22. Elizabeth
— ? —
Elizabeth
The decision doesn’t arrive like lightning. It seeps in slowly, like tide water finding its way through sand.
It happens in the quiet moments. The way Jarec appears at the cottage every morning with coffee from the shop in town, the one that knows my order now because he’s been coming so often.
The way he sits in the corner of my makeshift studio while I paint, never interrupting, never demanding attention, just present in a way he never was before.
The way he holds my hand when we walk on the beach and doesn’t try to turn it into more.
I watch him watching the waves one afternoon, his profile sharp against the gray sky, and I realize I’ve stopped bracing for disappointment. Stopped waiting for the coldness to return, for the walls to rebuild themselves between us.
He catches me looking and smiles. Not the careful, controlled expression I used to get. Something real. Something that makes my chest ache in a way that has nothing to do with pain.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
“That I might be ready to stop running.”
His hand tightens around mine, but he doesn’t push. Doesn’t demand clarification. Just keeps walking beside me, steady and patient, like he has all the time in the world.
That evening, I sit on the cottage porch and watch the sunset paint the sea in shades of gold and amber. The light catches the ring I’m still wearing - I never took it off, even when I should have - and throws a soft gleam across the weathered wood.
Jarec settles into the chair beside me, close but not touching. Waiting, as he always seems to be waiting now.
“I’ve been thinking about the house,” I say finally.
He turns to look at me, and I see the hope he’s trying to hide. The way his whole body goes still, like he’s afraid any movement might startle me away.
“About what it would mean to go back.”
He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t try to fill the silence with promises or persuasion. Just listens.
“When I lived there before, I felt like a ghost. Like I was haunting the halls of someone else’s life, waiting for permission to exist.” I pull my knees up, wrap my arms around them, make myself small against the vastness of what I’m considering. “I don’t want to feel like that again.”
“You won’t.”
The certainty in his voice makes me look at him. Really look, past the careful composure to the raw need underneath.
“How can you promise that?”
He shifts to face me fully, and his expression is open in a way I’ve never seen from him. No walls. No guards. Just Jarec, stripped of all his armor, offering himself to my judgment.
“Because this time, it won’t be my house that you’re living in.
It will be our home. Yours and mine.” He runs a hand through his hair, a gesture I’ve come to recognize as uncertainty, vulnerability.
“We’ll change whatever you want to change.
Fill it with your art, your colors, your presence.
Make it somewhere you want to be, not somewhere you’re just surviving. ”
“And your mother?”
His jaw tightens at the mention of Esther. “She’s not welcome. Not until she’s ready to treat you with the respect you deserve. And given that she’s currently not speaking to me, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”
“And Victoria?”
“Dead to me.” The words come out flat, final. “If she ever comes near you again, she’ll regret it.”
I’m quiet for a long moment, turning his words over in my mind like stones in my palm. Testing their weight. Their truth.
“I’m scared,” I admit. The confession costs me something, but less than I expected. “I’m scared of wanting this and having it turn back into what it was. I’m scared of trusting you and being wrong.”
“I know.” He reaches out slowly, giving me time to pull away. When I don’t, his fingers intertwine with mine. “I’m scared too.”
“Of what?”
“Of hurting you again. Of not being enough. Of watching you leave a second time because I failed you.” His voice cracks on the last word, and I see the vulnerability he’s finally stopped hiding.
“I lie awake at night terrified that I’ll do something wrong, say something cold, and you’ll realize I’m not worth the effort. ”
“Then why do it? Why risk it?”
His thumb traces circles on the back of my hand.
“Because the alternative is a life without you. And I tried that, Elizabeth. For two months, I tried living in a world where you weren’t mine.
” He looks out at the sea, at the sunset bleeding into the water.
“And it was the closest I’ve ever come to dying while still breathing. ”
I don’t have words for what that does to me. For the way my chest cracks open and something warm floods in, something that feels dangerously like hope.
“Okay,” I whisper.
He turns to me, not quite believing. “Okay?”
“Take me home.”
Three days later, I pack my bags.
Jarec helps, carrying boxes of canvases and supplies out to the car, treating my art with a reverence I didn’t expect. He handles each painting like it’s precious, irreplaceable, and I realize he’s holding them the way he’s started holding me.
When everything is loaded, I stand in the empty cottage one last time.
The afternoon light slants through the windows, illuminating dust motes that dance in the air like tiny stars. This place saved me. Gave me space to grieve and rage and rebuild myself into someone stronger than the woman who fled here in the dark.
“Thank you,” I say to the walls, to the sea I can hear through the open window, to the version of myself I became here. “For giving me back to myself.”
Then I close the door and don’t look back.
The drive to Rhode Island feels different this time. I’m not a nervous bride heading toward an unknown future, clutching a suitcase full of hopes I was too afraid to acknowledge. I’m a woman who knows what she wants, choosing to reach for it with both hands.
When the house rises from the cliffs, gray stone against blue sky, something settles in my chest.
