“We’ve sat at this table together so many times,” I said. My voice came out steadier than I felt. “At Mystery Night, when you went outside for his call, and the night we—” I stopped. My throat had tightened, and I needed a second. “You had all of those chances. You looked at me, and you chose not to say it. Every single time.”
“I know.” His voice had gone rough. “I know that.”
“Then help me understand why.” I looked up at him. “Because I have spent the last few weeks letting myself—” I stopped again, pressed my lips together, tried to get hold of it. “I told you things I haven’t told anyone. I let you in further than I have let anyone in a very long time. And you were sitting with this the whole time, and you said nothing, and I need to know why, because right now I genuinely don’t understand.”
He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and for a moment, he just looked at me. His eyes were bright in a way I hadn’t seen before, and it struck me that he was close to the edge of something himself, that this was costing him too, and I held onto that even though it didn’t fix anything.
“I told myself that if it came down to it, I’d choose you,” he said. “That if the job became a problem, I’d walk away from it. I kept thinking—if I can just keep both things separate for a little longer, if I can figure out how to make it work before I say anything—” He stopped. Shook his head. “And then I’d be withyou, and I was—” His voice broke slightly on the word. “I have never been this happy, Cara. I want you to know that. Whatever happens right now, I need you to know that. I have never in my life been as happy as I have been these past weeks with you, and I think I used that as an excuse. I told myself there was time. That I’d find the right moment. That as long as I was willing to choose you if it came to that, it was okay to let it sit.”
A tear slid down my cheek. I didn’t wipe it. “That wasn’t your decision to make alone,” I said. “That’s what you don’t seem to understand. You decided I didn’t need to know. You decided you’d handle it. You took something that belonged to both of us—not the job, our future—and you kept it to yourself, and every day that you did that, you were asking me to build something with you on a foundation I didn’t know was incomplete.” My voice cracked on the last word, and I stopped, pressed my fingers to my mouth for a second. “I don’t like secrets. I told you that. You knew that about me.”
“I know.” His jaw worked. “I know I did.” His eyes were wet now, and he wasn’t trying to hide it, and the sight of it undid me a little more. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry, Cara. There is no version of this where I was right to keep it from you, and I think I knew that the whole time, and I kept going anyway because I was scared and I was happy and I didn’t want to be the thing that broke it.”
I stood up because I couldn’t sit still anymore. I walked to the window, stood with my arms around myself, stared at nothing, and tried to locate the version of myself who could handle this without falling apart entirely. She wasn’t available.
“I’m not ending this,” I said to the window. “I want you to know that. I’m not walking away.” I turned back. “But I need to go home. I need to think. I can’t do that here.”
He was on his feet before I’d finished. “Cara.” His voice cracked open on my name. “Please don’t go. Not yet. Stay andtalk to me—just—” He crossed the kitchen and stopped in front of me, close enough that I had to look up at him, and his eyes were red at the edges. His hands came up and then stopped short, like he didn’t know if he had the right to touch me anymore. “Please. I don’t want you driving home alone with this. I don’t want that to be how you leave.”
“I can’t stay right now.” My own voice had gone unsteady, and I hated it. “I need to think, and I can’t do that when you’re—” I gestured at him, meaning all of it, meaning the fact that he was standing there looking at me like that with his eyes wet and his hands reaching for me. “I can’t think straight when you’re right there.”
Something moved through his expression at that—grief, and underneath it something that looked almost like hope, like he understood what I meant and was holding onto it. He stepped back. Gave me the room. “Okay,” he said, and his voice was very quiet and very raw. “Okay. Take whatever time you need.”
“Don’t call me. I’ll reach out when I’m ready.”
He nodded. His hands had dropped to his sides, and he was looking at me with an expression I was going to be thinking about for a long time—not resigned, not angry, just destroyed.
I went into the bedroom, changed into yesterday’s clothes, and left his shirt folded on the bed. I didn’t let myself look at the books on the dresser. I picked up my bag and walked back through the cabin.
He was still standing in the kitchen. He hadn’t moved.
At the door, I stopped. “Don’t come to the shop,” I said. “Don’t text. I’ll call when I’m ready.”
“I understand.” His voice was steady, but his eyes weren’t, and he was blinking more than usual, and I had to look at the doorknob instead of at his face. “Take my truck. Leave it at the shop; I’ll get it later. I have the motorcycle.”
I looked at him one more time despite myself—this man who was even now, in the middle of this, thinking about how to make things easier for me—and felt something in my chest break open the rest of the way.
“Thank you,” I said.
I opened the door and walked out into the cold November morning. He didn’t follow me to the porch. He gave me that much.
I made it about three miles before I had to pull over.
I pulled over and cut the engine. I sat with both hands on the wheel and let it come. It wasn’t the dramatic kind of crying—no gasping, nothing loud—just tears, quiet and steady and relentless, the kind that come when something important has cracked, and you don’t yet know how bad the damage is. I cried for the version of us I’d been building in my head, the one I’d let myself believe in fully and without reservation. I cried because he’d said he’d never been this happy, and I believed him. It still wasn’t enough to make him tell me the truth. I cried because I loved him and I was angry at him, and both of those things were completely true at the same time, and I didn’t know what to do with that.
Eventually, the worst of it eased. I wiped my face. Started the engine. Drove the rest of the way home.
The shop was closed—it was Sunday. I climbed the back stairs to my apartment and unlocked the door.
The cats were waiting. Wentworth came straight to me with a worried chirp and climbed into my lap the moment I sat on the hallway floor. Knightley pressed against my ankle. Darcy actually wound himself around my legs before settling nearby.
I let the tears come again then—harder this time, but still quiet.
The secrecy had cut deepest. He had wanted both things—the job and me—and yet he had kept me outside the decision.I understood the fear. I even understood why he had hesitated. But understanding didn’t make the hurt disappear.
I sat on the floor a long time with Wentworth purring in my lap. When the worst of the tears passed, I stood, went to the kitchen, and put the kettle on. The familiar routine steadied me a little—the apartment I had built for myself, the life that had been mine long before Jasper.
I picked up my phone, turned it off, and set it face down on the counter.
