Chapter 36
Rowan stared at the woods again as she tried to sort her thoughts.
“The movie industry changes people, Wes. Everyone’s constantly pretending they have it all together. Everyone wants something from you. And after a while . . .” She swallowed. “You start pretending too.”
Wes remained quiet, letting her gather her thoughts.
“I used to think success would feel bigger,” she said. “But mostly it just feels noisy and uncertain. Like everything I’ve worked so hard for could be snatched away at any minute. You know what the worst part is?”
“What’s that?”
She rubbed her ear. “Somewhere along the way I started becoming someone unrecognizable. Someone my family wouldn’t even like.”
Wes shifted toward her. “I don’t think that’s true.”
Her jaw tightened. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see me. You don’t know the person I became.”
“No, I didn’t, and I don’t. But I’m here now. And I still recognize you.”
Her chest tightened at the words.
He was here now. He’d been incredible to her since she came back to Virginia.
He’d always been incredible to her.
She’d left her life here thinking she could find something better—that she could become something better.
But she’d been wrong.
The better was right in front of her the whole time.
Rowan looked at the blanket in her lap. “Leaving here was a mistake.”
Silence followed, and for one terrible second she thought maybe she shouldn’t have said it out loud.
She looked up at Wes. She really looked at him. At the steadiness in his expression. The restraint. The warmth he kept trying not to openly show.
“I thought if I stayed, I’d never leave these mountains,” she continued. “Never do anything bigger. Never become someone.”
“And now?”
Rowan smiled through the sadness pressing against her ribs. “Now I think maybe I confused bigger with better.”
Something shifted in Wes’s expression. It wasn’t triumph or satisfaction. Perhaps it was just sadness for all the years sitting between them.
Neither of them spoke a moment. But in the space between where their gazes met, hundreds of small memories and future possibilities seemed to play like a projector playing a movie in the air.
She couldn’t look away. Didn’t want to look away.
No, what she wanted was to go back in time. To feel Wes’s arms around her again. To feel his lips against hers.
Her throat burned at the thought.
She’d tried so hard to leave all that behind her.
She’d failed.
“Rowan . . .” Wes leaned closer.
“Yes?”
Then Remington rose, instantly alert. His ears pointed forward, and his attention fixed beyond the pasture toward the woods bordering the property.
Wes tensed beside her.
Something was wrong.
Wes checked the perimeter of the property twice.
The first pass had been fast and tactical.
The second had been slower, more instinct than procedure.
Remington stayed close beside him the entire time, moving silently through the dark pasture and along the trees bordering the woods. Twice the dog stopped and listened into the darkness hard enough to tighten something low in Wes’s chest.
But nothing moved.
There were no footsteps. No flashlights. No shifting shadows between the trees.
He wished he believed that was true.
But he knew it wasn’t.
When he stepped back into the screened-in porch, he paused when he saw Rowan waiting for him there with wide eyes.
Something in his chest eased before he could stop it. The moment they’d shared before this . . . it had nearly left him undone. Because for a moment, he’d seen the truth in her eyes. He’d seen the truth that she still had feelings for him.
That was the very thing he’d been praying about for years. He hadn’t wanted to pray for it. He’d wanted to forget her.
But he couldn’t.
Rowan sat up straighter. “Did you find anything?”
He shoved his earlier thoughts aside. “No. Nothing.”
She studied his face. “You don’t sound relieved.”
“I’m not.”
“You still think someone was out there?” Rowan pulled the blanket around her more tightly.
“Yes.”
She lowered her eyes, and Wes immediately recognized her guilt.
Before she could spiral too far into it, he locked his gaze with hers. “You don’t carry all of this by yourself.”
A faint, sad smile touched her mouth. “People here keep saying that.”
“Because you keep trying to shoulder your burdens alone.”
The blanket slipped from one shoulder. Without thinking about it, Wes tugged it back up around her.
The movement brought him closer than he’d intended.
Rowan looked up at him.
She was close. Probably too close.
Wes was suddenly aware of everything at once: the faint lavender scent of her shampoo, the tiredness in her eyes, the way she looked at him like she remembered every version of them at once.
His breath caught.
For one dangerous second, he started to lean toward Rowan.
Emotion flickered through her gaze—longing, regret, exhaustion—all tangled together.
The feelings painfully echoed inside his own chest.
More than anything, he wanted to go back in time. He wanted to recreate what they’d once shared. See if that spark was still there.
But it was probably a bad idea—on so many levels.
He pulled back.
Or did Rowan?
He couldn’t be sure.
Either way, it was for the best.