The kettle finished. I poured the water over the tea and watched the color slowly bloom in the mug, dark and steady. The cats moved around my feet in their usual quiet orbit, but even their familiar presence couldn’t quite soften the sharp ache lodged behind my ribs.
I was hurting in a way I hadn’t expected. Not the clean, bright anger I’d felt shoving Eric away. This was heavier, a hurt that settled deep and made everything feel a little farther away.
I could see how the old wounds from his Marine days had made him terrified of asking me to wait, of risking that I might decide he wasn’t worth the cost. Part of me even wanted to reach across the distance and tell him it was okay, that I got it. But the bigger part of me—the part that had just learned how to stand up for herself—couldn’t let the secrecy slide.
I wrapped my hands around the warm mug and took a slow breath. The hurt wasn’t just about the job or the travel or the long hours. It was about the trust I had handed him so freely, only to discover he had been protecting himself instead of protecting us. I had let him all the way in—into my apartment, into my bed, into the quiet hopes I had started building around a shared future—and he had kept one foot outside the door the whole time.
Tears pricked at my eyes again, hot and unwelcome. I didn’t brush them away. I let them sit there for a moment, blurringthe steam rising from my tea. I wasn’t ending things with him. I wasn’t ready to walk away. But I also wasn’t ready to pretend the secrecy hadn’t cracked something important between us.
The cats watched me from the floor, patient and steady. Wentworth stayed close, his weight a small, solid comfort in my lap. For now, this was enough—my apartment, my tea, my cats. I needed time to sit with the hurt, to let it settle, to figure out whether the version of us I wanted could still exist once the truth was fully on the table.
I took a slow sip of tea and let the warmth spread through me. The irony lingered—the same day I had finally learned how to stand up for myself, the hardest person I would have to stand up to was the one I loved most.
And the worst part was that I had ignored every early warning my own heart had tried to give me.
Now I had to decide if love was worth trusting someone who had already shown me he couldn’t always trust me with the truth.
Chapter 31
Jasper
Isat in the kitchen for a long time after she left.
The coffee pot was still half full. The two mugs were still on the table—hers on her side, mine on mine. She had not finished hers. There was a quarter inch of cold coffee in the bottom of it and a smudge of lip gloss on the rim, and I looked at that smudge for longer than I should have, and then I looked at the river through the window, and still, I did not move.
I had not told her about the job.
Not a lie—I had not lied to her. But I had let weeks go by with the decision made, and every time I had sat across from her at the kitchen table or driven her back from the cabin or watched her in the shop moving through her evening like she was exactly where she was supposed to be, I had told myself I would tell her tomorrow. Tomorrow had come and gone a lot of times.
The light through the kitchen window had flattened into late morning. I was here trying to figure out what I was going to say when I saw her next. Not an excuse. I was done with excuses.
I was supposed to be at the bar at noon.
I picked up my phone to call Paige and saw the text from Emmett. I had been too upset to even ask how she’d found out.
She answered on the second ring. “Jasper.”
“Hey.” My voice came out wrong. Not broken—just flat in a way I could hear and could not fix. “I need to take the day. I can cover tomorrow. Whatever you need this week, I’ll work it.”
A short silence. Paige had heard it too. “What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it yet.”
“Is Cara okay?”
“Cara is okay. She went home. She took my truck.”
Another silence. “Take the day,” she said. “Take tomorrow too if you need it.” She paused. “Call Hannah. Let her help you.” Then, lower, almost to herself, “I’ll call her myself. I know you won’t.”
“Thank you, Paige.”
She hung up.
I put the phone down on the table and looked at it. Then I looked at the mug again. The smudge of lip gloss on the rim. I reached out, turned the mug so I couldn’t see it, then sat there staring off into the distance until the phone rang.
Hannah.
I almost didn’t pick up. I didn’t know what to say to her. I let it ring twice. Then I answered. “Hey.”
