Chapter 16
Gillian was draped half over me, her leg hooked over mine, the sheets twisted around us.
The air in the room was warm, heavy with the salt of sweat and the faint sweetness of her shampoo.
My chest loosened for the first time in I longer than I could remember.
Easy. Like all the years between now and that summer had folded in on themselves, and we’d found our way back to the middle.
It wasn’t merely the sex. It was her breathing syncing with mine, the weight of her hand resting on my stomach, the way my body had stopped bracing without me telling it to. This seemed like forward motion. Like perhaps the years apart hadn’t erased the part of us that mattered.
I brushed her hair back from her face, my fingers catching in the waves. “You’re gonna make it real hard to let you leave this bed,” I murmured, lazy, content.
She stilled. Not pulled away—just quieted in a way that had nothing to do with rest.
“I have a confession to make.”
The words cut straight through the haze. My gut tightened, instinct kicking in before my brain caught up. Confession was rarely good news. I shifted enough to see her face, bracing for whatever she was about to drop between us.
“Okay.” I drew it out, like giving the word more space might tell me where this was going.
She shifted onto her side, propped up on one elbow, the sheet sliding down enough to expose the warm curve of her shoulder. “I got offered a promotion. To junior partner.”
Junior partner. A year out of law school. I wasn’t sure how all that worked, but I suspected that wasn’t simply a good offer; it was the golden ticket. The kind of thing people killed themselves for. The thing she’d been killing herself for. The thing she’d ultimately left for the last time.
She continued, words careful, measured. “It’s more responsibility, bigger clients, more travel. It’s… everything I’ve been working toward.”
More work. Less time. Less life.
My chest tightened, not because I didn’t understand what it meant—I did, well enough—but because suddenly the space between us stretched wide again, like someone had shifted tectonic plates beneath the bed.
The room still smelled like her shampoo, that subtle vanilla scent that had been driving me crazy all night, and my skin still held her warmth where she’d been pressed against me moments before.
But that easy, loose sensation from a minute ago was gone, evaporated like smoke, replaced with the weight of what she’d dropped between us.
“So… you’re taking it?”
Her gaze slid past me, fixing somewhere on the wall. “I don’t know.”
And right there, the bottom dropped out of the moment. The warmth between us bled out so fast it was like somebody had cracked a window in January.
My jaw tightened as I processed it, the way my body always responded to threat before my mind caught up.
Because that’s what this was—a threat to whatever fragile thing we’d been building in the space between yesterday and tomorrow.
The sheets were suddenly too warm, the air too thick, and I had to resist the urge to put physical distance between us just to think clearly.
She didn’t know. After all this? After the way she’d looked at me, touched me, like she meant it?
It twisted in my gut. Not only the uncertainty, but the echo of four years ago, when she’d stood at the edge of everything we could’ve been and walked the other way without looking back. Chosen a path that didn’t have room for me.
I pushed up onto an elbow, not angry so much as… raw. “Then what was this, exactly?” My voice came out strangely steaady. “Nostalgia? Goodbye?”
She sat up, the sheet gathered tight around her like she needed the extra layer between us, hair tumbling forward over her shoulder.
“I don’t know!” Her voice pitched higher, edged with frustration.
“I didn’t come here looking for this—for you.
I’m not saying any of this to hurt you, Diego.
I’m trying to be honest about where I am. ”
The words landed square in my chest, sharp enough to make me hold still. Because the thing I wasn’t about to admit was that I’d already started sketching out the picture—her in my kitchen, her laugh filling the space, the quiet ease of having her here for good.
Turned out I was the only one walking that far ahead.
I shifted away from her, not far enough to make a point of it, but enough that the air between us cooled. My body language did what my voice couldn’t—pulled back, shut down, put up the walls I should’ve kept in place from the start.
“Well,” I kept my tone level, almost casual, “when you figure out where I fall in all of that, let me know.”
The words hung there, an exit ramp if she wanted it. But also a line I wasn’t crossing again. Not for maybes. Not for I-don’t-knows.
