"If I hadn't left?" The question I've been avoiding since I arrived. "Sometimes. More often than I’m comfortable admitting.”
It's the whole truth. I've thought about it more than sometimes—in quiet moments alone in my apartment, when relationships ended because no one quite measured up, during achievements that felt hollow without someone to share them with.
"Me too." His admission is quiet, almost lost in the wind. "More than I should."
I turn to find him watching me, eyes reflecting the golden sunset, expression open in a way it hasn't been since I arrived.
"I'm not trying to guilt you," he says, voice rough. "You did what you needed to do."
I open my mouth, but he lifts a hand—gentle, firm.
"Please. Just... let me say this."
I nod, heart thudding.
"I was angry for a long time. When you left without a word, without a goodbye, it felt like I'd been hollowed out. You were just... gone. And I didn't understand. I thought I'd done everything right. I thought what we had was?—"
He breaks off, jaw clenching, then exhales like the words cost him. "I blamed you. Told myself you ran because you couldn't handle it. Because you were scared of how deep we'd gone."
"Noah—" I try, throat tight, but he cuts in again.
"No. Let me get this out. I need to say it."
He turns to me fully, eyes burning with something I haven't seen in a decade—anguish, maybe. Honesty.
"We were kids, and what we had was intense. Beautiful, yeah, but also dangerous in ways we didn't understand yet. I was so caught up in the rush of it, in how good it felt to have you trust me that completely. And you were so eager to give, so quick to put me first. Too quick. And I let you. I let you because I was drunk on the power of it and how it felt. On being the center of your world."
I feel that truth settle deep in my chest.
"I didn't stop to ask if we were ready for that kind of intensity. If you were giving from a place of strength... or from a place of wanting to be enough."
My eyes burn. "I wanted to be everything for you."
"I know." His voice cracks, just barely. "And I let that blind me. I should've been watching closer. I should've seen what it was costing you."
Silence pulses between us.
"I don't forgive you," he says, and my breath catches. Then—"Because there's nothing to forgive. You did what you had to do. You left before you lost yourself." He shifts, eyes on the horizon now, away from me. "I forgive myself. For not seeing it. For being so wrapped up in the high of it—of you—that I missed what was slipping through my fingers."
He looks back, meeting my gaze head-on. "I think about it. What we could've been if I'd slowed down. If I'd chosen you over what we were playing at. We could've had a life. A house. Kids. Sunday mornings in that crappy booth at the diner with a sticky-fingered toddler between us."
That image punches a soundless gasp from my chest.
"I think about what I ruined by not protecting you better. About the family we could've built."
"Noah..." I swallow hard.
“I'm not trying to drag you back into the past.” He shakes his head. "You don't have to say anything. I just... I needed you to know I see it now. All of it. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't understand what I was doing. I'm sorry I made it easier for you to leave than to stay." His voice is soft now. Stripped bare. "And I'm sorry it took me ten years to say .”
The sun dips lower behind him, casting his face in gold and shadow. And for a moment, I don't see the Fire Chief or the hometown hero.
I just see the boy who once loved me too much... and the man who finally understands why that love nearly broke us both.
The sincerity in his voice undoes something in me—some knot of defensiveness I've been carrying since I first saw him on that rainy road.
"I'm proud of you." The words feel inadequate. "What you've built here, what you've done for the community. It's remarkable."
"High praise from a big-city journalist." His smile—soft, genuine—makes my heart stutter.
