Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
TORI
That’s four and a half hours to brace myself for the conversation waiting for me when I get there.
He answers on the first ring.
“Hi, Tori. I’m assuming you have news.”
I skip the pleasantries.
“Chase came to the office today. Calm. He just wanted to talk. I don’t know if he’ll stay this calm, but I’m not dragging it out anymore. I’m on my way to Moraine. This ends today.”
“I’ll have my co-counsel meet you at the house,” Jake says evenly. “Call me when you’re about an hour out so he has time to pull the paperwork together and drive over.”
“Okay.” My knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. “Thank you.”
The line clicks off and leaves me with nothing but the road and the ache in my chest. The drive blurs—winter-bare trees that look more like bones than branches, snow crusted in the ditches.
I try music, then silence. Neither helps. Every mile closer, the weight in my chest gets heavier, but my resolve is steady.
Mountains crest and fall into foothills. I cut north, trading highway speed for narrower roads that twist along creeks and through shuttered towns. Snow dusts the shoulders, bare branches bow over the pavement, and every curve brings me nearer to the jagged outlines of the Rockies.
By the time I’m about a half hour out, I call Jake again.
“I’m on track,” I tell him, my voice steadier than I feel.
He confirms the co-counsel will meet me there in an hour, and I end the call and drive the last stretch in a quieter, bleaker kind of focus.
The canyon leading into Moraine is narrow. Granite walls climb high on either side; the frozen river runs like a ribbon beside the road. The climb feels endless until the valley opens and the town spreads beneath the snow-capped peaks.
Finally, I’m driving down our street. The house comes into view, small under the mountain sky.
Chase steps outside—he must have been watching for my SUV from the window—and he stands, waiting on the porch. His smile is wide, almost boyish, and it cuts something deep inside me.
The drive has been long, but not long enough. Hours of winding canyons and snow-laced peaks, of trying to steady myself with coffee and silence, and still nothing could prepare me for the way Chase is waiting.
Chase steps off the porch when I pull into the driveway, shoulders squared against the cold.
For a heartbeat it feels like I’ve stepped backward in time, like nothing has broken between us.
Before I turn off the vehicle I send a quick text to Skye, realizing only now that in my hyper focus to make things happen I completely forgot to tell my roommate I wouldn’t be home after work.
Tori, 5:02 p.m.: I’ll be home late. Don’t wait up.
I don’t check to see if she responds, instead switching my phone to do not disturb before dropping it into my handbag.
Chase walks to my door and opens it, his voice warm, hopeful.
“Dinner’s ready. We’ll get your bags later.”
There are no bags.
He doesn’t even check.
I step out, letting him fall in beside me, but my chest is already tightening, bracing for the weight of what’s coming.
When we step onto the porch I pause, my hand gripping the rail. I can’t go inside.
It feels… wrong. Like a lie.
“Let’s sit a minute,” I say softly, lowering myself onto the top step. The wood feels frigid through my jeans—it’s insanely cold right now, but we both have on jackets. We’ll live.
I pat the spot beside me. He sits, close enough that our shoulders touch.
I take his hands in mine, look at them—at us. The way we’ve always fit, the way it once felt like home.
“Chase,” I say, softly. “I need you to hear what I’m about to say.”
He smiles faintly, still believing.
“Of course, baby.”
He leans in to kiss me, but I turn away, eyes fixed on our fingers knotted together.
“What’s wrong?” he asks. “You’re here now. Everything’s going to be fine, we can work on things—”
I lay three fingers gently over his mouth.
“No. Not this time. I need you to listen. Not to argue, not to twist my words, not only to hear what you want. Just listen. Can you do that?”
He studies me, something nervous flickering in his eyes, then nods.
I lower my hand and take a breath that cuts sharp in the cold. “I love you. I always will. But when I left… that wasn’t an ultimatum. That was the end.”
The hope drains from his face. His grip on my hands tightens, then falters.
“But you said—”
“I’m speaking,” I murmur, my voice breaking. “You’re listening.”
His jaw tightens, but he stays quiet.
“I’m proud of you for going to therapy,” I continue, voice trembling but steady enough.
“And you should keep going. But not for me. Not for us. For you. Because if you’re only doing it to win me back, then nothing will change. You need to heal for yourself. Because you are worth fighting for, Chase. You are worth loving. Even if it’s not me who does it anymore.”
He swallows, and the quiet after that feels like a held breath.
