After
AFTER
I wake before dawn.
At some point in the night, Grayson has turned off the lamp, and I lie in the blackness, thinking.
Yesterday broke me—sliced me open and pulled my guts out. But it remade me, too. It answered a question I’ve been asking myself for fourteen years.
I regret nothing.
Yet as I roll onto my side, trying to tether myself to the sound of Grayson’s breathing, I become acutely conscious of every wound gouged into me. Of every bloodied furrow left by Michael’s lies. The enormity of his deceit tears through me, as deafening as a stampede and even more destructive.
I can hardly comprehend what I’ve lost. Or whether I can ever heal.
Beside me, Grayson murmurs in his sleep. Not so much with words as with drowsy male sounds, but it’s still enough to send the blood in my veins veering off course. I imagine him waking and turning those oceanic eyes on me, the sheer depth of wanting they’ll hold. I imagine him asking me what happens next.
The answer he wants exists somewhere, buried deep—some naive sliver of me that wants to lie here forever, in this unfamiliar bed that somehow feels like home. But I can’t actually reach it. Too much stands in the way, a thorny bramble of lies and betrayals that tear at my flesh.
The hotel room’s shadows thicken, trying to pin me to the mattress, so I ease from bed and gather my clothes. My body aches in all the ways a woman’s does after she’s been skillfully taken apart and put back together again, but each movement only proves how much more the rest of me hurts.
My heart. My soul.
I slip from the room. In the parking lot, I cringe at the Porsche’s full-throated roar and back out as quickly as possible. On the way to the cabin, I fixate on the glittering curtain overhead. The dash clock reads 4:30—an hour until sunrise.
Out in the darkness, bears are probably rooting through the underbrush, but the forest calls to me, promising solace. Comfort. One last chance to retreat, to make sense of this.
Because really, this is my last chance. My four days here are up.
Time to go home.
The thought makes my skin prickle, and when I reach the cabin, I don’t stop to consider. I just layer a jacket over yesterday’s clothes and snatch the lantern from the living room without acknowledging the Monopoly money still papering the floor.
Outside, in the yard, the woods stretch like a beckoning tunnel. Starlight whirls above the treetops, but I aim for the shadows, letting the indigo trees fold me into their embrace.
The glow of my lantern bathes the massive trunks. The scene looks like Grayson’s photograph in reverse—light stretches up and up, never quite reaching the high dome of the forest. I steal through on quiet feet, not sure why I feel compelled to honor the silence, but doing it anyway. Nothing moves. Pine needles crunch underfoot, sending bursts of green into my nostrils.
In a clearing, I set down my lantern and unfurl on my back in the chilled moss, my gaze seeking the sky. Stars wink down through the sighing branches like benevolent, knowing eyes.
We see you , they seem to say. You are not alone .
I lie there, feeling like a stranger inside my own body. Nothing was what I thought. My life, my marriage... Fourteen years of memories attempt to rearrange themselves. Each snapshot moment looks different now, its angles subtly unfamiliar, like a long-lost friend greeted after a long absence, whose face has now changed.
Once upon a time, a thousand years ago, Michael’s hand curled around mine, stopped me from getting out of a car. Except it wasn’t Michael at all. That was Grayson. Grayson whose necklace glinted against his skin. It was his smell I wanted to drown in. His secrets, told without hesitation. He was the one who rescued me from Patrick’s house.
Michael only came after. Now I think of him at our condo in Seattle, bloodied and bruised, and his selfish agreement when I asked to stay. I consider the lies he hid behind a wall of silence. The secrets, the scars he left behind.
A despairing laugh bubbles up. God, how many years did I spend wishing he wouldn’t shut down at the first sign of emotion? That he’d invite me to feel instead of sending me off on a run?
Now someone’s asking me to do exactly that, and I can’t manage it. Because in the end, they both lied. They both broke my heart. And some things, once shattered, can never be stitched back together.
Apparently, Michael knew that even better than I do, because once upon a time, when the woman he loved died because of him, he built his walls and stayed behind them. He surrounded himself with what had proved safest—order. Routine. And then I came along and offered to help police the boundaries of the box he’d corralled himself into.
Of course he said yes.
A branch snaps. I jerk my head up. For a moment, silence greets me, then something moves in the underbrush. Something big.
I bound upright and raise the lantern. It can’t be the same damn bear, can it?
Except Grayson emerges from the twilit vault of the forest, his hair a mess. “Mina? What the hell are you doing out here?”
I lower the lantern, the rush of my pulse subsiding, although I might actually have preferred the bear. “Me? What’re you doing? Did you come out here after me?”
“You were gone,” he says, his tone defensive, his expression haunted. “And I...”
