Chapter 14 #3
Blaze stopped walking altogether before turning fully toward her. Wind rolled off the harbor hard enough to lift loose curls around her face while sunlight glimmered across the water behind her.
“You really think I’d leave without fighting for us?”
Johanna’s throat tightened visibly before she finally looked at him. “You already did it once.”
The quietness in her voice sliced straight through his gut.
Blaze exhaled slowly through his nose. “That was before—”
“Before what?” she asked, turning toward him fully now. “Before you remembered you loved me after you left me?”
The question settled heavily between them.
Because the truth was, Blaze had never stopped loving her.
And maybe that was part of the problem.
Johanna looked away first. “Do you know what it feels like hearing you considered a job thousands of miles away after everything that’s happened between us these last few weeks?”
The wind turned sharper suddenly, cold enough to sting exposed skin.
Without answering immediately, Blaze took her hand and guided her toward the hotel entrance.
The moment they stepped inside the grand lobby, warmth surrounded them again along with the low hum of conversations, rolling luggage, and piano music drifting faintly from the lounge bar.
Blaze led her toward a quieter corner near the elevators before finally stopping.
“I know where your mind went,” he said carefully. “And you got every right to be angry.”
Johanna’s eyes lifted to his.
Fear stared back at him now, rawer and far less controlled than before.
“Angry?” Her brow lifted slightly. “I’m not angry. I’m pissed because I was stupid enough to fall this hard again.”
The confession caused his stomach to drop.
Blaze stared at her for several long seconds while hotel guests moved through the lobby around them completely unaware that his entire world suddenly felt unstable again.
“You think you’re stupid for giving me another chance?”
Johanna gave a faint laugh that sounded dangerously close to breaking apart.
“No.” She looked down briefly before shaking her head. “I think trusting it’ll last this time makes me stupid.”
Shit!
Blaze scrubbed one hand slowly across his face.
This wasn’t really about Seattle anymore. It was about abandonment, trust, and the part of Johanna that still believed loving him meant eventually getting left behind.
Blaze stepped closer. “Baby, look at me.”
Reluctantly, she did.
And the second he saw the shine gathering in her eyes, something inside him twisted painfully.
Damn.
He reached for her hand slowly this time, giving her space to pull away if she wanted to.
She let him hold it.
But her fingers felt cold inside his.
“I need you to hear me carefully,” he said quietly.
Johanna swallowed hard but stayed silent.
“I interviewed for that job when my life looked completely different.” His thumb moved slowly across her knuckles. “Back then, I honestly thought maybe leaving Sheraton Beach would fix everything that felt wrong in my life.”
A tear slipped loose before she could stop it.
Blaze’s expression tightened instantly.
“Jo…”
She laughed softly and wiped it away too quickly. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
The tenderness in his voice only seemed to make her hurt more.
Johanna shook her head once before staring toward the elevator doors across the lobby. “You don’t understand.”
“Then help me understand.”
“When you left the first time…” She stopped briefly, fighting for composure before continuing. “I spent years telling myself I was dramatic for feeling abandoned because technically you didn’t leave me. We were already broken up.”
Blaze went completely still.
“But now I’m sitting here realizing you were already planning your next escape before we even found our way back to each other.” Her voice broke slightly before softening. “And suddenly I feel twenty-three again.”
Dammit.
At twenty-three, Johanna had been soft-hearted, hopeful, and trying so hard to support his dreams even when those same dreams terrified her. Now he realized he had accidentally triggered the same fear.
“You think I’m still that man?”
Johanna didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. The silence said enough.
Blaze leaned back slowly against the wall behind him, jaw tight with frustration and regret. “I’m happy here with you.”
Johanna lowered her eyes to their joined hands.
“And what happens if you wake up one day and Sheraton Beach stops being enough again?”
Blaze lifted her hand slowly and pressed a kiss against her knuckles.
“I’d still want you.”
Pain moved across her face yet he could tell that she desperately wanted to believe him. But fear was louder right now.
Johanna gently pulled her hand from his. “I can’t do this right now.”
Blaze’s chest tightened immediately. “Do what?”
“This.” She gestured weakly between them. “The convincing. The reassurance. The trying not to panic every five minutes.”
He stared at her.
She turned before he could answer.
“Jo—”
“I better get back to work,” she said softly, her voice fraying around the edges again. “Unlike you, some of us actually love living in this town.”
Then she stepped onto the elevator and disappeared behind closing doors, leaving Blaze standing alone in the lobby with the awful realization that fear might steal her from him all over again.
“Dammit.”
As Blaze walked back out into the cold toward his truck, he scrubbed both hands slowly over his face while guilt and helplessness battled inside his chest. This was exactly what he’d been afraid of all along.
Not the argument itself and not even Seattle.
What terrified him was Johanna’s fear, because it lived so deep inside her that once it woke up, neither of them seemed to know how to quiet it again.
And now he’d handed that fear a reason to grow.