The top rocker sewn onto the back still read “Silent Phoenix”—the club his father had founded, the legacy that had defined our life together. Beneath it, a blazing phoenix emerged from flames, wings spread wide.
My fingers drifted lower, to the bottom rocker that had read “Texas” for the entirety of our marriage, and everything inside me went still.
“Colorado.”
I blinked at the weathered stitching, confirming what my eyes were telling me even as my brain scrambled to reject it.
No. No, that couldn’t be right. In the middle of our divorce, he’d gone nomad. He’d told me as much when we signed the papers. And months later, when Addie slipped up and mentioned he was living in Colorado, I assumed he’d retreated here to lick his wounds while helping the chapter.
Nomad meant temporary. Nomad meant he was still figuring it out, still floating, still possibly open to?—
To what, exactly? Coming back to Texas? Coming back to me?
I turned the kutte around with shaking hands, needing to see the rest, even though some part of me already knew what I’d find. There,over the left breast, was the same patch his father had once worn on his own kutte.
“President.”
The man who led the chapter, who made the calls, who carried the weight of every brother’s life on his shoulders. The man who couldn’t just walk away when things got complicated.
The kitchen suddenly felt too small, the walls pressing in on me like a vise. I’d known, logically, that he was here. That he’d bought this cabin and the other. But knowing it and understanding what it meant were two different things. And standing here, holding the evidence of his commitment—the same way I’d once held his hand when he made vows to me—drove it home in a way nothing else had.
While I’d stayed in our old house, surrounded by bad memories and empty rooms, he’d been here. While I convinced myself he was miserable without me and that we’d find our way back to each other, he’d been building something new from the ashes of the marriage we’d torched. Something permanent. Something that had nothing to do with me or the life we’d once shared.
This place wasn’t a retreat or an escape—it was his home. This chapter wasn’t a distraction—it was his purpose. Colorado wasn’t a temporary solution—it was his answer to the question of how to keep going when everything fell apart.
And that answer didn’t include me. I wasn’t even a part of the equation.
President. The word might as well have been “goodbye” for how final it felt.
That was the problem with temporary ceasefires and forced proximity—they created the illusion that everything could go back to how it was. I’d been so busy thinking about all we’d confessed last night, about the beautiful, terrible truths we’d shared, that I’d forgotten the most basic truth of all: geography didn’t care about feelings. Distance didn’t shrink because you had a breakthrough.
He’d put down roots somewhere I wasn’t, and I’d stayed in the place he’d left behind.
Both choices were valid. Both were necessary, maybe. But they ledto different futures, different paths that ran parallel but never quite touched.
And last night hadn’t changed a damn thing about that.
We were still five hundred miles apart, with separate lives that only intersected in the past.
My throat tightened with fresh tears, but I was too exhausted to let them fall. What was the point? We’d already cried ourselves empty, confessed our worst secrets, forgiven the unforgivable. We’d found our way back to honesty, to seeing each other instead of just our own reflections of guilt and failure—doing the work, as my therapist would say.
But that didn’t mean we’d found our way back to each other.
Not really.
The coffee maker beeped, startling me back to the present, but I couldn’t let go of the kutte. Couldn’t stop staring at the patches that rewrote everything I thought I knew about where we stood.
It felt like a door was closing between us.
Or maybe it had been closed all along, and I’d just been too desperate to notice. I’d gotten caught up in playing house and being the center of his world again that I failed to see the signs in front of me.
Behind me, I heard movement as Teddy approached. But I stood paralyzed, kutte still clutched in my hands as the second chance I hadn’t dared to hope for crumbled before it had even begun.
“Mornin’,” he said, his voice still rough with sleep. “You’re up early.” The floorboards creaked as he moved closer, stopping just behind me. Close enough to touch but not touching.
My fingers tightened on the leather until my knuckles went white. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Kels?” There was a question in the way he said it, a wariness that told me he’d already clocked what I was holding. “What are you doing?”
