Chapter 11
MARCELLA
Three hours of silence is all I can take.
After our confrontation this morning, Finn retreated into himself so completely it’s like I’m sharing space with a ghost. He checks on systems that don’t need checking. Adjusts the fire that’s burning fine. Stands at the window staring at nothing, his jaw tight and his shoulders rigid.
I give him space at first. Maybe he needs time to think. Maybe the enormity of what I’m asking—that he choose hope over fear—requires processing I can’t rush.
But when he pulls on his coat and boots and heads for the back door without a word, something in me snaps.
“Where are you going?”
“Woodpile needs restacking.”
“It’s twenty degrees and snowing.”
“I’ve worked in worse.”
The door closes behind him before I can respond.
I stand in the kitchen, hands clenched at my sides, and make a decision. I’m not doing this. I’m not spending our last hours together—because they are our last hours, the storm is breaking and reality is coming—watching him hide from me behind physical labor and emotional walls.
If he wants me gone when the roads clear, fine. But he’s going to look me in the eye and tell me why. The real why. Not the sanitized version he offered this morning.
I grab my coat and follow him out.
The cold hits like a slap, sharp and immediate. Snow swirls around me as I trudge toward the woodshed, my city boots completely inadequate for the drifts piling against the ranger station. I don’t care. There are more important things than frozen toes.
Finn is exactly where I expected—splitting logs with a violence that has nothing to do with building a fire. The axe rises and falls in a brutal rhythm, each impact sending wood chips flying. His breath comes in visible puffs, his flannel already dark with sweat despite the freezing temperature.
He doesn’t acknowledge me. Just keeps swinging.
“We need to talk.”
Rise. Fall. Crack.
“Finn.”
Rise. Fall. Crack.
“I’m not leaving until you actually talk to me.”
He pauses mid-swing, the axe frozen above his head. For a moment, I think he’s going to ignore me, keep chopping until I give up and go back inside.
Instead, he lowers the axe and turns to face me.
“There’s nothing left to say.”
“Bullshit.”
His eyes widen slightly. I press my advantage.
“You gave me the cliff notes version this morning. Nightmares, panic attacks, social anxiety. Fine. But that’s not the whole story, and we both know it.
” I step closer, ignoring the cold seeping through my inadequate clothing.
“Tell me the rest. Tell me why you’re so convinced you don’t deserve to be happy. ”
“Marcella—”
“I mean it.” My voice cracks, but I don’t look away. “If you want me to walk away when the roads clear, I will. But you owe me the truth first. All of it. Because I’m standing here freezing my ass off for a man who won’t even fight for us, and I deserve to know why.”
The silence stretches between us, broken only by the wind and the distant creak of snow-laden branches. Finn’s face is a mask of conflicting emotions—pain, frustration, something that might be longing.
Then he drives the axe into the chopping block and exhales.
“Jimmy’s wife was pregnant when he died.”
The words hit me like a physical blow.
“She was seven months along. Their first kid. He used to show everyone the ultrasound pictures, talk about how he was going to teach his son to fish, coach his little league team.” Finn’s voice is flat, mechanical.
The voice of someone who’s told this story to himself a thousand times in the dark.
“The baby was born two months after the IED. A little boy. James Jr.”
“Finn...”
“I went to the funeral. All six of them, one after another. Stood there in my dress blues while their families cried and asked me why I survived when their husbands and sons and brothers didn’t.” His jaw tightens. “I didn’t have an answer. I still don’t.”
I want to reach for him, but something in his posture warns me off. He’s not done. Maybe he’s never told anyone the whole thing before, and stopping him now would be cruel.
“Jimmy’s wife—Sarah—she found me after the service.
I thought she was going to blame me. Scream at me.
Ask me why I wasn’t with them when it happened.
” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it.
“Instead, she thanked me. For being his friend. For serving with him. For surviving. She said Jimmy talked about me in his letters home. Said I was the one who kept them all sane out there.”
“That sounds—”
“It was worse than blame.” His eyes finally meet mine, and the pain in them steals my breath.
“Blame I could have handled. Anger, resentment—those I could have fought against. But gratitude? For living when her husband was in the ground? When her son would never know his father?” He shakes his head.
“I couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t look at any of them.
I took the first flight back to base and didn’t leave my bunk for a week. ”
“Finn...”
“I moved up here three months later. Told myself I was healing. Really, I was just hiding. Building furniture because it was easier than building a life. Staying alone because it was safer than risking losing anyone else.”
The snow falls around us, soft and relentless. I’m shivering now, the cold finally penetrating, but I don’t move.
