Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen - Emma
Emma had always found comfort in the silence. It was the very thing that had drawn her to the desert in the first place. Out here, silence wasn’t emptiness, it was space. It was grace. It was permission to let the noise inside settle, to let wounds scab and soul fragments shift into alignment.
But now, the quiet scraped at her nerves like grit beneath the skin.
She stood in the center of her cabin, arms folded across her chest, staring at the bed Olivia had slept in for nights she could no longer count.
The blanket was still bunched at the foot, the pillow still hollowed from the weight of her head, her scent a lingering warmth that hadn't yet faded.
Emma had stripped the sheets twice and washed them once, and still, it was there, sun-kissed skin, sage oil, and that faint thread of something floral and unknowable that Emma now associated with surrender.
The bed looked wrong without her in it. The whole room did.
She moved through it like a stranger, touching objects that felt like they should still be warm.
The old lantern on the dresser. The glass she had brought her water in.
The tank top, pale blue and almost transparent with wear, folded at the end of the bed like Olivia had meant to come back for it.
Emma picked it up and let it slide through her fingers.
The fabric was soft, still holding the shape of Olivia’s body in the way that things do when they've been worn close.
She brought it to her face and inhaled.
The scent was immediate and brutal. Olivia.
It hit her in the chest, sharp and aching, too much and not enough.
Emma stood there for several long breaths, the top pressed to her face, her other hand clenched at her side.
Every muscle in her body screamed to be still, to pretend, to not feel this.
But the desert had stripped her of that habit.
Olivia had stripped her of it, with her soft sighs and her laughter and the way she said Emma’s name like it was a tether and a prayer.
She needed to do something.
Emma stepped outside into the morning heat, barefoot and shirtless, her hair twisted back in a rough knot. The sun was already high, brutal against the dry sky, but she barely noticed. Her hand gripped the shirt like a lifeline and carried it down to the firepit.
She struck a match and watched the flame lick at the edge of the fabric. It caught fast.
The fire flared, bright and hungry, curling the shirt into ash with a hiss. Smoke rose in a twisting column, and Emma leaned closer, letting it fill her nose, her throat, her lungs. She wanted it inside her, wanted to swallow it whole.
For one desperate second, she imagined Olivia stepping out of the smoke, barefoot and grinning, the sun on her face and that look in her eyes, the one that said you see me.
But the smoke faded and the shirt was gone and Emma was alone.
She crouched beside the dying embers, one hand in the dirt, breathing deep and steady. She didn’t cry. She didn’t rage. She just let it hurt, let it live in her body like everything else Olivia had touched.
“I’m not done with you,” she whispered, voice low and hoarse. “Not even close.”
The wind shifted slightly, curling around her shoulders like a promise.
Emma stood slowly and walked back toward her cabin. The scent of ash clung to her hands. The heat followed her inside.
And though she had no map, no plan, no damn idea what came next, her coordinates had already shifted.
Emma tried to return to her usual rhythm.
She moved through the motions of retreat life like a woman walking inside the memory of someone else’s routine.
She watered the rosemary and thyme each morning with practiced care, checked in on new guests whose names she couldn’t quite hold in her head, and stood barefoot in the sand while leading breathwork circles that once grounded her but now felt like echoes, soft and distant and no longer her own.
The view from the ridge remained the same, but it didn’t fill her anymore.
It didn’t soothe. It only reminded her of what was absent, of watching Olivia disappear into the sunrise with the weight of something sacred tucked into her chest. Even the soil felt different beneath her boots.
Not angry, not rejecting, but quiet in a way that unnerved her, as though the land itself had exhaled and taken its secrets with it.
The lavender had overgrown again. Emma trimmed it carefully, but her jaw tightened as she did, remembering the way Olivia had once tucked a sprig behind her ear and laughed, asking if that made her look like a local.
That laughter lingered in the air some days, invisible and infuriating in the way it made her want more of it, even as it reminded her of what was missing.
She avoided the hammock on the east deck. It still swayed sometimes on its own, whispering of the night they’d lay tangled together, skin to skin, naming stars and kissing like the sky could collapse at any moment.
