But tonight, I rest in his arms and let myself believe that forever is possible.
Chapter six
Davin
I’m halfway through measuring the oak for Tilly’s floating shelves when my phone vibrates in my back pocket. My older brother Alban’s not the type to call without purpose. My jaw tightens.
I step onto the porch. Cold air shocks my skin. My breath fogs the air. “Hey.”
“You haven’t said much lately,” Alban says. His voice comes through clear despite the distance between Montana and Virginia.
“Been busy.”
“Neve says you met someone.” He’s probably standing in their kitchen in Granitehart Ridge, coffee in hand, looking out at the Shenandoah Mountains the way I’m looking at the Rockies. “She knows someone with family in Lovesbury. Said you shut down a bachelor auction for her.”
“I did.”
Silence stretches between us. Wind moves through the pines, a low whistle that makes the trees creak. Alban’s learning to wait instead of push, a skill he’s developed since marrying Neve. Theman who used to fill every silence with solutions now knows when to let quiet do the work. “You want to talk about it?”
“Not much to say. Met a woman. She matters.”
“It’s moving fast.”
“Yeah.” A hawk circles overhead. “It is.”
“Does she know about the fire?”
My jaw tightens. “Some of it.”
“Davin—”
“I know what you’re going to say.”
“Do you?” His voice carries the weight of someone who’s watched me punish myself for a few years. Who drove thirty hours to Montana when I left the firehouse and found me half-feral in this cabin I was building with my bare hands. “Because I’m going to say it anyway. You deserve good things. You deserve to be happy. What happened wasn’t your fault.”
“I was the team lead. I made the call.” The words taste like old ashes. I’ve said them so many times they’ve worn grooves in my throat.
“You made the call based on the information you had. The building collapsed faster than anyone expected.” Alban’s tone goes firm in that older brother way that used to piss me off when we were kids. Now it just makes my chest feel too tight. “You’ve carried this long enough. Let it go.”
The words won’t come. Letting go feels like betrayal, like forgetting, like deciding the loss doesn’t matter. My hand grips the porch railing until splinters bite into my palm. “I don’t know how.”
“Start by accepting that happiness isn’t a debt you have to earn.” Neve’s voice comes through the phone now, closer like Alban’s put it on speaker. “Alban struggled with the same thing after his accident. He thought he had to prove he was still useful before he deserved to be loved.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?” she challenges, and I hear the whisk against a bowl. She’s working while she talks, the way she always does. “You’re both good men who made impossible choices and blamed yourselves when the outcome wasn’t perfect. But punishing yourself doesn’t honor what you lost. Building a good life does.”
Her words echo what I told Tilly days ago.
“This woman,” Alban says. “She’s the real thing?”
“Yeah.” The certainty in my voice surprises me. My throat feels raw, exposed. “She is.”
“Then stop sabotaging yourself by believing she deserves better than what you are.” His voice drops lower, the way it does when he’s about to say something that costs him. “I almost lost Neve that way. I pushed her away because I was convinced she’d be better off without a man who couldn’t save people when it counted. Don’t make my mistakes.”
“How did you get past it?” The question scrapes out of me.
“I let her choose.” Simple words. Impossible execution. “Stopped deciding for her what she could handle. Stopped protecting her from myself. Just laid it all out and let her decide if I was worth the work.”
