"I'll walk you up."
It's not an offer. It's a statement. And something about his tone makes my spine stiffen.
The Claire who left Virginia three days ago would have accepted it quietly. Would have smiled and nodded and let someone else take charge because that's what she'd been trained to do. Be agreeable. Be accommodating. Be the good girl everyone expected.
That Claire is gone.
"I can find my own room, Max."
He stops on the first step. Turns. Those green eyes pin me in place, and for a moment I forget how to breathe.
He's not the man I remember.
The Max from my childhood was quick to laugh, always ready with a joke or a teasing comment. He'd swing me onto his shoulders without warning, tickle me until I screamed, sneak me extra dessert when my parents weren't looking.
This Max is harder. Sharper. His face has new lines carved into it, and his eyes carry shadows that weren't there before. He moves like he's constantly bracing for impact, like the world is a battlefield and he's never truly left it.
But underneath all that hardness, I can still see him. The man who sat with me in silence when everyone else tried to fill the void with empty words. The man who held my hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The man who disappeared without explanation and left a hole in my life I've never been able to fill.
"Claire." His voice is rough. Tired. "It's been a long day. Just let me make sure you're settled."
"Why?"
The question catches him off guard. I see it in the slight widening of his eyes, the tension that ripples through his shoulders.
"Because your father would want me to."
There it is. The ghost that's been standing between us since I walked into his shop.
"My father's been dead for ten years." I keep my voice steady even though my heart is racing. "Whatever you think you owe him, you don't owe it to me."
Something flickers across his face. Pain, maybe. Or guilt. Before I can identify it, he's shuttered it away behind that hard mask.
"Room twelve," he says flatly. "Top of the stairs, end of the hall."
Then he's gone, the front door swinging shut behind him, and I'm standing alone in the lobby with Carol pretending very hard not to have heard every word.
I climb the stairs on legs that feel like rubber.
Room twelve is small but clean, with a brass bed frame and a quilt that looks handmade. The window faces east, and even in the fading evening light I can see the mountains rising in the distance, their peaks dusted with early snow.
I drop my duffel bag on the bed and sink down beside it.
What am I doing here?
Three days ago, the answer seemed so clear. I'd found Max's letters in a shoebox at the back of my mother's closet, hidden beneath old photographs and my father's folded flag. The return address was smudged but legible. Grizzly Ridge, Montana. A place I'd never heard of, at the edge of the world.
A place to disappear.
That's what I needed. To disappear. To escape the suffocating weight of expectations and obligations and a life I never chose.
Derek's face flashes through my mind. That practiced smile he wore like a mask. The way he'd hold my hand in church while texting her with the other. The night I found them together in his office, her worship music still playing on his laptop like some sick joke.
I'd been so stupid. So desperate to believe that someone like him could actually love someone like me.
My stepfather's voice echoes in my head. "Every couple goes through trials, Claire. A godly woman forgives."
