Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Savannah
Cold air knifes through the valley as I turn off the engine.
The world is quiet here. Too quiet.
The kind of quiet that presses against your ribs and threatens to wake every memory you spent ten years burying. I’ve been avoiding this place for the week since I’ve been back, but there’s no more avoiding it now. I have to confront the pain of my past head on.
I step out of the truck and crunch into the snow, boots sinking just deep enough to make each step feel heavy. Ghostlike fog curls from my breath. A thin layer of frost coats the grass, the remnants of last night’s snowfall glittering under a pale sun.
And there it is.
The place I once called home.
Or what’s left of it.
A stone foundation. A few charred beams half-swallowed by the earth. The faint imprint of rooms that don’t exist anymore. It all looks smaller now—like loss has a way of shrinking things in your mind until you come back and realize it was never the house that collapsed.
Just you.
I wrap my arms around myself, partly for warmth, partly to hold the pieces inside me that never quite settled right again.
I should’ve prepared for this.
I thought I had.
Turns out some wounds stay raw no matter how many years pass.
Wind whistles low through the broken remains. For a moment I swear I hear my father’s laugh. My mother humming in the kitchen. Axel telling me not to climb the damn oak tree barefoot.
A painful smile touches my lips.
God, we were kids. Just kids playing at forever, not knowing how fast forever can burn.
I move toward what used to be the living room. I can almost see the Christmas tree we decorated the year before my mom died. I can almost feel the warmth from the fireplace.
I crouch, brushing snow away from the stone. My fingers tremble.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into the cold. “I’m so, so sorry.”
A sound crunches behind me—snow shifting under heavy boots.
I stand too quickly, breath catching.
Axel.
He stops a few feet away, chest rising and falling in slow, uneven breaths. His jacket is dusted with snow, the wind tugging at his dark hair, making him look more like the boy I knew and the man I’m still not ready to face.
But I feel him.
God, I feel him.
Warmth radiates off him in waves, hitting me even from this distance. He looks massive against the backdrop of the forest—tall, broad, built like a wall you can either hide behind or crash into.
He’s staring at me like he’s been punched.
“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” he says quietly.
His voice is rough, deeper than I remember. It scrapes along my nerves and leaves a shiver racing down my spine.
I steel my expression. “I didn’t think anyone else would be.”
His jaw works, a muscle ticking on the side. “I saw your truck. And I knew where you’d go.”
Of course he did.
He always could read me, even when I didn’t want him to.
A gust of wind blows between us, lifting my hair into my face. Axel’s eyes track the movement, lingering longer than necessary.
He takes a slow step forward. Not close enough to touch. Close enough to ruin my breathing.
For a moment we just stand there, the only sound the crunch of frost, the distant rush of the Phantom River, and the frantic thrum of my heart in my ears.
I clear my throat. “I didn’t expect this.”
He frowns. “Coming back?”
“That,” I say, gesturing around us. “And how… intact it feels. Like time didn’t move on as much as I thought.”
He looks over the remains of my house, hands in fists at his sides. “Time moved.” His voice thickens. “Too damn fast.”
Something fragile tightens in my chest.
I look away, toward the river cutting through the snowy trees behind what used to be the backyard. “I needed to see it. To face it.”
He nods once. “I get that.”
Silence stretches between us again. Thick. Charged. Almost painful.
My eyes drift to the property line—and freeze.
A home stands where his used to be. A new build, modern rustic timber, warm cedar siding, smoke curling gently from the chimney.
“What… what is that?” I ask quietly.
Axel follows my gaze. “My family rebuilt.”
My stomach drops. “I didn’t know.”
“You wouldn’t have,” he says. “You left right after… everything.”
His words aren’t accusatory. If anything, they’re soft. Too soft. Like he’s afraid of hurting me again.
I swallow. “It looks beautiful.”
He doesn’t answer for a moment. Then—
“We bought the land next door too.”
My breath catches. “What?”
He glances at me. “Your house. After the fire, no one knew what was happening with the property. It was condemned. Tied up in court for a while. Eventually it went up for sale.”
Pieces click together slowly, painfully.
“You bought it?” I whisper.
He nods. “Yeah.”
I blink through the sting in my eyes. “Why?”
He looks back at the rubble. His voice drops into something so raw it nearly buckles my knees.
“Because I couldn’t stand the thought of it going to someone else. Someone who didn’t understand what this place meant. Someone who didn’t know what happened here. Someone who didn’t… remember.”
My throat closes.
