Chapter 32
I woke up to pale winter light filtering through my curtains and the ache of exhaustion in my bones, but for the first time in a long time, I didn’t wake up heavy.
The night at Adam’s had blurred into laughter and clinking glasses and the warmth of new friends and family crowded into one room. But somewhere between midnight and morning, the quiet crept in, the nerves, the second-guessing.
I almost texted Brody to cancel, which felt like the theme of my life lately.
Then a knock sounded at the door.
When I opened it, he was standing there, bundled in a dark jacket, with a dark beanie on his head and his hair curling around the edges. He had a perfectly scruffy beard, and his hazel eyes had a twinkle of mischief in them.
“Morning,” he said, his breath curling in little clouds. “You ready?”
I hesitated, leaning against the doorframe. “Depends. Ready for what exactly?”
His grin was soft, easy. “You’ll see. Dress warm. Trust me.”
The pond was half-hidden at the edge of the woods, a glassy stretch of frozen water rimmed by trees dressed in frost. The air bit at my cheeks, and the silence out here felt like a different world, no whispers, no stares, no noise except for the crunch of our boots on packed snow.
“You found this?” I asked, balancing on the edge of the bank as Brody set down a worn canvas bag with skates inside.
“We skated here as kids,” he said, sitting in the snow while navigating, taking off his boots and lacing his skates with practiced ease. “Adam broke his wrist right there.” He nodded to a crooked birch by the far edge, his voice warm with old mischief.
I smiled faintly. “Good pep talk.”
He stood and motioned for me to sit where he had just been. I huffed dramatically and flopped down. Brody chuckled and pulled out a pair of skates that were somehow the perfect size.
With his gloves in his pocket, his warm palm cradled my calf, sending a feeling through me that I wasn't ready to name. I shivered, and he grinned with a soft pink touching the tops of his cheeks.
Was Brody Palmer blushing?
He worked in silence, the wind kissing my cheeks, rustling the whisps of hair that had escaped my toque. I closed my eyes for a moment, letting my surroundings settle me, letting Brody's strong, warm hands ground me.
Brody stood, pulling my eyes to him.
"You are ready to go."
He started to slowly skate backwards in that way that Canadian boys who grew up playing hockey could do without even thinking.
I sighed and covered my face with my mittened hands, "I am going to look like Bambi out there. I haven't been on skates for years."
He laughed and held out his hand. “Come on, Morgan. Don’t make me skate alone.”
At first, it was awkward, my legs unsteady, his hand steadying me when I wobbled. But as the minutes passed, my body remembered how to move, how to glide, and soon we were circling the pond, the cold air burning in my lungs, our laughter echoing off the trees.
For a while, it was light.
Then Brody’s voice softened. “Cass…”
I slowed instinctively, meeting his gaze as we drifted to a stop near the far edge.
“Why him?” he asked quietly. “Why, Andrew?”
The question cut deeper than I expected, not because it was cruel but because it wasn’t. I knew Brody, and he truly wanted to understand, wanted to know me.
I stared down at the ice, my breath clouding in front of me. “Because he made me believe,” I said finally. “He saw me when I felt invisible. Or I thought he did.”
Brody didn’t interrupt, didn’t push.
I kept going, my voice steadier than I felt. “For a while, he was… everything. He said the right things. Promised the right future. And I believed him because I wanted to. Because I wanted to believe someone could want me, not my family, not the Morgan name, not the idea of me.”
A bitter laugh slipped out before I could stop it. “Funny, right? People used to want me for my last name. Now I’m the name they whisper behind their hands.”
Brody’s jaw tightened, his eyes dark. “Cass… you’re not the whispers.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I shook my head and skated away a little, letting the cold sting my cheeks.
When he caught up, his voice was lower, softer. “You know I get it, right?”
I glanced over, skeptical.
He smiled faintly, the faint indent of his dimple showing itself under his scruff.
“Not the Andrew part. But the pressure. The need to prove yourself. I went to college because I thought I had to, thought I had to be more than the farm, more than Adam’s kid brother, more than a Palmer.
I picked a girl, whom I realized too late that I didn’t even love, because she looked right on paper.
Did everything I thought I was supposed to. ”
His breath came out in a soft laugh, tinged with regret. “And now? I want none of it. I came home, started working with Adam, and am working on building my woodshop from the ground up. Turns out, the quiet life I ran from is the one I wanted all along.”
"Isn't it crazy how we fight so hard not to be who we were supposed to be all along?" I mused.
Brody hummed, then laughed, "I majored in fucking accounting, Cass."
I laughed so hard that I snorted, thinking about Brody sitting in a grey, sterile office. Embarrassed by the sound that had just escaped me, I tried to cover my face, which I knew was red and not because of the cold.
Brody tugged my hand down and held it, staring at me with a grin that reminded me so much of when we were just kids.
Something unknotted inside me, the same thing that always did when I was around him, like he saw past the noise and straight into me.
We skated until our feet ached, until our cheeks burned from the cold, until laughter replaced the heaviness pressing between us.
Then we sat on the back of his truck, sipping hot chocolate from the thermos he’d packed. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was… easy. Nice.
I pulled my knees up, resting my chin on them. “I don’t know what I want next,” I admitted softly. “I’ve been ghostwriting so long it feels like my voice doesn’t matter, that it is no longer my own. I don’t know if I even have a story worth telling.”
Brody leaned back enough so he could see my face, his shoulder brushing mine just enough to ground me. “Then write it anyway,” he said simply. “Write it for you. Not for anyone else. Find your voice again.”
I turned to him, searching his face, but he wasn’t looking at me. He stared out over the frozen pond as if he were discussing more than just writing.
For the first time in months, I felt the slightest flicker of something I hadn’t dared let myself feel.
Hope.
It wasn’t much, just a flicker. But after months of drowning in shadows, even a flicker felt like fire.