"I couldn't write back without lying," she whispered. "And I couldn't tell you the truth. So I just—stopped. Everything. I thought I was saving you. I thought you'd move on and find someone whole and be happy, and that would be—" Her breath hitched. "Enough."
I couldn't swallow. Couldn't get air past whatever had locked in my throat. Eight years of silence pouring out of her like poison from a wound that had never been cleaned.
I would have done anything to take it from her. Carried it myself. Burned it down. Anything.
But there was nothing to do except hold her and let the pain run its course.
I covered her hand with mine.
"I went to DC to heal." Tears streaming. "But I didn't heal. I just... survived. Day by day. And by the time I could breathe again, I'd been silent so long I didn't know how to reach out. I'd abandoned you, Garrett. I'd promised you forever, and then I disappeared."
"Sloane—"
"And then I came back." Her voice cracked. "Five years ago. I was going to find you. Explain everything. See if there was anything left. And I saw you."
I went still.
"Outside a restaurant in Midtown. With a woman. She was laughing at something you said, and you looked... happy." Her breath hitched. "I thought you'd moved on. So I walked away."
The restaurant. Five years ago. A date that ended with her telling me she couldn't compete with a ghost.
"I've spent eight years hating myself. For leaving. For the silence. For not being brave enough to come back." She looked up at me. "And when I read about Rebecca, I saw myself. Not the arson. But the destruction. The way pain can make you into someone you never meant to be."
She looked up at me, tears still falling.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I put you through hell, and you didn't deserve?—"
"Stop."
She froze.
My voice came out rough. Raw.
"That woman." I cupped her face in my hands. "The one you saw me with. She was breaking up with me that night."
Sloane's breath caught.
"Because I was still in love with someone else." I held her gaze. "Every woman I dated for eight years... none of them were you. They knew it. I knew it."
Her eyes searched mine.
"I never could move on."
Silence. Her eyes searched mine.
"I couldn't." My voice cracked. "I never could."
Something shifted in her expression. Hope and terror and eight years of longing, all tangled together.
"I still love you." My thumb brushed the tear from her cheek. "I never stopped. Not for a single day. Not even when I was angry. Not even when I convinced myself you weren't coming back."
I held her gaze.
"It was always you."
She kissed me.
Eight years of silence crashing into eight years of longing.