“So this is it,” he says finally, voice small. “This is really done?”
“It is,” I answer. “It’s not one fight or one problem.
It’s every time I picked myself up after you broke me and then smiled so you wouldn’t feel worse.
It’s every time I swallowed my anger because your shame made you louder.
It’s the years of being the one who fixed, smoothed, and absorbed your darkness because you couldn’t sit with what hurt you. ”
He looks as if he might argue, but words fail him; they stack behind his eyes like bricks.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel like that,” he whispers. “I didn’t know how to be different.”
“Then learn,” I say, sharper than I want, then softer. “Learn for you, not because I asked. I won’t be the reason you stop spiraling. I’m not your safety net.”
His hands are shaking, not from the cold. I can feel the tremor run through him.
“I’m trying. I swear I am. Every week—there are things I say out loud that I never said to anyone. It’s brutal.”
“I know you’re trying,” I admit, and it hurts to say it because trying shouldn’t be the only thing that keeps people together. “But trying is different from changing. Trying can be performative if it’s shaped around getting me back. Change is slow, ugly work. And it has to be for you. No one else.”
Tears slide down his face, silent at first, and then steady. “If I’m worth loving, and if you still love me… why are you ending this?”
“Because I’ve broken too many times for you.” My own tears spill over. I’ve held them back too long. “And I can’t do it anymore. As long as I stay, we’ll keep breaking each other until there’s nothing left.”
He clutches at my hands like a lifeline.
“I don’t want to lose you, Tor. I was scared—scared of failing, scared of being small. My parents—” He stops, the words too heavy for the thin winter air. “They did this to me. I don’t want to be that man. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“My staying won’t make you stop hurting me,” I say. “Your childhood didn’t make you a bad man, Chase. It made you wounded. But I won’t let you keep using me as the place to bleed out. I loved you and I thought love could hold everything. I was wrong.”
He closes his eyes, and the sound he makes is half sob, half apology.
“Tell me what to do. Tell me anything that could fix this. I’ll do it.”
My throat tightens. I want to give him a list—therapy sessions, reading lists, support groups, calls to Trent, consistent check-ins with a sponsor. I want to give him a plan that guarantees success.
But there’s no guarantee. There’s only time and work and a willingness he must find inside himself.
“Start with you,” I say finally. “Keep going to therapy. Do the homework. Go when it’s hard, not just when it’s convenient.
Talk to your brother and let him see you try.
And stop drinking—really stop. Not for me.
Not for your brother. For yourself. Then show up for the small things.
People don’t need grand gestures. They need daily proof that you can be a different man. ”
He nods, furious and desperate and heartbreakingly sincere. “I will. I swear I will.”
“Then do it for that reason,” I plead, still crying. “Not so you can come back to me. Do it so you can live with yourself without hating the man you see in the mirror.”
He looks at me like that broken boy I fell in love with so many years ago, and he whispers, “I love you.”
“I love you,” I whisper back. “And that’s why I can’t stay.”
His forehead presses against mine, his tears thick in his voice. “I ruined us.”
“It wasn’t only you,” I breathe.
“But it was mostly me.”
My throat tightens. “Maybe. Yeah.”
He pulls back just enough to cup my face, his hands warm against my frozen skin, his thumbs wiping at tears that won’t stop. His eyes are red, wet, so full of regret that I almost can’t bear it.
“I’m sorry, Tor.”
I choke on a sob, because this hurts. It hurts like my soul has cracked in two, my heart is breaking all over again. “I know.”
Then he leans forward and presses his lips to mine. Gentle. Careful. A soft goodbye.
When he pulls back, he doesn’t let go, just rests his forehead on mine again. And for a long time we sit like that.
Crying together. Mourning seventeen years of shared history—a complicated life and a turbulent love we built together, all of it crumbling into memory while the mountains watch in silence.
The sound of tires crunching over snow breaks the moment. A black Mercedes pulls up the drive and the attorney climbs out, briefcase in hand, and even without words Chase understands.
Inside, the house is the same—same furniture, same scent. But it feels foreign now, like walking through a photograph.
The papers are laid out on the coffee table, white sheets that weigh more than stone. The space next to his name waits for his signature, then mine.
Chase goes first. His hand shakes as the pen scrapes across the page. Then it’s my turn. My fingers tremble, but I sign anyway.
And just like that, seventeen years are reduced to ink on paper.