She flinched, her fingers tightening on the sheet. “That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” I sat up, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, my back to her. The hardwood was cold under my feet. “You’ve got a decision to make. I get that. But I’m not gonna pretend I’m okay being the thing you’re weighing against a corner office.”
“It’s not that simple—”
“Sure it is.” I reached for my jeans, the denim rough against my palms. “You either want the life you’ve been building, or you want something different. I told you how I feel. Made it clear as I know how. The rest is on you.”
The bed creaked behind me. She was moving, probably finding her clothes, putting herself back together. I stayed facing the wall, counting breaths, trying to keep the disappointment from bleeding through.
“Diego.”
Her voice was soft, closer now. She stood behind me, not touching but close enough that the air between us was charged. Part of me wanted to turn around, pull her back down, convince her with my hands and mouth what my words couldn’t seem to manage.
But I’d already played that card. And look where it got us.
“I should go,” she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper in the heavy silence that had settled between us.
I nodded slowly, still not turning around, keeping my eyes fixed on the worn paint of the bedroom wall.
The texture was familiar—I’d stared at it plenty of nights when sleep wouldn’t come, when calls from the firehouse replayed in my head, when the weight of other people’s emergencies pressed down on my chest. But tonight, the emergency was mine.
“Yeah,” I managed, the word coming out rougher than I intended.
The silence that followed stretched between us like a taut wire, loaded with everything we weren’t saying, everything we’d already said and couldn’t take back.
I heard her moving around behind me—the soft rustle of cotton and denim, the nearly silent pad of her bare feet against the hardwood.
Every sound scraped against my nerves like fingernails on glass, made my jaw clench tighter until my teeth ached.
The bedroom door opened with a soft creak.
I felt her standing there in the doorway, hesitating, and for a moment my chest tightened with something that might have been hope.
Maybe she’d changed her mind. Maybe she’d come back to bed, back to me, and we’d pretend the conversation hadn’t happened.
That the offer in Chicago was a bad dream, that we had more than four days to figure this mess out.
“This isn’t—” She stopped abruptly, her voice catching. I heard her take a shaky breath, regroup. “I didn’t mean for tonight to hurt you.”
Slowly, I turned my head enough to see her silhouette framed in the doorway.
The hallway light created a halo around her, making her look almost ethereal, like she might disappear if I blinked too hard.
Her hair was still mussed from my fingers, falling in dark waves around her shoulders.
Her clothes weren’t quite straight—her shirt was wrinkled, her jeans not fully buttoned.
She looked like she’d been thoroughly kissed and then some.
Like she’d been loved and claimed and worshipped.
She looked like everything I wanted and wouldn’t get to keep.
“I know,” I said, and meant it. That was the hell of it.
If this were only about her being cruel, being selfish, it would be easier.
But I saw the conflict written across her face, the way her fingers worried at the hem of her shirt, the uncertainty in her posture.
She wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was just trying to survive the choice between two lives that couldn’t coexist.
She stood there for one more beat, two, like she was waiting for something.
For me to ask her to stay, probably. To tell her it was okay, that we’d figure it out somehow, that love was enough to bridge the gap between her corner office dreams and my small-town reality.
To make it easy for her to choose me without having to really choose at all.
But I’d already made my play. Said what needed saying, laid my cards on the table as honestly as I knew how. The rest was her call to make, and making it for her wouldn’t do either of us any favors.
The door clicked shut behind her.
I dropped back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling where the streetlight threw shadows through the blinds.
The sheets still smelled of her. The pillow still held the indent of her head.
An hour ago, this had felt like the beginning of something.
Like we’d found our way back to each other after all the years and distance.
Now it felt like a countdown clock had started ticking.
Four days. That’s what she had left in Huckleberry Creek. Four days to decide if the life she’d built was worth more than the one she could have here. Four days for me to either get her back or lose her for good.
The ceiling had no answers. Neither did the empty room, or the cooling sheets, or the ache settling deep in my chest.