God, Graham.
I missed him the way you miss a limb. Not constantly. Sometimes I’d go an hour not thinking about him, and then it would catch me and the absence would knock the air out of me. The way Drake saidayeon the phone and my whole body went still. The sound of rain on the window and I was back in the barn, soaked and shivering, telling him about parents I never knew. I thought about Graham’s hands on mine in Cassiopeia’s stall, pressing his lips to my knuckles, sayingWhen you’re ready. If you’re ever ready. I’ll be there.
I’d pushed him away. Told him he was a distraction. Told him to leave. And he’d done what I asked because he loved me enough to give me what I said I needed, even when what I said I needed was the opposite of what I actually needed.
I’d destroyed the best thing that had ever happened to me because I was too afraid to need it.
At two inthe morning on a Tuesday, I did the thing I’d been avoiding.
Again, I was sitting on the fire escape, my spot now, the only place in the apartment where I could be alone without feeling like I was hiding, with my phone in my hands.
I typed his name into the search bar. Fraser Kincaid.
The results filled the screen. Headlines, thumbnails, speculation.Fraser Kincaid’s Secret Ranch Romance. TheWoman Who Rejected the Internet’s Favorite Adventurer. Kincaid Channel Goes Dark—What Happened in Colorado?
I scrolled past all of it until I found his channel.
His latest video was at the top. Posted four days ago.
The thumbnail was Graham. Just Graham. No adventure backdrop, no production value. He was sitting in what looked like a stone kitchen, warm light, and he looked exhausted. The title was simple:
Taking a Break.
I stared at the thumbnail for a long time. At the shadows under his eyes. At the way he was looking directly at the camera, not performing, not presenting, just looking. The way he’d looked at me in the barn.
My thumb hovered over the play button.
I couldn’t do it.
I wasn’t ready to hear his voice. Wasn’t ready to see his face move, to watch his mouth form words that might be about me. Wasn’t ready to feel whatever I was going to feel when the distance between us collapsed into a screen.
I locked the phone. Set it face-down on the fire escape grating.
Stared at the city. Millions of people, millions of lives, millions of stories happening in millions of lit windows, and somewhere across an ocean, in a stone kitchen in Scotland, a man I’d loved and lost had sat in front of a camera and told the world he was taking a break.
Because of me.
Because I’d broken him the same way I’d broken myself.
I picked up the phone. Put it down. Picked it up again.
Left it dark.
Not tonight.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ROSE
The first timeI saw my name in a headline, I was buying coffee.
Not even good coffee. Bodega coffee. I’d started going to the same place every morning after my run because the guy behind the counter didn’t look at me twice and the coffee was bad enough that nobody lingered.
I was standing at the register when the woman behind me said, “Oh my God. That’s her.”
I didn’t turn around. Told myself she was talking to someone else. Paid for my coffee. Walked out.
She followed me.
