Chapter 14
MARCELLA
The road blurs through my tears.
I shouldn’t be driving like this—vision compromised, hands shaking on the wheel, sobs catching in my throat every few seconds.
But I can’t stop. Can’t pull over and fall apart on the side of a mountain road.
If I stop moving, I’ll turn around. I’ll drive back up that winding path and beg him to change his mind, and I refuse to beg.
I’m done begging men to love me.
The switchbacks are every bit as treacherous as Finn warned.
Ice lurks in the shadows, and my rental SUV fishtails once, twice, before I learn to take the curves slower.
My headlights catch the guardrail—or lack thereof—on the outer edge, revealing the stomach-dropping void beyond.
One wrong move and I’d tumble fifteen hundred feet into the valley below.
The irony isn’t lost on me—even now, even after everything, he was still trying to protect me.
Still giving me practical advice for a trip he forced me to take.
His last words weren’t “I love you” or “I’m sorry” or anything that might have given me hope.
They were “drive carefully” and “watch for ice.”
Bastard.
Wonderful, broken, cowardly bastard.
I make it to the main road without driving off a cliff, which feels like an accomplishment given my current state.
The town of Timberline Falls appears in the distance—a cluster of buildings nestled in the valley, lights beginning to flicker on as evening descends.
I pull into the first hotel I see, a modest place called the Mountain View Inn, and sit in the parking lot until my hands stop trembling enough to unbuckle my seatbelt.
My phone has seventeen missed calls from Coralyn.
I hit redial before I can talk myself out of it.
She answers on the first ring. “Oh my God, Marce. I’ve been freaking out. Are you okay? Are you dead? Why weren’t you answering?”
“I’m not dead.” My voice comes out raw, wrecked. “I’m at a hotel in town.”
“You sound like you’ve been crying. What happened? Is this about the wrong address? Because I swear, I double-checked, and I don’t know how I messed that up—”
“Cora, I say, hating the hardness in my tone. “I need you to listen. Can you do that?”
Silence. Then, softer: “Yeah. Yeah, of course. I’m listening.”
So I tell her everything.
The wrong cabin. The storm. Finn McGrath with his gray eyes and his handmade furniture and his soul-deep damage.
The way he looked at me like I was something precious.
The way he touched me like I was worth worshipping.
The three days that somehow contained more genuine connection than three years of my marriage.
And then the ending. The brutal, efficient way he packed me up and sent me away. The walls slamming shut behind his eyes. The goodbye that felt like a door closing forever.
By the time I finish, I’m crying again—ugly, heaving sobs that fog up the windows of my rental car.
Coralyn is quiet for a long moment after I stop talking.
“So let me get this straight,” she says finally. “You found a hot mountain man who builds furniture and worships your body and actually listens when you talk. You fell in love with him in three days. And then he pushed you away because he’s scared?”
“That’s the summary, yes.”
“And you just... left?”
The question hits like a slap. “What was I supposed to do? He made it very clear he didn’t want me to stay.”
“Since when do you let men tell you what to do?”
I blink, caught off guard. “That’s not—”
“Marcella.” Coralyn’s voice is gentle but firm. “You spent three years letting Stephen convince you that you were too much. You shrunk yourself down until there was barely anything left. And when you finally got out, you swore you’d never do that again.”
“This is different.”
“Is it? Because from where I’m sitting, it sounds like Finn is scared, and instead of fighting for what you want, you’re running away.”
“He doesn’t want me to fight for him!”
“So? Since when does what a scared man says he wants have anything to do with what he actually needs?”
The words land somewhere deep in my chest. I stare out the windshield at the darkening sky, trying to process.
“He said terrible things,” I whisper. “About how he’d ruin my life. How I deserve better. How he can’t be what I need.”
“He said scared things. There’s a difference.
” Coralyn sighs. “Look, I’m not saying he didn’t hurt you.
He clearly did. And if he were just some random asshole, I’d tell you to forget him and move on.
But from everything you’ve told me, this guy is drowning in trauma and isolation, and you’re the first person in four years who made him want to come up for air. That’s not nothing, Marce.”
“So what am I supposed to do? Camp outside his cabin until he changes his mind?”
“I don’t know. That’s for you to figure out.
” Her voice softens. “But I know you. I’ve known you since freshman year when you cried over a B+ on a paper because you thought it meant you were failing.
I’ve watched you build something incredible with your blog, brick by brick, even when Stephen was tearing you down. You’re not someone who gives up.”
I swallow hard. “This is different than a blog post.”
“Yeah, it is. It’s harder. But you didn’t walk away from your marriage because you were weak, Marce. You walked away because you were strong enough to choose yourself. The question is—can you be strong enough to choose him too? Even if he’s too scared to choose himself?”
I don’t have an answer for that.
