Chapter 10
FINN
I wake with Marcella in my arms, and for one perfect moment, everything is right.
Her head rests on my chest, dark hair spilling across my skin like ink on paper. Her breathing is slow and even, her body soft and warm against mine. One of her hands curls over my heart, fingers splayed like she’s holding it in place.
Maybe she is.
The gray morning light filters through the skylight, muted by the snow still falling outside. The storm hasn’t stopped, but it’s quieter now. Gentler. Like even the weather knows something precious happened here and doesn’t want to disturb it.
I don’t move. Don’t want to wake her. Don’t want to break whatever spell has made this possible—this woman, this moment, this feeling in my chest that I barely recognize.
Happiness. That’s what this is.
I’d almost forgotten what it felt like.
Marcella shifts in her sleep, pressing closer, and her lips brush against my collarbone. The contact sends warmth flooding through me, followed immediately by something colder. Sharper.
Fear.
Because this can’t last. None of this can last.
The thoughts come slow at first, then faster, building momentum like an avalanche.
She has a life in Denver. A career. Friends.
A world I can’t be part of, not really. And what do I have?
A ranger station in the middle of nowhere.
A furniture business that barely pays the bills.
A broken mind that can’t handle crowds or noise or any of the things normal people take for granted.
Last night was incredible. Last night was everything I didn’t know I needed.
But last night doesn’t change reality.
I look down at her—this beautiful, vibrant woman who somehow ended up in my bed—and I see the future stretching out in front of us like a minefield.
She’ll want to go places. Do things. Introduce me to her friends, meet mine.
Except I don’t have friends. I have Moira, and that’s it.
I have a life specifically designed to avoid everything she represents.
She’ll try to change that. She’ll be patient at first, understanding.
She’ll coax me into going to town, attending events, being normal.
And I’ll try, because I’ll want to make her happy.
But eventually, I’ll fail. The anxiety will win.
I’ll embarrass her, disappoint her, become a burden she has to manage instead of a partner she can rely on.
I’ve seen it happen. The VA support groups were full of men whose relationships crumbled under the weight of their damage. Divorces, estrangements, partners who couldn’t handle the nightmares and the triggers and the constant work of loving someone who’s fundamentally broken.
One guy—Winston, I think his name was—told us his wife left after two years of trying.
She’d been supportive at first. Patient.
But eventually the midnight wake-ups and the canceled plans and the inability to just be normal wore her down.
“She said she felt like my caretaker, not his partner,” he told us.
“She said she loved me, but she couldn’t keep living half a life. ”
That stuck with me. Half a life. That’s what I’d be offering Marcella.
That’s what I’m offering her. A life of managing my dysfunction. Of making excuses for why we can’t go to that restaurant or that party or that trip she wants to take. Of learning my triggers and walking on eggshells and slowly, inevitably, growing to resent me for everything I can’t give her.
She deserves better.
The thought settles into my chest like a stone.
Carefully, so carefully, I extract myself from her embrace. She murmurs something in her sleep, reaching for me, and I have to physically stop myself from crawling back into bed and never leaving.
Instead, I pull on my jeans and flannel and slip downstairs.
The ranger station feels different this morning. Smaller. More claustrophobic.
I go through the motions of my routine—coffee, fire, systems check—but none of it brings the usual comfort.
The silence I’ve cultivated for four years now feels oppressive rather than peaceful.
Every corner of this place reminds me of her.
The kitchen where she cooked. The couch where we talked.
The window where I first saw Boyd being cruel and felt something protective flare in my chest.
This was supposed to be my sanctuary. Now it feels like evidence of everything I’m about to lose.
I’m on my second cup of coffee when I hear her on the stairs.
“Hey.” Her voice is sleep-rough and warm. “You weren’t there when I woke up.”
I don’t turn around. “Needed to check on things.”
“Things?” She sounds closer now. I can feel her presence at my back like heat from a fire. “Finn, is everything okay?”
“Fine.”
The word comes out clipped. Cold. I hear her stop moving.
“That’s not a ‘fine’ voice. That’s a ‘something’s wrong and I don’t want to talk about it’ voice.” A pause. “Did I... was last night...”
“Last night was good.” I force myself to turn, to meet her eyes. She’s wearing one of my flannels—I don’t remember her grabbing it—and her hair is a mess, and she looks so beautiful it physically hurts. “It was better than good.”
“Then why do you look like you’re about to deliver bad news?”
Because I am. Because I have to.
The words stick in my throat.
“Finn.” She crosses the distance between us, reaches for my hand. I let her take it, even though I shouldn’t. “Talk to me. Whatever’s going on in your head, just tell me.”
“The storm’s breaking.”
She blinks at the non sequitur. “What?”
