Epilogue
KINGSTON
The fire inside my cabin burned bright while outside, fat, lazy snowflakes drifted past the window.
I’d gotten used to spending the holidays alone.
It wasn’t all bad. I had a homemade turkey dinner my chef had left in the refrigerator for me to reheat and an expensive bottle of white wine all to myself.
It wasn’t how I’d imagined spending every Thanksgiving, but it was more than I deserved.
Somewhere down the mountain, Mustang Mountain’s annual Friendsgiving potluck was in full swing. Ruby Nelson probably had everyone in town stuffed into the community hall, singing off-key and piling second helpings onto mismatched paper plates. It was the kind of thing she lived for.
It used to be the kind of thing I lived for, too.
I speared a green bean and shoved it into my mouth without tasting it. Instead of sitting shoulder to shoulder with people I’d grown up with, I was alone in my cabin with a gourmet turkey dinner for one and the kind of silence that felt like punishment.
Which, I guess, it was.
I set the fork down and pushed my plate away, the scent of gravy suddenly too much. I couldn’t eat. Not when my stomach was tied up in knots and every bite tasted like regret.
The fire crackled in the big stone fireplace, casting soft shadows across the room.
My laptop sat closed on the table, the blinking light on the side the only indication it wasn’t completely dead.
I could’ve been working. Could’ve distracted myself by checking in on the latest version of the adaptive irrigation software I’d sold three years ago.
But even that couldn’t hold my focus tonight.
Because tonight, Scarlett might be down there.
The phone rang, slicing through the quiet like a sharp knife. I didn’t even check the screen. There was only one person who would call me tonight.
“Kacen,” I answered.
My brother's voice came through the speaker, breathless and choppy. “You sitting down?”
I stood and turned toward the window. The lights from the valley flickered in the distance. “Not anymore.”
“That’s too bad. I’ve got bad news. Ruby outted you.”
My stomach dropped. “Outted me how?”
“At the potluck. She made a full announcement. Said Mustang Mountain owes everything to its mystery benefactor. Then she named you. Said you invested in the bookstore, provided start-up funds for the barbecue place, and even covered some folks’ medical bills.
” He paused. “And I’m pretty sure Scarlett is questioning that scholarship that paid for all four years of college. ”
I closed my eyes. That last part burned. She wasn’t supposed to find out about that.
“She even made a toast. It was actually pretty sweet. You should be proud.”
“So Scarlett was there?”
Silence.
“Kacen. Was she there?”
“Yeah. Front row.” He exhaled. “She got up to talk to Ruby then left right after. Didn’t say goodbye to anyone. Just walked out.”
My jaw clenched so tight it ached.
“You okay, man?” Kacen asked.
“We’ll see.”
“I know this isn’t what you wanted, but it was going to come out eventually. Too many people who love you know the truth. You deserve—”
“I don’t deserve shit.” That was the truth of it and the only one that mattered.
“Kingston…”
“I’ll talk to you later.” I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to continue the conversation. So I hung up and set my phone on the table.
Kacen was right. The truth always finds a way out, but Ruby had promised she’d wait. She said she’d let me control the timing of letting everyone know I was the man behind the start up funds and investments. I should’ve known better.
Now Scarlett knew. And I had no idea what that meant.
I paced to the edge of the room, my hand brushing the letter on the mantel as I passed.
It was still sealed. Still untouched. I’d written it eight years ago in a cell I’d tried to forget.
I’d addressed it to the woman I’d loved since I was fourteen and never stopped loving, even when I told her goodbye.
I couldn’t bring myself to mail it back then. Couldn’t bring myself to destroy it either.
A knock sounded on the massive front door. Three sharp raps. I froze. It was her. I knew it in the depths of my bones.
I crossed the room in four slow steps. As I tugged a baseball cap on and pulled it low over my eyes, I opened the door.
There she was.
Scarlett Monroe. All fire and ice and dark wind-blown curls, standing on my porch like a storm I no longer knew how to weather. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, her big brown eyes blazing hotter than the fire behind me.
“So,” she said, no greeting, no preamble. Just fire. “You’ve been living right under my nose all this time while I grieved you like a goddamn widow?”
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.
“No.” She stepped past me and into the cabin. “You don’t get to talk yet.”
She smelled like cinnamon and vanilla and memories of the past. Like holidays we never got to share. Like everything I’d lost.
“Scarlett—”
She turned on me. “Don’t you dare say my name like that. You don’t get to say it like I still belong to you.”
I closed the door. Not because I planned to keep her in, but because I didn’t want the cold to ruin the one thing in this place that still felt warm.
She looked around the room. Her eyes landed on the untouched tray of food. The sealed letter. The unopened laptop.
“So this is what your exile looks like,” she said, her voice low and streaked with pain. “This is where you’ve been hiding while the rest of us wondered what the hell happened to Kingston Raines.”
“I wasn’t hiding,” I said.
She snorted. “No? Then what would you call it?”
I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck. “Protecting you.”
That was the wrong thing to say.
She laughed but it didn’t reach her eyes. “That’s rich. You disappear without a word, go to prison, fake your own emotional death, and I’m supposed to be grateful you did it for me?”
“I didn’t fake anything. I just didn’t want you to wait around for a man who might not survive what was coming.”
Her mouth parted. For a second, she looked like I’d slapped her. “You think that was your decision to make?”
I looked toward the fire. Toward anything but her.
“Jesus, Kingston. You weren’t just some high school boyfriend. We were building a life. You were the man I loved.”
Every word cut deep into my heart.
“I still am,” I said, my voice coming out too damn soft, too fucking broken.
She didn’t answer. Just stared at me, her brown eyes brimming with tears I didn’t deserve.
After a moment, she reached past me and picked up the sealed envelope from the mantel. I’d scrawled her name across the front along with the address of the house where she’d grown up.
“Is this for me?” she asked.
“It was.”
“Can I read it?”
My heart twisted at the thought of her reading the words I’d written so long ago. Not because I didn’t mean them, but because I did. She deserved to move on and leave me in the past. Unsealing that letter would rip open wounds that had already healed.
“I don’t think you should. It’s too late.” I would have reached for it, but I didn’t want to move closer. Didn’t want her to see the man I’d become.
She didn’t open it. Just held it in both hands, like she wasn’t sure whether to tear it apart or tuck it into her coat and run.
“I don’t know what this is going to say,” she whispered. “But I want you to know that whatever you think you protected me from, you didn’t. You just broke me from a distance.”
Then she turned and walked out into the night, the letter clutched in her hand, and for the first time in eight years, I wondered if maybe I’d made the wrong decision after all.