The hotel room is generic in that comforting way all hotel rooms are—neutral colors, standard furniture, a bed that’s neither too soft nor too firm. I drop my bag on the floor and sink onto the mattress, staring at the ceiling.
Coralyn’s words echo in my head. Are you going to let fear win, or are you going to fight for what you want?
The anger is fading now, leaving behind something rawer. Something that aches in a way I didn’t know I could still ache after Stephen had already broken me so thoroughly.
I love him.
The realization isn’t new—I said it to his face, in the heat of our argument—but sitting here alone in this anonymous hotel room, it feels different. More real. More permanent.
I love Finn McGrath. I love his quiet strength and his hidden gentleness and the way his whole face transforms when he almost-smiles.
I love that he builds beautiful things with his hands because creating is easier than feeling.
I love that he covered me with a blanket when I fell asleep on his couch, that he taught me to carve wood, that he ate my cooking like it was the first real meal he’d had in years.
I love the way he said my name—Marcella—like it was something precious. I love that he told me I wasn’t too much when I’d spent years believing the opposite. I love that he shared his pain with me, his guilt, his fear, even when every instinct told him to stay silent.
I love him, and he loves me too. I saw it in his eyes even as he was pushing me away. I felt it in the way his hands shook when he loaded my bags into the car. I heard it in his voice when he told me to drive safely, like the words were covering up something else entirely.
He’s not incapable of love. He’s just terrified of it.
And I understand that fear. God, do I understand it.
After Stephen, I swore I’d never let anyone have that kind of power over me again.
I built walls of my own—different from Finn’s, but walls nonetheless.
The bright smile that hides the insecurity.
The endless chatter that fills silence before it can become uncomfortable.
The way I make myself useful, indispensable, so people have a reason to keep me around.
We’re both broken. We’re both scared.
The question is whether we’re brave enough to be broken and scared together.
I pull out my phone and start composing a text to Finn. Delete it. Start again. Delete that too.
What would I even say? I know you told me to leave, but I’m not going anywhere? That sounds like the setup to a restraining order. I love you and I think you love me too? He already knows that. It didn’t change anything.
I set my phone down and stare at the ceiling.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll check out of this hotel, drive back to Denver, and try to pretend the last three days were just a strange dream. A beautiful, painful dream that I’ll probably never fully wake up from.
I pull up my calendar app and look at next week.
Blog posts to write. A meeting with a potential sponsor for the channel.
Lunch with my mom, who’s been trying to set me up with her dentist’s son.
Normal life. The life I had before I drove up a mountain and found everything I didn’t know I was looking for.
How am I supposed to go back to that? How am I supposed to film cooking videos in my Denver kitchen when all I’ll be able to think about is his kitchen, with its handmade cabinets and the way the morning light streamed through the windows?
How am I supposed to date anyone else when I’ve been looked at the way Finn looked at me? When I know what it feels like to be seen—really seen—not as too much or not enough, but as exactly right?
I can’t. But I’ll have to try.
I think about the woman I was three days ago. Nervous, hopeful, cooking short ribs for a blind date with a man I’d never met. I think about everything that’s happened since—the wrong cabin, the storm, the man who made me feel more seen in seventy-two hours than my ex-husband did in three years.
I’m not the same person who drove up that mountain.
And maybe that’s the point. Maybe Finn changed something in me that can’t be unchanged. Maybe loving him—even if he’s too scared to love me back—has taught me something about my own courage. About my worth. About what I deserve.
I deserve someone who fights for me. Someone who chooses me even when it’s terrifying. Someone who doesn’t let fear win.
And if Finn can’t be that person, then I need to let him go.
Are you going to let fear win?
The question hangs in the air, but I already know the answer.
I’m not going to let fear win. I’m going to go home, throw myself into my work, and slowly—painfully—move on.
Not because I want to, but because staying here, pining for someone who won’t choose me, would be letting fear win in a different way.
Fear of being alone. Fear of starting over.
Fear of admitting that sometimes love isn’t enough.
I close my eyes and let exhaustion pull me under.
Tomorrow I’ll drive away from these mountains.
Tomorrow I’ll start the process of forgetting.
Tomorrow I’ll begin learning how to live with a heart that’s broken in an entirely new way—not from cruelty this time, but from love that wasn’t brave enough to fight for itself.
Tonight, I just let myself grieve.
For what we had. For what we could have been. For the life I glimpsed in that ranger station—cooking in his kitchen, waking in his arms, building something beautiful out of two broken people’s pieces.
Tomorrow I’ll be strong. Tonight, I let myself shatter.
Because sometimes loving someone means letting them go, even when every cell in your body screams to hold on.
Even when you know they’re making the wrong choice.
Even when walking away feels like leaving half your soul on a mountain with a man too afraid to claim it.