“You didn’t hide,” I say quietly. “You survived. The same way you survived the explosion. The same way you survive every day.”
“Surviving isn’t living.”
“No. But it’s a start.”
He shakes his head slowly. “You don’t understand.
Every relationship, every connection—they end.
They always end. Death or divorce or just people drifting apart.
And I can’t—” His voice breaks. “I watched six men I loved die in a single moment. I can’t go through that again. I can’t love someone and lose them.”
“So you won’t love anyone at all.”
“It’s safer.”
“It’s cowardly.”
The word hangs between us, sharp and unforgiving. Finn flinches like I’ve struck him.
“You think I don’t know that?” His voice rises. “You think I don’t wake up every day knowing I’m wasting the life they didn’t get to have? They had families, Marcella. Futures. And I’m up here building furniture and avoiding people because I’m too fucking scared to try.”
“Then try.” I close the distance between us, grabbing his arms through the flannel. “Try, Finn. Not for them, not for me—for yourself. Because you deserve more than this half-life you’ve built, and somewhere underneath all that fear, you know it.”
He stares at me, breathing hard. The snow catches in his hair, his beard, his eyelashes. He looks wild and broken and beautiful, and I want to save him so badly it hurts.
But I can’t save him. He has to save himself.
“You want the whole truth?” I say, my voice steadier now. “Here’s mine. Stephen didn’t just criticize me. He systematically dismantled everything I believed about myself over three years.”
Finn goes still.
“It started small. Comments about my weight disguised as concern for my health. Suggestions that maybe I shouldn’t laugh so loud in public.
Little corrections, little criticisms, until I didn’t recognize myself anymore.
” The memories rise, bitter and familiar.
“He told me my food blog was embarrassing. That no one wanted to see a fat woman posting pictures of her dinner. That I should get a real job and stop wasting time on something that would never amount to anything.”
“Marcella—”
“I believed him.” The admission scrapes my throat raw.
“For three years, I believed every word. I stopped seeing friends because he said they were bad influences. I stopped posting recipes because he said it was pathetic. I made myself smaller and quieter and less, because I thought that’s what love looked like. ”
The wind howls around us. I’m crying now, tears freezing on my cheeks, but I can’t stop.
“When I finally left, I felt like a failure. Not because the marriage ended, but because I’d let it happen.
I’d let him turn me into someone I didn’t recognize, and I hadn’t even fought back.
” I meet his eyes through the blur of tears.
“So don’t tell me I don’t understand damage, Finn.
Don’t tell me I don’t know what it’s like to be broken.
I’ve been there. I’m still there, some days. ”
He reaches for me then—finally, finally—and pulls me against his chest. His arms wrap around me, solid and warm despite the cold, and I bury my face in his flannel and let myself shake.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into my hair. “I’m so sorry he did that to you.”
“And I’m sorry you lost them.” My voice is muffled against his chest. “I’m sorry you’ve been carrying that alone for four years.”
We stand there in the snow, holding each other, two broken people who somehow found each other in the middle of nowhere. It’s not a solution. It’s not a promise. But it’s something.
A beginning, maybe. If we’re brave enough to take it.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Finn says quietly. “I don’t know how to let someone in without waiting for them to leave.”
“I don’t know how to be with someone without making myself smaller to fit.” I pull back enough to look at him. “But maybe we can figure it out together. Maybe being broken in different ways means we can help each other heal.”
His forehead drops to mine. Our breath mingles in the frozen air.
“I want to try,” he whispers. “I want to try so badly it scares me.”
“Being scared is okay. Running isn’t.”
“I know.” His hands tighten on my waist. “I know.”
The moment stretches, fragile and precious.
Then the radio crackles through the open back door, loud enough to hear even from here.
“...road crews report Highway 7 will be cleared by this evening. Residents are advised that travel conditions will remain hazardous, but the pass should be accessible by approximately 6 PM...”
We both freeze.
Evening. That’s hours away. Not days—hours.
Finn pulls back, his expression shifting into something I can’t read. The walls are going up again, I can see it happening in real time.
“We should go inside,” he says. “You’re freezing.”
He’s right—I’m shivering so hard my teeth are chattering. But I don’t want to move. Don’t want to break this fragile connection we’ve just built.
“Finn—”
“Inside.” His voice is gentle but firm. “We’ll talk more. I promise.”
I let him guide me back toward the ranger station, his arm around my shoulders. The radio is still droning weather updates as we step through the door, but I barely hear them.
The roads are clearing.
Time is running out.
And I still don’t know if what we have is strong enough to survive the real world.