That tremor. The way he hid it so quickly, so practiced.
The thought followed me down into dreams, where Miles was holding my hand and the sun was warm and neither of us was carrying any secrets at all.
4.Miles
The fortress took me fifteen years to build. One night with Charlotte Huston, and it was rubble.
I stared at the ceiling of my parents' bedroom, morning light streaming through gaps in the curtains, and catalogued the damage. The way she'd laughed at my terrible jokes, just like she used to. The warmth of her shoulder brushed against mine on those cold metal bleachers. The look in her eyes when we said goodnight, like she was seeing someone worth seeing, someone I wasn't sure existed anymore.
"You're an idiot," I spoke to myself as I turned around in bed. "A complete, absolute idiot."
I probably was.
I'd spent fifteen years convincing myself the feelings had faded. That time, distance, and the deliberate construction of a life without her had cauterized the wound. Seeing her was supposed to provide closure. A final chapter. A gentle goodbye to the ghost of something that ended before it really began.
Instead, I'd discovered the feelings hadn't faded at all. They'd been sleeping, buried under law degrees and failed relationships and the relentless forward motion of a life I'd built accordingto someone else's blueprints. One conversation, and they were awake. Roaring back to life with a strength that terrified me.
Stronger than before. More dangerous, because now I had so much more to lose.
And so much less to offer.
The memory surfaced before I could stop it, sharp as a shard of glass.
Fifteen years ago. My father's study, the air thick with leather and disappointment. I was nineteen, home for a weekend, my heart still aching from saying goodbye to Charlotte at the train station.
"This distraction has gone on long enough, Miles." He hadn't looked up from his briefs; his voice was cold, the tone he used to dismantle weak arguments in court.
"She's not a distraction," I'd said, hating how thin my voice sounded. How young.
"Long-distance is a fantasy for children." He'd finally looked at me, his gaze like a gavel falling. "She has her nursing path. You have yours in Law. They do not intersect."
"You don't know that."
"That sentiment you have is a luxury for those who can afford failure." He'd leaned back in his chair, utterly certain. "The choice is simple. Focus on your future and become someone who matters. Or waste your potential on a small-town girl and become nothing."
He'd laid the options out like facts of nature. Immutable. Inarguable.
And I, desperate to be someone who mattered—to him, to the world, to myself—had accepted them.
The phone call to Charlotte a week later was the hardest thing I'd ever done. I'd dressed his words up as my own maturity, my own wisdom.
"It's not fair to either of us to keep doing this, Charlotte. We want different futures."
The silence on the other end had been devastating. A void that swallowed all sound.
Then her voice, small and shattered: "Okay. If that's what you really want."
It wasn't. It was what I was too afraid to fight for.
I'd chosen the future my father prescribed. I'd chosen prestige and expectation and the path of least resistance. And I'd broken her heart in the process.
Now, fifteen years later, I was sick. My body was a traitor, my mind beginning its slow betrayal. Dr. Patel had warned me about early-onset dementia being on the table for me soon, the same shadow that had consumed my father in his final year. And it was beginning to look like it was no longer a distant specter. I had started forgetting things. Small things: whether I'd taken my medication, what day it was.
But it was getting worse.
After hurting Charlotte once by choosing an abstract future over her, it would be unconscionably cruel to draw her back in now. To tie her life to a man whose mind might one day look at her with empty, unrecognizing eyes.
I couldn't do that to her. I wouldn't.
