CHAPTER 23
The silence didn’t break all at once. It was like a rubber band slowly being expanded and stretched. It became something neither of them could name.
Randi noticed it first in the spaces of time throughout her day. It was the thought of him, how it felt to touch him, kiss him, be with him. It racked her brain … creeping in at first, and then, like a throbbing toothache, a primal need.
Then, she reached for her phone and stopped remembering how his name no longer rang in and popped up on her cell as often as it once had.
The way their conversations were, when they happened, felt careful, as if both of them were trying not to disturb something already fragile and nearly broken.
She told herself it was timing, the distance, and life moving faster than either of them had planned.
But late at night, when all was quiet and the city had settled into stillness, the truth pressed in harder.
God, she missed him. It wasn’t a casual need, it was like everything else felt slightly out of place and a gap that needed to be closed.
Across the country, Brew stood in the doorway of his office, watching the last patient of the day leave.
The clinic was thriving and growing every day. Everything he had hoped it would become, happened. Yet, when the door closed, the satisfaction didn’t stay. It never did. There was a massive void in his life.
He reached for his phone.
Stopped. Then he finished the motion anyway. Her name stared back at him. It felt familiar, near, but so far away. The need was strong. He waited, looking at the clock on the far wall. It was mid-morning and she was probably deep in creativity.
He didn’t call. Not this time, again. Because he already knew how it would go. They would talk, briefly, carefully, and he wanted more.
Her there by his side.
He set the phone down. And for the first time, he admitted it wasn’t working. Not like this.
Randi stood in the middle of her studio, surrounded by work that had once felt like progress. Now it felt like something else. It felt incomplete and disconnected. Or was it her that had become that way.
Her gaze landed on a smaller canvas leaning against the wall. The one she hadn’t shown anyone. The one she had started after that night.
She crossed the room slowly, lifting it carefully. The image stared back at her. A field of wildflowers. Butterflies caught mid-motion.
And two figures seated close together, their bodies turned slightly toward one another, the space between them nonexistent. Both connected and certain of each other.
Her fingers brushed lightly over the surface.
“This is what I want,” she whispered.
The realization came quietly and didn’t dwindle. It consumed her.
She set the canvas down, turned, and immediately made a decision that made her smilebroadly … warm … happily … emotionally.
Across the country, Brew did the same.
Randi moved through her cottage with a clarity she hadn’t felt in weeks.
Drawers were opened with clothing haphazardly thrown about.
Her closet was emptied.
The life she had built there—carefully, deliberately—became meaningless.
Not abandoned.
Chosen.
