Chapter 19
Blakelyn
I don’t know what woke me, but I know I don’t want to cry when I wake up this time. I don’t panic. I don’t look for my clothes on the floor or wonder if I should sneak out before he does… because he’s still here .
Lying on his side, one hand resting low on my bare stomach, his breath warm against my collarbone. His lashes are thick and dark against his cheek, and his mouth moves a little when he exhales like he’s dreaming.
He’s asleep. Gruene is actually deeply asleep beside me.
His body is loose, not rigid with guilt or drowning in the past. His touch is there, not distant or punishing. He’s just here .
His face is so peaceful. So soft. So relaxed.
I don’t know what to do with soft when it comes from him… intense, he’s gorgeous. Soft… I can’t even handle it.
So, I just stay still, letting myself exist in it. Just letting myself feel it .
The moment will end. I know it will. I know him. The tide always recedes.
But this morning, for the first time, I feel like maybe it doesn’t have to.
Maybe the tide is shifting.
Maybe I’m not just the storm he can't avoid.
Maybe I’m the one thing he doesn’t want to outrun… anymore.
He stirs just before seven. I never went back to sleep. I’ve just been lying here, watching him sleep beside me, reveling in the comfort of his even breathing.
He doesn’t say much as he rouses. He just drags his hand down my spine once, kisses my shoulder at the curve, as though he’s afraid I’ll disappear, and then gets up without making a sound.
He finds his jeans on the floor and slips them on, not buttoning them. He doesn’t ask where his shirt is.
He looks down at me and sees me looking back at him. Neither of us says anything.
I sense the change in him. Whatever happened last night cracked something open and now he doesn’t know how to put it back inside of the box.
Good.
Neither do I.
Leaning down, he kisses me softly.
I don’t ask him to stay but I don’t stop him, either.
When the door closes behind him, I lie there for a long time, wrapped in sheets that smell like sweat and sun and him.
I replay every second—every breath, every touch, every unspoken ache that slid between our bodies like it had always belonged there.
Last night wasn’t about sex. It was about need . It was about pain and closeness and letting go while making room for something new.
It was a true beginning and I’m not sure I’ll ever be the same.
I lie in bed, just staring at the ceiling for a bit before getting up a little after eight.
I hop in the shower and wash my hair. I shave my legs before standing in front of the mirror wrapped in nothing but a towel longer than necessary because I don’t want to cover the bruises, he left with his mouth, with clothes.
They’re proof of something. Of him letting me in. Of me letting go .
I make coffee and lean against the counter while I brews. Then, I pour it into my favorite blue mug and walk barefoot out onto the dock and watch the river flow slow and golden under the rising sun.
The floaters will be out soon. The river will fill with laughter and splashing and the blaring buzz of cheap Bluetooth speakers. But right now, it’s just mine. And his.
It’s ours.
The mug burns my hand, but I hold the ceramic tighter because for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like I’m waiting to be left behind.
I feel chosen. I feel wanted. I feel… loved…
Even if he doesn’t know how to say it yet.
I’m standing at the front of my first-period classroom, trying to focus while one of my students tells me about a science experiment gone wrong that ended in a melted pencil case and half a set of eyebrows gone missing.
I try to laugh, but my mind’s not here.
It’s back at the cabins.
With him.
With yesterday morning’s dawn kiss.
Slow and almost too soft—like he didn’t want to let go, but he had to.
I haven’t heard from him since and he worked really late last night. The shop lights were still on when I turned out my lights and went to bed.
I feel him… like a pulse under the skin of this day… like a low thrum that I can’t tune out no matter how many times I reread my lesson plan.
At lunch, I check my phone.
Nothing.
No missed calls. No texts. Not even a stupid message like the last one he left scribbled on my grocery list.
I don’t panic because Saturday night was something and whether he’s ready to face it or not, I know he felt it.
I know I did.
I keep the phone screen turned face-down in my open top drawer, but I don’t put it away.
At dismissal, I make my way out to the lot and climb into my car, half-expecting to see his truck parked in the shade across the road again.
It’s not there. Of course, it’s not. It’s a work day for both of us.
My chest tightens but not with rejection. With understanding.
This is who he is. He’s making the effort.
Hurt just doesn’t leave easy.
Grief doesn’t let go with a kiss.
And love—if that’s what this is—isn’t a cure all for pain.
It might just be the thing that softens what grief can’t break though.
And I can be patient.
For him, I can be.
I will be.
I don’t see him when I drive past the shop, so I park in front of my cabin.
The air is thick with river heat, but there’s a quiet to it—It’s too late in the day for anyone to launch form here. There are no floaters. There’s no yelling. No laughter. No music.
I glance toward the dock again. There’s still no sign of him but when I step onto my porch, I see it.
His shirt.
The one I wore last, folded neatly and placed on my top step.
A yellow wildflower is placed on top of it. The same kind that grows up near the ridge he took me to.
And underneath both is a note.
Three words. Just three. But they say everything.
I’m still here.
My knees go weak, and I sit down, right there on the step. The shirt is in my lap, the flower is between my fingers, and the note is clutched to my chest like a lifeline.
Because it is. Because he is.
He’s still here.
He’s trying.
He’s still fighting every wall inside him to give me even this .
I won’t ask for more right now.
Because this… is everything.
Gruene
I tell myself it’s fine. That she didn’t expect anything after Saturday night. That she knew exactly what it was when I kissed her like she is the only thing I’ve let matter in six fucking years.
