlights catch the guardrail—or lack thereof—on the outer edge, revealing the stomach-dropping void beyond. One wrong move and I’d tumble fifteen hundred feet into the valley below.
The irony isn’t lost on me—even now, even after everything, he was still trying to protect me. Still giving me practical advice fora trip he forced me to take. His last words weren’t “I love you” or “I’m sorry” or anything that might have given me hope. They were “drive carefully” and “watch for ice.”
Bastard.
Wonderful, broken, cowardly bastard.
I make it to the main road without driving off a cliff, which feels like an accomplishment given my current state. The town of Timberline Falls appears in the distance—a cluster of buildings nestled in the valley, lights beginning to flicker on as evening descends. I pull into the first hotel I see, a modest place called the Mountain View Inn, and sit in the parking lot until my hands stop trembling enough to unbuckle my seatbelt.
My phone has seventeen missed calls from Coralyn.
I hit redial before I can talk myself out of it.
She answers on the first ring. “Oh my God, Marce. I’ve been freaking out. Are you okay? Are you dead? Why weren’t you answering?”
“I’m not dead.” My voice comes out raw, wrecked. “I’m at a hotel in town.”
“You sound like you’ve been crying. What happened? Is this about the wrong address? Because I swear, I double-checked, and I don’t know how I messed that up?—”
“Cora, I say, hating the hardness in my tone. “I need you to listen. Can you do that?”
Silence. Then, softer: “Yeah. Yeah, of course. I’m listening.”
So I tell her everything.
The wrong cabin. The storm. Finn McGrath with his gray eyes and his handmade furniture and his soul-deep damage. The way he looked at me like I was something precious. The way he touched me like I was worth worshipping. The three days that somehow contained more genuine connection than three years of my marriage.
And then the ending. The brutal, efficient way he packed me up and sent me away. The walls slamming shut behind his eyes. The goodbye that felt like a door closing forever.
By the time I finish, I’m crying again—ugly, heaving sobs that fog up the windows of my rental car.
