Everything I want—who I want—is standing right in front of me.
“Milo.” She says my name gently.
“We can figure it out together.” My fingers thread in her drenched hair. “We can do this together.”
Tears fall down her face, their heat melting her rain-streaked mascara. “I have to do this for myself. Remember how you needed time to heal? I need that, too. I’ve lived almost ten years without you. Ten years of choices that I’ve got to face. This is the favor I’m cashing in. Take the job and let me go.”
The bet.
From yesterday. The one I agreed to without thinking.
“That’s not fair, Sadie,” I murmur.
“For years,” she says, voice quiet but sure, “I’ve just . . . stayed. Stayed where it was safe. Stayed where people expected me to be. And I don’t even know when I stopped asking what I wanted.”
My chest tightens, but I don’t interrupt.
“I love you,” she continues, eyes locked on mine. “That hasn’t changed, even after all these years. When I saw you again, my heart knew before I let my head catch up.” A small shaky smile touches her mouth before fading. “But I can’t build a life on just loving you. Not if I don’t know who I am in it.”
Rain drips from her lashes, her fingers curling lightly into my shirt like she’s steadying herself.
“I need to figure out what I want . . . without it being about who needs me or who I might disappoint.” Her voice softens. “Because if I don’t, I’ll keep shrinking myself to make everyone happy. Even you.”
That lands harder than anything else. “You can’t disappoint me, Bookworm.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not just about you. This is about me. I’ve disappointed myself.”
“I can be the one to remind you every day of how amazing you are, of how loved you are,” I plead as I frame her face with my hands.
“And I know you would, but I need what you did. I need tofind forgiveness for myself. I want to choose you with my whole heart, not just the part of me that’s always loved you.”
Her cold hand wipes the tears and rain from my face. “This isn’t forever, Milo. I’m just choosing myself right now so I can come to you as someone who knows how to stand on her own first—just like you did.”
I nod against her hands that are now cupping my face, and then my mouth covers hers hungrily, letting her feel all of me want her—only her.
We kiss in the rain until we have nothing left in our lungs, and when we walk together back to the hotel, I know I must let her go and trust that she’ll come back to me just like I came back to her.
It took me almost four years when everything I’d built my life around came crashing down. I can only pray it doesn’t take her as long. But even if it does, Sadie Summers will always be the woman worth waiting for.
51
SADIE
Dusty Hollow spreadsout before us. It’s such a small dot on the map, but it’s held most of the life I’ve ever known. It’s where I was born and raised. Where I took my first steps, read my first words, and learned about Jesus.
These city limits were a border of safety for me for so long, but they’ve also been a quiet kind of boundary. The kind you don’t notice at first because it feels like comfort.
For years, I thought being good meant staying inside those lines. Doing what was expected. Being who everyone needed me to be.
But somewhere along the way, the lines started to feel smaller. Not because Dusty Hollow changed.
Because I did. I just didn’t know how to admit that out loud.
I lean into Milo one last time, pressing a kiss to his cheek before sliding across the seat.
He smiles, but it’s sad—one of those smiles that feels more like a sigh than a breath.
I love Milo Carter. I always have. But it’s not my love for him that’s in question right now. It’s the love I have for myself.
