I shook my head. “I don’t know what I want.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “I know what you need.”
She stood and disappeared into the kitchen. I heard the tap run. A glass clink. Cabinet doors opening and closing. The ordinary sounds of living, the kind that used to comfort me. Now they felt like they belonged to someone else’s life.
My gaze drifted to the window. Calgary sprawled beyond it, all glass and steel and traffic sliding along like veins full of light. Somewhere down on the street, a car horn blared. Someone laughed. A siren rose and faded. The city didn’t pause to ask if I’d been okay out there. It didn’t care that I’d left a piece of myself in a valley.
My phone sat in my pocket like a stone.
I hadn’t turned it on yet.
I didn’t have the courage to see what was waiting.
Dani returned with a glass of water and two Advil on her palm like an offering. “Drink,” she ordered, voice gentle but unarguable.
I took the pills, swallowed them dry because my hands were shaking too hard to lift the glass. Dani held the water to my mouth like I was sick. I hated it. I clung to it.
The water tasted like home and guilt.
When she set the glass down, she sat beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched. Her knee bumped mine lightly, a silent reminder that I wasn’t alone even if my brain kept trying to convince me otherwise.
“So,” she said softly. “Talk to me.”
My throat tightened. I stared at my hands in my lap, at the faint dirt still under my nails that I couldn’t quite scrub out. Proof. Residue. A little piece of the place I’d left.
“I left,” I whispered. She went quiet. Her hand slid over mine. Warm. Steady.
“I signed the letter of offer Wyatt had given Ray,” I admitted. “I didn’t tell him. I didn’t tell anyone. I just did it.”
Dani’s fingers tightened around mine. “Tess.”
“I couldn’t stay,” I said, and the words rushed out before I could stop them. “I couldn’t breathe there anymore. Every time I opened a drawer, it was Ray. Every time I turned around, it was the debt. Every time I looked up, there was that valley and those fences and that stupid, stubborn land staring back at me like it was daring me to fail. And I kept thinking about the cabin and how small that space felt, and then I’d walk into my own kitchen, and it felt just as small. Like I traded one kind of trap for another.”
My voice cracked. I swallowed hard.
Dani’s eyes shone. “You’re not trapped here.”
“I know,” I said, but I didn’t sound like I believed myself.
My body was still braced for something to happen. For a door to slam. For a voice to rise. For a demand. For control disguised as care.
Instead, there was only Dani, breathing beside me.
I pressed my fingertips into my thigh hard enough to hurt, grounding myself in pain because it was easier than drowning in the soft.
“I keep thinking,” I said, and my voice dropped. “I keepthinking he’s going to show up. I keep listening for footsteps in the hall.”
Dani’s face went pale. “Colin.”
I nodded.
“I hate that he’s still in my head,” I whispered. “I hate that I’m here and I still feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
Dani’s jaw clenched. “He’s not coming back.”
“You don’t know that,” I said, and the fear in my voice embarrassed me immediately. “I don’t know where he is.”
Dani’s hand slid to the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair. “I know,” she said. “I know. But he’s been dealt with. You’re safe. You’re here. You’ve got me, and you’ve got locks, and you’ve got a building full of nosy neighbours who’d love a reason to call the cops.”