But that’s a lie. And I’m a coward. Because I felt it.
Every second of her under me. Around me. With me.
Not just her body—though fuck, I could lose myself in that—but her . All of her. The pieces she’s still learning how to carry. The ones I’ve been too broken to hold.
Blakelyn.
So, I leave the note. I leave my damn shirt because even though it’s two sizes too big, it looks better on her than it does on me. I leave that flower I picked from the ridge this morning like it means something… because I can’t say the words. Not yet. But I need her to know .
I haven’t run.
I’m still fucking trying.
Even if my chest feels like it’s caving in under the weight of it all.
I’m here and here with her is where I want to be.
Reece doesn’t say a thing when I show up late. He just tosses me a pair of gloves and nods toward the busted ice chest someone left floating downstream. We can repair it and rent it out. Less trash for the landfills and more money for us.
I spend most of the day doing grunt work.
Avoiding people. Avoiding her. And mostly—avoiding myself.
My head is fucked and my chest feels like it’s burning from the inside out. It shouldn’t feel like this. I shouldn’t feel like this. Not again. Not with her. But I do… and I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do about it.
By sundown, the river’s gone quiet other than the low hum of cicadas and the distant babble of the water.
I should eat. I should shower. I should do anything other than what I’m about to do. But I can’t help it.
My feet move before I tell them to. I head straight to her door.
I knock once. Twice. Then, the door opens and there she is—hair in a messy braid, wearing one of those soft cotton tank tops that clings to her chest in ways that make my chest too tight, and my mouth feel like I chewed on a cattail.
It’s her eyes that stop me. Those fucking eyes. They’re soft as though she sees right through me… like she’s been seeing me when everyone else has done what I’ve made them do and looked right past. It fucking undoes me. She undoes me.
“Hi,” she whispers.
I swallow hard and grunt, “Can I come in?”
In answer, she steps aside.
The second the door shuts, I’m breathing her in. Vanilla. Books. A little river water and a lot of something that’s just Blakelyn.
Fuck me, but I want to drown in it.
Drown in her.
“Thanks for the flower,” she says after a beat, leaning against the counter. Her voice is quiet. Honest.
“I didn’t know if you’d…” I shake my head. “Didn’t know what the hell I was doing, if I’m honest.”
Her lips tilt up and my whole world spins. “You didn’t have to say anything. That said enough.”
I look at her. Really look. And it hits me—how long it’s been since someone looked back at me like this.
Like I wasn’t just wreckage on a riverbank.
Like I’m still worth something.
“I didn’t know how to tell you,” I admit, voice low. “That I’m still here.”
“You did….with your note… and the fact that you stayed through the night.” She whispers.
Silence fills the space between us, but it’s not tense. It’s waiting. For me. For this.
“I still think about Molly every day,” I say quietly. “Still… even now. Even… with you. Aubree, too. Sometimes I swear I hear her laugh, or Molly humming in the kitchen. I don’t want to forget them. I can’t. But with you…”
Blakelyn sighs. “You shouldn’t forget them, Gruene.
I don’t want you to forget them. I’d never ask that of you,” she says.
“Remembering them, preserving their memory… that’s important.
You loved them. You still love them, and you should.
You always will but that doesn’t mean you can’t make room.
” Her hand lightly brushes against mine and I freeze.
“Room for what?” I rasp.
She takes a deep breath and stares at me. “For something new. Something alive. Someone alive.”
I close my eyes.
I want to believe her.
God, I do.
But I don’t know how.
“I’m not whole,” I mutter.
“You don’t have to be.” She calmly replies. “I’m broken, too, Gruene. You know that.”
I look down. Her fingers are threaded through mine and I don’t want to pull away.
I don’t.
We make it out to her porch and sit on the steps. We stay there for hours.
She leans back against the railing, and I sit beside her. We don’t say much.
We just sit, watching the trees shift in the warm wind, listening to the buzz of bugs and the soft trickle of the river carving its way around the bend.
Every so often, she leans into my shoulder. I let her stay because I want her there… because it feels… right.
And I don’t remember the last time anything did.
“Do you want to stay?” she asks when the sky goes full black and the only light is from the stars. She moves to face me and her motion detector—that I installed—kicks on.
I nod as I stare back at her.
She stands first and offers me her hand. I take it and stand with her. She leads me inside like I’m not the man who’s built walls ten feet high to keep people like her out… like I’m not the one who ran the moment my world collapsed.
She never acts like I’m broken. She accepts it and just lets me be broken .
Maybe that’s why I can finally breathe around her.
The sex is different. It’s slower. Deeper. Not rushed or messy or fueled by whatever hell’s chasing me.
Her hands are on my chest. My mouth is on her neck. I move languidly, not frenzied. She gasps my name like it’s a promise and not a plea. I move inside her and she wraps around me like she’s always been meant to hold me together. And for once, I let her.
I let her.
We come together and it’s beautiful, right. when she falls asleep against my chest, I don’t think about leaving. I don’t think about what this means or what comes next. I just hold her close and let her be here… here with me.
Her breath is the last thing I hear before I fall asleep.
Morning light filters in through the curtains.
Her breathing is peaceful and even.
I watch her for a long time, my hand resting on the curve of her hip, my thumb brushing against skin I never want to forget the feel of.
And I know…
It’s too late.
I’m in. I’m fucking in.
I’m in love with her and there’s no undoing it now.