“I can’t do this again, Finn.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “I can’t let you in and have you decide I’m not worth the effort. I’ve already had one man make me feel like loving me was a burden. I can’t survive another.”
“I know.” I want to reach for her, but I don’t. She hasn’t given me permission. “I know I have to earn this. I know words aren’t enough.”
“They’re not.”
“Then tell me what is. Tell me what you need, and I’ll do it.”
She studies my face for a long moment. I stand still under her scrutiny, letting her look for whatever she needs to find.
“I need time,” she says finally. “I need you to prove this isn’t just panic and regret. I need to know that tomorrow, next week, next month, you’re still going to choose this. Choose me.”
“I will.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” I agree. “But I know I want to. And I know I’m willing to do whatever it takes to show you.”
Another long pause. Then she steps back from the doorway.
“Come inside,” she says. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”
Chapter 16
MARCELLA
The apartment door clicks shut behind him, and suddenly my familiar space feels completely different. Finn stands just inside the threshold, looking as out of place as a wolf in a pet shop. He’s breathing too fast, his hands clenched at his sides, and I realize—really realize—what it cost him to come here.
Denver. Cities. Crowds. Everything that triggers his worst anxiety, and he drove through all of it for me.
“Sit,” I say, gesturing to the couch. “I’ll make tea. And then we’re going to talk.”
He nods and lowers himself onto my secondhand sofa, looking too large for the space, too wild for my small Denver apartment. I escape to the kitchen and take my time with the kettle, letting my hands shake where he can’t see them.
I bring two mugs back to the living room and hand him one before settling on the opposite end of the couch. The distance feels necessary. Safe.
“Talk,” I say.
So he does.
He tells me about the empty ranger station, how it felt like a tomb the moment my taillights disappeared. About calling Moira, and what she told him—Jimmy’s words at his homecoming, the fear that Finn would “disappear” into himself. About lying awake all night, staring at the ceiling, realizing that pushing me away didn’t protect either of us. It just guaranteed the loss he was trying to avoid.
“I thought I was being noble,” he says, staring into his untouched tea. “Saving you from having to deal with my damage. But that’s not what I was doing. I was just... scared. And I made you pay for it.”
“Yes,” I say. “You did.”
He flinches, but he doesn’t argue. Doesn’t defend himself.
“I’ve spent four years convincing myself that isolation was the answer,” he continues. “That if I didn’t let anyone close, I couldn’t lose anyone else. But last night, alone in that house that still smelled like you—“ His voice cracks. “I realized I’d already lost you. And it was worse. It was so much worse than anything I was afraid of.”
I don’t respond. I’m not ready to make this easy for him.
“So I got in the truck,” he says. “And I drove. Three hours of panic attacks and counting breaths and pulling over twice because I couldn’t see straight. And the whole time, I kept thinking—what if she won’t let me in? What if I ruined it? What if I have to drive back to that empty house knowing I had something real and I destroyed it?”
“What made you keep driving?”
He looks at me then, those gray eyes raw and unguarded. “You. The way you looked at me like I was worth knowing. The way you cooked in my kitchen like you belonged there. The way you—” He stops. Swallows. “The way you made me want to be better. Not fixed. Just... better.”
The words land somewhere deep, in a place I’ve been protecting since the divorce.