Not dread. Not resignation.
Something that feels almost like coming home.
Jarec parks the car and comes around to open my door, but when I start to climb out, he stops me.
“Wait.”
I pause, one foot on the gravel drive.
He takes a breath like he’s steadying himself. Then he slides his arms beneath me and lifts me into his embrace, one hand supporting my back, the other beneath my knees.
“Jarec, what are you-”
“I should have done this the first time.” He adjusts his grip, holding me closer, and starts toward the house. “Let me do it right.”
I laugh, surprised by the gesture, by the earnestness in his voice. “This is ridiculous.”
“Probably.” He’s smiling, really smiling, and the expression transforms his face into something almost boyish. “But I don’t care.”
He carries me over the threshold like I weigh nothing, like I’m something precious he’s finally been trusted to hold.
Inside, the house is different.
Fresh flowers in every room - white roses and blue hydrangeas and the soft pink peonies I once mentioned loving. My favorite books are stacked on the end tables, spines familiar as old friends. The furniture has been rearranged, more open now, more welcoming.
And on the foyer table, where I once left my ring in cold accusation, sits a vase of white roses. The kind my mother used to grow in our tiny backyard, back before everything went wrong.
“I made some changes,” Jarec says, setting me down gently. His hands linger at my waist like he’s reluctant to let go. “If you don’t like them, we can-”
“I like them.”
He exhales, and I watch the tension drain from his shoulders. “Good. That’s… good.”
“How did you know? About the roses?”
“You mentioned them once. In passing, right after you moved in. You said they reminded you of being safe.” He reaches out, touches one perfect white petal. “I wanted you to feel safe here. Finally.”
My throat tightens. All those months when I thought he wasn’t paying attention, when I convinced myself he didn’t see me at all, and he was cataloging every detail. Hoarding them like treasures against a future he didn’t believe would come.
“Your studio is ready too,” he continues, and there’s nervous energy in his voice now, an eagerness I’ve never heard from him before. “I had better lighting installed. And there’s a surprise, but that can wait if you’re tired.”
“What kind of surprise?”
“Come see.”
He takes my hand - not pulling, not demanding, just an invitation - and leads me through the halls. Past the rooms that once felt like a prison, past the staircase, past the dining room where I ate alone, past all the places where our story went wrong.
We stop in front of a door I don’t remember.
“This used to be a storage room,” he says. “But I thought it would make a better space for you. For your work.”
He opens the door, and I step inside.
The room is flooded with natural light from windows I’m certain weren’t here before. My easels are set up, my paints organized on a new shelving unit, my brushes arranged in ceramic jars that catch the sun. It’s perfect. It’s everything I could have wanted and never thought to ask for.
But that’s not what steals my breath.
My portrait of Jarec hangs on the wall.
The shadow man, half-turned away, unreachable. I thought I’d hidden it, thought I’d buried it so deep he’d never find it. But here it is, displayed like something valuable, like something worth keeping.
And beside it, an empty frame.
“I found it in your studio,” he says quietly. “After you left. I spent hours staring at it, trying to understand what you saw when you looked at me. Why you painted me like that.”
I can’t speak. Can barely breathe.
And then I notice what else is in the room. Leaning against the wall near the window - Arrangement. The massive abstract in blues and grays, that violent slash of red across the center. My centerpiece. The one that sold to an anonymous buyer.
“You,” I breathe. “The anonymous buyer. ‘Someone I’m trying to find my way back to.’”
He doesn’t deny it.
“I was hoping,” he continues, moving to stand beside me, “that someday you might paint another one. Of who I’m becoming.
Who we’re becoming together.” He swallows, and I see the vulnerability in the set of his jaw, the hope he’s trying not to let overwhelm him.
“But only when you’re ready. Only when you see something worth painting. ”
I stare at the empty frame for a long moment.
The shadow man. The man he was. The man who hid from himself, from me, from everything that scared him.
And beside it, space for who he’s becoming. Who we’re becoming.
I turn to him, rise on my toes, and kiss him softly. “I already do,” I say against his lips. “I already see it.”
His arms come around me, holding me close, and I feel him trembling. This man who built walls so high I thought they’d never fall, shaking in my arms because I said I see him.
Because I chose to come home.
We don’t make love that night.
Instead, we lie in bed together, fully clothed, my head on his chest, his arms wrapped around me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear.
The house settles around us, creaking and sighing in the wind off the sea, and for the first time since I walked through its doors, the sounds feel familiar instead of foreign.
“I don’t deserve this,” he murmurs into my hair.
“No,” I agree. There’s no point in lying about it, and we’ve had enough lies between us. “But I’m giving it to you anyway. Don’t waste it.”
His arms tighten. “I won’t. I swear to you, Elizabeth. I won’t.”
I press my palm flat against his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath my hand. This heart that closed itself off for so long. This heart that finally found the courage to break open.
“I know,” I whisper. “I believe you.”
I fall asleep to the rhythm of his breathing, safe in his arms, home at last.