“The storm. It’s weakening. Radio said the roads should be clear by this afternoon, tomorrow morning at the latest.” I force myself to look at her. “You’ll be able to leave soon.”
Understanding dawns in her eyes, followed quickly by something that looks like hurt. “Is that what this is about? You’re pulling away because I’m about to leave?”
“I’m being realistic.”
“You’re being an ass.”
The bluntness startles an almost-laugh out of me. “Marcella—”
“No.” She drops my hand, steps back, and I see the hurt transforming into anger. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to give me last night—everything last night was—and then shut down the moment reality gets complicated.”
“It’s not about shutting down. It’s about being honest.”
“About what?”
“About the fact that this doesn’t work,” I reply.
“You have a life in Denver. I have... this.” I gesture at the ranger station.
“I can barely handle going to town, Marcella. You think I can handle your world? Restaurants, events, meeting your friends? I’d be a disaster.
I’d embarrass you. And eventually, you’d realize you made a mistake, and you’d leave, and—”
“And you’d be hurt,” she finishes quietly. “So you’re leaving first. Emotionally, at least.”
I don’t have an answer for that.
“Did it occur to you that I get a say in this?” Her voice is steadier now, but I can hear the pain underneath. “That maybe I’ve thought about the logistics too, and I’m willing to try anyway? That I’m a grown woman who can make her own choices about what she can handle?”
“You don’t know what you’d be signing up for.”
“Then tell me.”
“I have nightmares.” The words come out like bullets.
“Bad ones. The kind where I wake up not knowing where I am. The kind where I’ve hurt people trying to fight off enemies that aren’t there.
” I watch her face for the flinch, the withdrawal.
It doesn’t come. “I have panic attacks in crowds. I can’t do parties, concerts, anywhere with too many people and not enough exits.
I haven’t been to a restaurant in three years because the noise and the strangers and the—”
“Finn.”
“I’m broken, Marcella. Fundamentally. And you deserve someone who can give you a real life. Someone who can take you to dinner without having a breakdown. Someone who doesn’t wake up screaming at 3 AM.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. The fire crackles. Outside, the wind whispers against the windows, gentler than it’s been in days.
“My ex told me I was too much,” she says finally. “Too loud, too passionate, too everything. And I believed him, for a long time. I made myself smaller and quieter because I thought that’s what love required.”
I don’t see where she’s going with this.
“It took me years to realize that wasn’t love.
That was control disguised as concern.” She meets my gaze, and there’s something fierce in her expression.
“You’re doing the same thing, Finn. You’re deciding what I can handle without asking me.
You’re making yourself less—pushing me away—because you think that’s what’s best for me. ”
“It’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it?”
The question hangs in the air between us.
“I’m not trying to control you,” I say, but the words sound weak even to my own ears.
“No, you’re trying to protect me. From yourself.” She shakes her head slowly. “But I don’t need protection, Finn. I need honesty. I need you to tell me what you’re afraid of instead of deciding for both of us that it’s not worth trying.”
My hands curl into fists at my sides. “I’m afraid of losing you.”
The admission tears out of me like shrapnel.
“I’m afraid of having this—having you—and then watching it fall apart. I’m afraid of being a burden you grow to resent. I’m afraid of loving you and losing you the way I lost them, and I can’t—” My voice cracks. “I can’t survive that again.”
The silence that follows is deafening.
Then Marcella closes the distance between us, takes my face in her hands, and forces me to meet her eyes.
“I can’t promise you forever,” she says softly. “Nobody can. But I can promise you right now. I can promise I’m willing to try. The question is—are you?”
I want to say yes. Want to grab onto this moment with both hands and never let go.
But the fear is there, cold and familiar, whispering all the ways this ends in pain.
“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “I don’t know if I can.”
Something flickers across her face—disappointment, maybe, or resignation. But she doesn’t pull away.
“Then think about it,” she says quietly. “The storm’s not done yet. We have time.”
She releases me and steps back, and the distance between us feels like miles.
I watch her walk to the kitchen, start making breakfast like nothing happened.
Like I didn’t just admit I might not be brave enough to fight for us.
She moves with the same confidence she always has—cracking eggs, finding the pan, humming softly under her breath—but there’s something different now. A guardedness that wasn’t there before.
I did that. I put that wall up between us.
The ranger station feels colder than it has all week. The fire burns in the hearth, but I can’t feel its warmth. The coffee in my mug has gone cold, but I can’t bring myself to move.
Somewhere in the last three days, this woman became everything I didn’t know I was missing. And now, because I’m too broken and too scared to reach for her, I’m watching it slip away.
The worst part? I don’t know if I want her to stay or if it would be kinder for us both if she left.
Either way, it feels like losing.