I wait, but he doesn’t continue, just swallows and glances to the side, as if he can’t bear to meet my eyes, though he never once looked away last night.
“You what?” I prompt.
He swallows. “I had a dream. That you...disappeared. Forever. And then I woke up, and you weren’t there, and...” He contemplates the distance. “I just needed to see. Needed to make sure you were okay.”
I search for words. I know we have to talk. Obviously we do, but I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to say. Leaving before he woke up already sent a clear enough message.
“Just come back with me,” he says. “Please? This is no place to be at twilight. Not unless you want to run into that mama bear again.”
Okay, maybe he has a point. I glance around, but there are just trees and more trees, and nothing overhead but a scrap of velvet sky. As mired in my thoughts as I was, I didn’t pay an ounce of attention on my way here. “Fine. But we’re lost.”
“Not really.” Grayson turns a circle, inspecting the forest, the stars, the ground. He still doesn’t look at me. The set of his shoulders gives me the impression he doesn’t want to.
Finally, he points. “It’s this way.”
I scan the dark beyond his finger. “How do you know?”
He cuts me a look.
I press my lips together. Of course. He taught me how to orienteer. Not Michael.
We set off. Unsurprisingly, Grayson delivers us straight to my backyard. The cabin glows in the budding dawn. In the driveway, his red whatever-it-is sits parked at a cockeyed angle, as if he arrived in a hurry.
“Thanks.” I catch at his arm. “For getting me home.”
He pulls away. He’s wearing a T-shirt, presumably chosen in haste, and rubs at his pebbled arms. “You know the woods are dangerous at this hour.”
I flinch and attempt to swallow the shame in my throat. “Yeah. I just...didn’t know what else to do. Where else to go. I needed to process. Alone.”
He sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets. “And? Did you? Process?”
I waver. “Not really. But we should still talk. Do you want to come inside?”
He aims a glance at the cabin, then away. I can almost see him figuring that the evidence of our night by the fire still litters the room. “Not really.”
“Okay.” I shuffle my feet. “In your car, maybe?”
“Fine,” he says.
“Fine.”
We make for the driveway. I set the lantern down and climb into his race car. Grayson hunches in the driver’s seat, his muscles taut as he glares at the steering wheel.
“A stick shift?” I say, in a futile attempt to lighten the mood. “I didn’t know anyone actually drove these anymore. Looks complicated.”
He stares at me like I’ve committed a mortal sin. “That’s what you want to talk about? Really?”
I pause. “No. I just... Sorry. It’s just that nothing I have to say is going to be what you want to hear.”
He grunts. “Yeah, I figured as much. It’s fine.”
When he doesn’t continue, I bury my face in my hands. “It’s not , though. This is all too much to handle. I mean, Michael dying was bad. Really bad. But now I’ve found out my whole life has been a charade. That the guy I married was essentially a stranger. Not to mention a manipulative asshole. And the one I actually loved lied to me. Do you have any idea what that feels like? How confusing that is? How hurtful ?”
His eyes darken. “I never meant to hurt you, Mina. Ever. Like I said last night.”
“You know what? I actually believe you. But that doesn’t change the fact that you did, anyway. Which almost makes it worse.”
He goes quiet, gears turning behind his eyes.
“And the craziest thing is,” I continue, “that despite it all, I still love you. I’m so fucking in love with you it hurts.” I laugh hollowly, unable to imagine a sadder way to echo his words back to him.
He blinks, rapid-fire.
“But it’s all twisted up,” I say. “Mangled. Like a fork someone’s pulled out of the disposal. It’s not...functional.”
“I’m not asking for it to be.” He grimaces. “I know it’s too late. I knew it last night. Even if I hadn’t, when I woke up and you weren’t there...” He bites down on the rest.
I look away. Silence piles between us.
“So what now?” I finally ask.
He makes a bitter sound. “You tell me. You’re in charge here. What I want doesn’t factor into this.”
I consider, but it’s like reaching for something that isn’t there. “What do you want, though?”
He squeezes the bridge of his nose. “It doesn’t matter. And you don’t want to hear it. Trust me.”
“Just tell me. Please.”
He drops his hand with a humorless laugh and stares through the windshield. “You really want to know? Well, shit...where do I start? Really, I just want to carry you into that cabin and tear all your clothes off again. I want to make love to you in front of the fire and hear you say my name the whole time. My real name. I want to make you make that little squeaking moan again. I want to do that a million times. And then I want to bring you with me to New Zealand, and let you choose which assignment I take after that, and after that. Take you wherever you want to go. I want to wake up and see your face every morning and make you coffee while you sleep in like a teenager, and I want to beat you at Monopoly over and over again and cook you kettle corn that’s three times too sweet because that’s the way you like it and... I don’t know. Get a fucking dog with you, or something. That’s what I want.”
