Lily—
The cabin is too quiet without you.
He stopped typing. Read it back. Kept going.
I made coffee for two out of habit. Your sunglasses are sitting on my table like a rebuke. Everything smells like your shampoo and I can't decide if that's comforting or torturous.
I should have asked you to stay. I wanted to. The words were right there every time I looked at you, but I couldn't make myself say them because I've spent my entire adult life convincing myself that wanting things leads to losing them, and it's easier to have nothing than to have something precious and watch it disappear.
That's not an excuse. It's barely even an explanation. It's just the truth.
I'm sorry.
He read it back, then highlighted the entire thing.
His finger hovered over the delete key.
What good would it do? Even if he could send it—which he couldn't, no Wi-Fi, no signal, because he'd specifically chosen this island for itsisolation—words on a screen weren't the same as words spoken face-to-face.
And he'd had his chance for those.
He'd choked.
Delete.
The blank document stared back at him, somehow more accusatory than before.
By noon, the numbness had started to crack.
Alex stood in the middle of the cabin, fists clenched at his sides, his jaw so tight it ached. The anger had been building for hours—a slow simmer beneath the surface that he'd been trying to ignore with coffee and failed emails and the lie that everything was fine.
Everything was not fine.
"What iswrongwith you?" The words came out loud, startling in the silence. He didn't care. There was no one to hear him anyway.
That was the point. That had always been the point.
He paced the small space like a caged animal, his thoughts spiraling.
She'd stood right there—right thereby the door—and told him she'd miss him. She'd talked about California being accessible. She'd given him every possible opening, practically handed him a script, and he'd responded with platitudes about her video doing good work.
Good work.Like she was a colleague he'd collaborated with on a research paper. Like she hadn't spent two weeks breaking down every protective barrier he'd spent decades building.
The anger surged, hot and ugly, and before he knew what he was doing, his arm swept across the table. The coffee mug—his, not hers, he'd never touch hers—flew across the room and shattered against the wall.
The sound was satisfying for exactly half a second.
Then he was just standing in a cabin with coffee dripping down the wall and ceramic shards scattered across the floor, feeling like an idiot.
Congratulations, Carmichael. Very mature. Very adult of you.
He cleaned up the mess, his hands shaking with residual adrenaline. The anger hadn't dissipated—it had just turned inward, where it belonged.
Because the truth was, he wasn't angry at Lily for leaving. He wasn't even angry at the situation.
He was furious with himself.
Every moment played back in excruciating detail. Every time she'd been brave and he'd retreated. Every time she'd shown him something real and he'd responded with deflection.
