Chapter 13
FINN
She can leave now.
The thought hits me like a round to the chest.
I look across the room to where she’s sitting on the couch, her phone in her hands, probably checking the same weather updates I just heard. Her face is pale. She knows what this means.
“Finn—”
“I’ll help you pack.”
The words come out clipped, automatic. Mission mode. It’s what I do when things get dangerous—shut down the emotions, focus on the task, survive now and feel later.
Marcella stares at me. “What?”
“Your things. You’ll want to get down the mountain before dark. The roads will ice up again once the sun sets.” I’m already moving, already retreating into efficiency because it’s safer than standing still. “I’ll make sure your car starts. Battery might be dead after three days in the cold.”
“Finn, wait.” She’s on her feet now, crossing the room toward me. “We need to talk about this.”
“About what?”
“About what happens next. About us.”
The word hangs in the air between us. Us. Like we’re something. Like three days in a snowstorm created something permanent instead of just... this. Whatever this is.
“You have a life in Denver,” I say, not quite meeting her eyes. “A career. Friends. Your blog. All of that is waiting for you.”
“And you’re here.” Her voice is steady, but I can hear the fear underneath. “That doesn’t mean we can’t figure something out. Long distance, or—”
“Long distance doesn’t work.” The words come out hard—too hard.
I hear it even as I say it, but I don’t stop.
I can’t. “You’d drive up here on weekends, and I’d try to come to Denver, and every time I’d have a panic attack in traffic or freeze up at one of your social events.
Eventually you’d get tired of managing me.
Of making excuses for me. Of explaining to your friends why your boyfriend can’t handle a dinner party. ”
“You don’t know that—”
“I do know that.” I finally look at her, and the hope in her eyes is almost enough to break me.
Almost. “I know exactly how this ends, Marcella. I’ve watched it happen to a dozen guys at the VA.
The partners who try so hard to be patient, to be understanding, until they can’t anymore.
Until the damage is too much. Until they realize they signed up for a life of managing someone else’s broken pieces instead of building something whole. ”
“I’m not those partners. And you’re not just broken pieces.”
“No. You’re better. Which means you deserve better than what I can give you.
” The words feel like glass in my throat, cutting with every syllable.
“You deserve someone who can take you to dinner without mapping the exits. Someone who sleeps through the night without waking up screaming. Someone who doesn’t have to count his breaths just to get through a trip to the grocery store. ”
Her expression shifts. The hope fading, replaced by something harder. “So that’s it? You’re just going to decide for both of us that this isn’t worth trying?”
“I’m being realistic.”
“You’re being a coward.”
The word lands like a slap. I absorb it without flinching.
“Maybe,” I admit. “But at least this way, the only person I’m hurting is me.”
“That’s not true.” Her voice cracks. “That’s not even close to true, Finn. You’re hurting me too. You’re hurting us. Everything we built over the last three days—“
“Three days isn’t enough to build anything.”
“Bullshit.” She’s angry now, really angry, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright with unshed tears.
“Three days was enough to see something real. Three days was enough to make me want to try—really try—for the first time since my divorce. Three days was enough for you to make me believe I wasn’t too much for someone. ”
Her voice breaks on the last words, and something in my chest splinters.
“And now you’re telling me none of it mattered?” she continues. “That I imagined the way you looked at me? The way you touched me? The way you said you’d rather be scared with me than safe alone?”
I flinch. She’s throwing my own words back at me, and every one of them lands like a blade.
“I meant that,” I say, and my voice comes out wrecked. “I meant every word. That’s the problem, Marcella. I meant it too much. I—“
I stop myself before the rest spills out.
Before I tell her that somewhere in the last three days, I fell so hard I can’t see straight.
That I love her—God help me, I love her—and that’s exactly why I have to let her go.
Because loving someone means watching them leave, or worse, watching them stay and slowly realize they made a mistake.
“You what?” she demands. “Finish the sentence, Finn.”
But I can’t. If I say it out loud, I’ll never be able to push her away. And pushing her away is the only thing I know how to do.
“You should go.” My voice sounds foreign to my own ears. Hollow. “I’ll get your things.”
I turn toward the stairs before she can respond. Before I can see her face crumble. Before I lose my nerve and beg her to stay, even though staying would only delay the inevitable.
Before I tell her I love her and ruin us both.
Packing takes fifteen minutes.
She didn’t bring much—just an overnight bag and the groceries she’d intended for her date with Boyd. I carry everything to the door while she watches in silence, her arms wrapped around herself like she’s trying to hold herself together.
The walk to her car feels endless.
The snow is deep but packed down enough to navigate. Weak afternoon sunlight filters through the clouds, casting everything in shades of gray and white. Beautiful, in the stark way winter mountains can be. Unforgiving.
Her rental SUV starts on the third try. The battery held after all. One less excuse to keep her here.