Snowflakes drift silently between us, settling in my hair. Axel watches them fall like they’re something sacred.
“We didn’t rebuild it,” he adds softly. “Didn’t want to. Some places shouldn’t be forced back to life.”
I nod, barely holding myself together.
Instead of rebuilding, they created greenspace—soft hills, frost-covered grass, wild pines along the river, open sky where a roof once stood. It’s heartbreakingly beautiful.
And he preserved it for me.
I can’t stop the tears now. One escapes, rolling hot and humiliating down my cheek. I swipe it quickly.
“Savannah…” he murmurs.
His voice is so gentle it almost undoes me.
I shake my head. “Don’t. I’m fine.”
“You’re crying.”
“So?” I snap. “It’s allowed.”
A beat. Then—almost a smile. Not full. But close. “Yeah. It is.”
I look at him fully, really look, and something inside me twists.
“I never blamed you,” I whisper.
His entire body goes still—as if the world freezes with him.
“What?” His voice cracks more than a little.
I step closer. The distance shrinks to a thin ribbon of cold air. “I never blamed you, Axel. Not then. Not now.”
He shakes his head slowly, like he physically can’t take in the words. “Savannah, that fire started because—”
“Because of faulty wiring,” I cut in. “Accidents happen. And my father made the choice he made. He saved me. He protected me. That wasn’t you. That was him being… him. You can’t carry that.”
His eyes darken, stormy with pain. “I carried it anyway.”
“I know,” I breathe. “I know.”
Silence snaps tight around us, but this time it’s different. Charged. Magnetic. Pulling us helplessly toward each other.
He takes a slow, tortured breath. “Savannah…”
His voice wraps around my name like a prayer. Or a warning.
Maybe both.
Maybe that’s why I don’t move.
Maybe that’s why neither of us steps back.
The wind kicks up, swirling snow around us. I feel the heat of him, even in the freezing air. My heart stumbles and reorients itself toward him like it never stopped.
He studies my face with an intensity that makes my knees wobble. His eyes flick briefly to my mouth—so quick I wouldn’t have caught it if I weren’t already tracking his every move.
“That night…” he says hoarsely. “I didn’t just lose my house. I lost you. And I’ve spent every day since wondering if anything would’ve been different if I had—”
“Don’t,” I whisper again. “You were sixteen. We were kids.”
He laughs, but it’s a sound carved from pain. “You weren’t a kid to me.”
My breath catches.
Electricity arcs between us—hot, dangerous, intoxicating.
I can feel the gravity pulling us closer. One step. One inch. One breath and we’ll cross a line we won’t come back from.
I shouldn’t want that.
I shouldn’t want him.
But I do.
God help me, I do.
His voice drops to something devastatingly soft. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“That we shouldn’t be standing this close.”
He gives a low, humorless huff. “We’re not close enough.”
My pulse jumps. “Axel…”
He doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t reach for me. But his restraint is somehow even more unnerving than if he had.
“I can’t forgive myself,” he says quietly. “Not for the fire. Not for losing you. Not for everything that followed.”
“You didn’t lose me,” I whisper.
His eyes search mine like he’s looking for truth carved into my bones. “Savannah… you left.”
My throat tightens. “Because staying felt impossible. Because everywhere I looked, I saw what I lost. Because I couldn’t breathe here anymore. Because…” My voice thins. “Because if I’d stayed, I would’ve loved you too much to survive it.”
His breath stutters.
A raw, broken sound escapes him—soft, strangled, real. It hits me in the center of my chest.
We stand like that—close, aching, orbiting each other without touching—as snow falls quietly around us.
He whispers, “I never stopped wanting you to come home.”
“I never thought I’d want to.”
Another beat of silence.
“Do you?” he asks.
Do I?
God help me.
Yes.
But the word freezes on my tongue because saying it out loud might ignite everything that’s already smoldering between us.
We don’t move.
We don’t speak.
We just breathe the same cold air, hearts beating too fast, heat building too quickly, two people caught between the ashes of the past and the spark of something dangerously alive.
Finally, I manage a whisper.
“We should go.”
His jaw flexes. “Yeah.”
But neither of us steps back.
Not yet.
Not until the snow drifts heavier and reality presses between us like a wall we’re forced to acknowledge.
Only then do we turn away, walking slowly toward our separate vehicles—not touching, not speaking, but painfully aware that something shifted today.
Something we can’t untangle.
Can’t ignore.
Can’t bury again.
The past didn’t stay buried.
And neither did we.