Emma wasn’t sure who she was anymore. Or maybe, for the first time, she was exactly herself—peeled open, unable to compartmentalize the way she used to.
Olivia had stripped her, not in sex, but in spirit.
With every look, every challenge, every soft confession shared beneath the moon.
And now, Emma couldn’t wear detachment the same way.
Couldn’t pretend the silence comforted her.
Couldn’t forget the sound Olivia made when she came or the way her eyes had looked that last morning—wide open, certain, free.
She skipped lunch with Marv and missed two sunrises. Guests asked if she was okay, and she told them she was tired, which was true, but not complete.
Because it wasn’t fatigue.
It was grief.
And not for Olivia, but for the version of herself she’d been before loving her.
She found herself returning to the firepit where she had burned Olivia’s tank top.
Just to be near the place where letting go had started.
She sat in the dirt, sometimes for hours, tracing the edge of ash that had never fully blown away.
She didn’t cry. She didn’t scream. She just sat with the weight of it all and let the heat wrap around her body like arms that used to belong to someone who whispered her name like it tasted good in her mouth.
On the fourth day, her phone rang.
She almost didn’t answer; it rarely rang anymore, but the name on the screen stilled her: Dr. Bridget Stephens.
She wiped her hand on her jeans and answered on the third ring. “Lang.”
“Still picking up like you owe someone money,” Bridget said, her voice familiar and fond.
Emma exhaled a small, startled laugh. “Some habits die slow.”
“I’ll get to the point. A donor with pull at Harrington Memorial is building a case for trauma-informed recovery models.
I mentioned you. He asked if you’d consider stepping into a role at their rehab unit as a visiting specialist. Six-month term.
High autonomy. Good pay. And, from what I hear, it has one hell of a view. ”
Emma said nothing for a moment, letting her eyes drift to the ridge, the same one where she’d watched Olivia drive away.
“You still there?”
“Yeah,” she said slowly. “Just surprised my past finally called with something that didn’t feel like a warning.”
Bridget chuckled. “Well, this one’s a door, Lang. Walk through it or don’t. But don’t pretend it isn’t there. Let me know when you figure it out.”
She hung up before Emma could ask a single question.
The sun was dipping low, casting everything in gold. Emma stared at the screen, the name lingering like a challenge.
Harrington Memorial.
Olivia’s hospital. Her city.
It would be so easy to call it chasing. To say it out loud with a bitter laugh, to play it off like a stupid, lovesick impulse.
But she knew better.
This wasn’t chasing.
This was following her truth. And Emma had always followed the truth with her whole body.
She didn’t want to possess Olivia. She didn’t want to disrupt her. She just wanted to be near the gravity that had changed her. Maybe they would orbit. Maybe they would collide.
But she couldn’t stay still anymore. She looked to the ridge one last time, eyes narrowing against the sun. She wasn’t going after Olivia. She was going after both of them.
The sun hadn’t yet climbed fully over the mountains when Emma stepped onto the porch of the main cabin, boots scuffed and shirt collar half-buttoned, hair pulled back into a knot that had started the morning messy and ended up even more stubborn than she was.
Her bag was slung over her shoulder, worn canvas that had seen five lives by now and still carried the scent of sage, smoke, and something sweet she refused to name out loud.
The retreat was quiet in the way it only ever was right before something changed.
Marv was already on the porch, sitting in his usual spot, one leg hooked lazily over the other, a cup of black coffee steaming in his calloused hands.
The morning wind tugged at the hem of his shirt, but he didn’t seem to notice.
He just watched the sky like it might give him something new if he stared long enough.
Emma stood beside him for a moment, letting the smell of coffee and sun-warmed earth settle in her bones one last time. Then, wordlessly, she dropped her bag by the steps and sat beside him.
He didn’t look at her right away, just handed over the second mug resting at his feet. It was chipped near the handle, the one Olivia had always reached for like it meant something.
Emma took it without a word, wrapping her fingers around the heat.
They sat in silence, the kind that didn’t need to be filled. The kind that said everything had already been said, and yet somehow, nothing had been.
After a long sip, Marv finally spoke, his voice low and dry as gravel. “You sure about this?”
Emma nodded, staring out across the land that had once saved her. “I think so.”