I load her bags into the back while she stands by the driver’s door, watching me with an expression I can’t read. When I finish, I close the hatch and turn to face her.
This is it. The goodbye I’ve been dreading since I first smelled her cooking drifting through my trees.
“Drive carefully,” I say. “The roads are clear, but there might be ice in the shadows. Take the switchbacks slow.”
“Finn.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “Please don’t do this.”
“It’s already done.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” She steps closer, and I force myself not to retreat. “I meant what I said. About being willing to try. About figuring it out together. You said you were willing too—was that a lie?”
I want to tell her no. Want to tell her I meant every word, that the afternoon we spent imagining our future together was the happiest I’ve been in four years.
But wanting something doesn’t make it possible. Wanting something doesn’t make me capable of being what she needs.
“I thought I could,” I say finally. “I wanted to. But the roads are clear now, and you’re about to drive back to your real life, and I—” I stop. Swallow. “I can’t follow you there, Marcella. I can barely handle going into town.”
“Then I’ll come here.”
“And give up everything? Your apartment, your friends, your community? For a man who might never be able to take you to dinner without having a breakdown?” I shake my head. “I won’t let you do that.”
“It’s not your choice to make.”
“Someone has to make it,” I say. “Someone has to be realistic about what this is and what it isn’t. And I’d rather break both our hearts now than watch you slowly grow to resent me over months or years.”
She stares at me for a long moment. The tears are falling now, sliding down her cheeks, and every drop feels like an accusation.
“You’re not protecting me,” she says quietly. “You’re protecting yourself. You’re so afraid of losing someone else that you won’t even try.”
The words hit like bullets. Every one of them true.
“Maybe,” I admit. “But at least this way I know how it ends. At least I’m in control of something.”
“Is that what you want? Control? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’re just alone.” Her voice breaks on the last word. “You built this beautiful life up here, Finn. This sanctuary. But it’s not a sanctuary—it’s a prison. And you’re the only one with the key.”
I don’t have an answer for that. She’s right. She’s completely, devastatingly right.
But being right doesn’t change anything. Being right doesn’t make me brave enough to reach for what she’s offering.
“Goodbye, Marcella.” The words taste like ashes. “Drive safe.”
She stands there for a moment longer, searching my face for something. A crack in the armor. A sign that I’m going to change my mind.
She doesn’t find it.
Or maybe she does, and she’s finally seeing me for what I am: a coward dressed up in soldier’s clothing, too damaged and too scared to fight for something that matters.
“Goodbye, Finn.” Her voice is barely audible. “I hope someday you realize what you’re throwing away.”
She gets in the car. Closes the door. Starts the engine.
I stand there as she backs up, turns around, begins the slow drive down the mountain road.
I stand there as the SUV grows smaller, navigating the first switchback, then the second.
I stand there until her taillights disappear around the final curve and there’s nothing left but tire tracks in the snow.
She’s gone.
The silence that follows is absolute. No wind, no birds, no radio chatter. Just me and the mountains and the crushing weight of what I’ve just done.
I walk back to the ranger station on numb legs. Open the door. Step inside.
It smells like her. Bread and vanilla and something warm that I’ll never be able to scrub out no matter how hard I try. The couch where she sat, the kitchen where she cooked, the bedroom where we—
I can’t think about that. Can’t let myself remember the way she looked in my arms, the way she said my name, the way she made me feel like maybe, maybe I could be whole again.
She’s gone. I made sure of it.
The ranger station stretches around me, empty and silent. The same walls I’ve lived inside for four years. The same furniture I built with my own hands. The same isolation I chose because it was safer than risking loss.
It doesn’t feel safe anymore.
It feels like a tomb.
I sink into my leather chair, the one I sit in every night, and stare at the dying fire. The cold is already creeping in, but I can’t bring myself to add more wood. Can’t bring myself to do anything except sit here and feel the full weight of what I’ve just destroyed.
Three days. That’s all it took for her to change everything. Three days of her warmth filling these walls, her laughter echoing off the rafters, her presence making this place feel like something other than a monument to my isolation.
She said she loved me.
She said I made her believe she wasn’t too much.
And I let her drive away. Pushed her away, with my own two hands, because loving her felt more dangerous than losing her.
The first crack appears in my chest, small but spreading. The careful numbness I’ve maintained for four years begins to splinter. All the feelings I’ve been holding at bay—grief, loneliness, the desperate aching need to be known by another person—come flooding in like water through a breached dam.
I think about Jimmy. About what he’d say if he could see me now.
You’re an idiot, McGrath. You had something good and you threw it away because you’re scared. We didn’t die so you could spend the rest of your life hiding.
He’d be right. They’d all be right.
For the first time since my team died, I feel tears on my face.
And I have no one to blame but myself.