Chapter 23
Sierra
“So, you know how you told me that Kyle chose his family and his career and everything else in his life over me? And you were totally right?”
“Uh, yeah,” Sophie says through the speakers in my van. I’m driving back into Vancouver after landing on the ferry in Horseshoe Bay when I call her to tell her that I came home early.
“Well, I think I’ve hit an all-time low. Mason chose abuildingover me. A building that’s not even his.”
“You don’t know that’s true. Did you actually talk to him about it? Did youaskhim?”
“I can’t,” I tell her, getting choked up. “It hurts too much.”
I’m afraid.
Sophie does her best to reason with me, of course. Talk me down off the ledge. And I thank her and tell her I love her, and that I’ll call her later this week to let her know how I’m doing. I tell her I’ll be okay.
But I’m not so sure how I’ll hold to that.
The decision I made to leave Orchard Cove, which seemed like such a healthy decision at the time—putting myself first and all—now feels like an act of extreme cowardice.
The truth is, I was running scared.
I moved to Vancouver in my early twenties and went searching for my biological father, and I know that I was deeply and maybe irreversibly wounded when I found him, called him up, and he told me in no uncertain terms never to call him again because he had a family and he didn’t want me to “ruin things.”
And I know that there’s been a part of me that must fear I’m not good enough to be anyone’s first choice.
Otherwise, why would I keep repeating this pattern? Letting the wrong people into my life, and shutting the right ones out.
Trying so hard to fix things as they fall apart around me—not knowing when they’re really unfixable, not knowing when to leave before it’s too late.
And not being brave enough to stay, to take a chance on something that might actually be good for me.
As I drive home in thick traffic across the sprawling Lions Gate Bridge, through Stanley Park, and into downtown Vancouver along West Georgia, lined with its gleaming glass towers, then pull into the secure parkade under my building, everything looks the same. But I can feel it—that nothing is the same as it was when I left the city a month ago.
BecauseI’vechanged.
I’ve grown, so much, into someone more like myself, that maybe I don’t fit into this life anymore.
Maybe it’s more than that, though.
I can feel it when I go out for lunch, walk into a sushi place by myself, and sit up at the bar alone to eat, listening to music in my earbuds. While I run errands and go pick up groceries, alone.
How painstakingly I’ve isolated myself.
How maybe I never really fit in here like I hoped I would. Because when I came to Vancouver, I was running away, and maybe I’ve never actually stopped running.
And maybe these last few years, as I got my business off the ground, I was also trying too hard to fit into the life Kyle wanted for me.
A life that was bigger and busier and more expensive than anything I could reasonably carry, and yet he refused to help me carry it.
I realize as I ride the elevator back up to my apartment that it really wasn’t living in a small town that I hated growing up. It was the people I was surrounded by, the ones who made Carlton into a place that I didn’t fit into. And I never really had people there who sawme, who liked me for me, except my grandpa.
Here in Vancouver, I’ve never really had people of my own, either. I had Sophie and Pete and some of their friends, and some of my employees who came and went. And later, I had Kyle. But I’ve never really had a friend group here, because I’ve never really tried.
I expected to hate Orchard Cove because I thought it would remind me of the place where I grew up. I was wrong.
What I found was a beautiful, welcoming town filled with people who liked me for me.