I topple back in my seat like he’s pushed me. “Would the dog be old?”
His brow knits. “I guess?”
“And smelly?”
“Sure. Why not.”
I don’t say anything. I can almost see it—us leading a normal life, like two people who just met and fell in love and didn’t have an ocean’s worth of lies and lost chances between them.
But we aren’t those people. We never will be.
Grayson sighs. “But I know that isn’t what should actually happen.”
My breath catches. “What should happen?”
“You should go home.” He doesn’t miss a beat. “And put the pieces back together. Live your life. Do the things that make you happy. Forget about Michael. He wasn’t worthy of you, anyway. And he’s definitely not deserving enough to keep you from moving on. I’m not, either.”
Tears prickle behind my eyes, but I hold them in check. “You make it sound so easy.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not. It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do. I get that. But remember when you asked if I still recognize you? I said I do, and it’s true. And the Mina I see is strong. Strong enough to get through anything.”
“I don’t feel strong,” I say faintly. I feel like someone who’s just been emotionally filleted.
“Bullshit. You are. You always have been. Look how much whining and feeling sorry for myself I’ve done, and in the meantime, you’ve survived so much worse than I have. But you’re still here. Because you’re like that lantern, Mina. You glow. You endure. So go home, and get past this. And be happy.”
Get past this . The words catch beneath my breastbone. “But what does that mean for you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s time I tried taking my own advice. Maybe I need to do what I decided in Nepal and let go.”
My stomach shrinks to a hard, aching marble. “Of me?”
He shrugs stiffly. “Of my obsession with you, maybe. I’ve always thought the only thing I’ve ever done right in my life is love you. That it was my only redeeming quality. But I think...maybe I need to figure out who I am without you. Because right now I have no idea. It’s like I’ve spent half my life running. Toward you. Away from you. Shit, half the time I can’t even tell the difference.”
My breath dies. He might as well have cut my chest open and let my heart squelch out onto the floor mat.
Except he’s right. “I have no way to argue with that.”
“Well, damn it.” He fiddles with the steering wheel. “I was kind of hoping you would.”
“I don’t.” My throat burns. “But I am sorry. For it to end this way.”
He exhales and slides down in the seat. “It’s okay. You promised me three days, and that’s what I got. I might’ve gotten my hopes up for a minute, but I never really expected anything else. And the truth is I could never be with you, anyway.”
“What?” My brows snap together. “Why not?”
“Because you’re clearly not a fan of manual transmissions.”
When I say nothing, he catches my eye. The silence stretches. “That was a joke,” he says.
“Oh.” I know he’s trying to downplay the significance of what’s happening, or maybe trying to let me off easy, but I can’t muster up a chuckle.
“Great.” He sighs. “Well, on that note, I’m not leaving until you do.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because,” he says, “I really don’t feel like abandoning you out here. With the bears.”
My fingers twine in my lap. I realize I need to get out of the car, but this feels so horrifically final. “I still have to clean the cabin, though. The movers are coming today.”
“Okay. Why don’t you pack up and put all your luggage on the porch? I can load Michael’s car for you while you finish up.”
“It’s not Michael’s car anymore. It’s mine.”
He gives me a quizzical look. Fair enough, since I have no idea why I said that. It’s like I’m just trying to keep him here longer.
“Don’t mind me,” I say. “That sounds good. Thanks for the help.”
He leaps out as if he can’t get away from me fast enough. I get out, too. Once in the cabin, I tidy the evidence of my brief tenancy, stacking my suitcase and other belongings outside for Grayson to deal with. His footsteps thump against the porch. I give the furniture a cursory wipe-down, lock up, and stash the key beneath the grizzly.
Before I know it, Grayson is helping me into the Porsche. I start the engine and look up at him through the open window, struck by the mirror image of that day in Seagrove, when I stood beside his car and caught my very first glimpse of him.
He took my breath away that day. And somehow, for all that my heart is splintering into shards right now, I feel like he’s finally giving it back to me, all these years later.
“Bye, Mina.” Grayson leans in through the window and kisses me, softly, with tenderness instead of heat. It only lasts a second. “I love you. Always.”
I don’t have the chance to respond. In another moment, he climbs into his car.
I shift into Drive and ease my foot onto the gas. Tears burst out before I even clear the driveway. In the rearview mirror, the sun crests over the trees.
Only when my sobs finally quiet do I look over at the passenger seat and realize what Grayson has sent with me. I accidentally left it beside his car, but there sits the red lantern, tucked between bags of groceries. As Seagrove looms closer, I glance at it a dozen times or more.
Every time, it feels as though Grayson’s gentle lips are pressed to mine all over again.
I wonder how long it will take me to forget what they feel like.