Thanks. Love you.
I laughedat my phone and shook my head. My stomach growled, and I realized I hadn’t consumed anything besides coffee all morning. I pressed a hand to my empty belly andgroaned. Going downstairs to get a snack meant coming face-to-face with my surly roommate. I stretched my neck and looked out the window. The snow had finally stopped, and everything looked cold and still. Peaceful.
I needed to get out of this room.
I shoved my laptop closed, grabbed my keys off the dresser, and tugged on jeans with the kind of urgency that suggested I was fleeing an active crime scene. I added a sweater, boots, and a scarf, and in the mirror I looked like a woman who had her life together.
I almost believed it.
With a smile plastered on my face, I looped my laptop bag over my shoulder and headed for the front door. Downstairs, Wes was on the couch, his shoulders hunched like he was holding himself in place. The TV was on, but he wasn’t watching it. His gaze was fixed somewhere ahead, unfocused, jaw tight, a mug cooling on the coffee table.
He looked up when he felt me there. For a second neither of us said anything.
I held my chin high without so much as a glance toward Wes. At the door, I paused with my hand on the knob.
I could leave without saying anything. Wes wouldn’t care. He probably preferred it.
I’d been in his space for less than a week, and already I could feel how hard he clung to whatever control he still had left. But then I thought about Hayes’s face at the table. The way he genuinely worried about his best friend. He’d saidmissing appointmentsandrefusing carelike he was listing symptoms.
I had agreed to help, no matter how awkward my intrusion had made things.
I thought about the thump. The silence. The way my heart had lurched into my throat because for a split second I had been sure something was wrong.
Wes wasn’t broken, he was simply a man who’d built his entire life around being capable, and now even the shower had turned into an obstacle course.
I could feel the house breathing around me, waiting to see what I’d do. The air in the house was too warm, too thick.
I swallowed, tried to sound normal, tried not to sound like a girl asking a boy for permission to leave the house.
“I’m going to head to the farm,” I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. “I’m meeting Elodie.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, studying me like he didn’t know why that mattered. Like he didn’t know what to do with information that wasn’t a problem to solve.
My fingers tightened around my keys. “Call if you need anything.”
The words hung there, but so did his silence.
I braced myself for a grunt. Maybe an eye roll or a dismissive flick of his hand. Something that told me I was overstepping again.
Instead, Wes just stared at me, his expression unreadable, like the idea of calling someone—anyone—was a language he’d forgotten.
Then his throat worked, and he gave me a firm nod.
A nod that was almost ... grateful. Like he hadn’t expected me to offer that. Maybe Wes didn’t know what to do with help that didn’t come wrapped in pity.
My chest tightened.
I didn’t let myself linger long enough to name it. I turned on my heel and bolted, because I was braver in motion than I was standing still.
Outside, the cold air slapped my cheeks back into my body. I inhaled until my lungs burned, started the car, and drove toward Star Harbor Family Farm as snow-covered dunes flew past the car window.
The farther I got from Wes’s house, the easier it was to breathe.
The closer I got to the farm, the more I could feel myself coming back online.
Star Harbor FamilyFarm looked like a postcard in winter.
In the distance, the big blue barn wore a soft cap of snow. The peaked roofline stood out against the pale sky, and smoke drifted from somewhere behind it—someone burning something, someone warm inside while the world stayed cold. Twinkle lights were strung along the front, and even in daylight they glowed faintly, like stubborn little stars.
