Chapter 5
GEMMA
The trailer felt different now.
We’d cleaned up as best we could, righting the scattered papers, straightening our clothes. My hair was a lost cause—I’d finger-combed it into something resembling order, but there was no hiding what we’d been doing.
Not that anyone was here to see. Just me and Kade, standing on opposite sides of the small space like strangers who’d accidentally wandered into the same room.
He’d gone quiet. Not the comfortable silence from earlier, when we’d worked side by side and gradually let our guards down. This was something else. Something cold.
I watched him shuffle papers that didn’t need shuffling, his jaw set in a hard line, his eyes fixed on anything but me. The man who’d held me like I was precious, who’d whispered my name like a prayer, had vanished. In his place was the same closed-off stranger I’d met this morning.
The walls were going back up. I could almost see them rising, brick by brick, sealing him away.
“So that’s it?” I asked, breaking the silence. “We’re just going to pretend that didn’t happen?”
His hands stilled on the papers. “Gemma…”
“Because I’m not really a pretend-it-didn’t-happen kind of person.” I crossed my arms, trying to ignore the ache building in my chest. “If you regret it, just say so.”
He finally looked at me, and the expression on his face made my stomach drop. Guarded. Resolved. Like he’d already made a decision I wasn’t going to like.
“This was a mistake,” he said flatly. “I shouldn’t have let it happen.”
The words hit harder than I expected. I’d known, on some level, that this was coming. He’d warned me himself—told me he didn’t do this, didn’t believe in this, couldn’t give me what I deserved. I just hadn’t expected it to hurt so much.
“A mistake,” I repeated, tasting the word. Bitter. Wrong.
“I meant what I said before.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, shoulders rigid. “I don’t do love. I don’t do relationships. And you…” He shook his head. “You deserve someone who can give you the fairy tale. The happy ending. That’s not me. It’s never going to be me.”
I stared at him, waiting for the tears to come. The pleading. The desperate need to make him change his mind.
Instead, I felt something else rising in my chest. Something hot and sharp.
Anger.
“That’s bullshit,” I said.
His eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” I stepped closer, my voice steady despite the fury coursing through me. “That’s complete and total bullshit, and you know it.”
“Gemma—”
“No, you don’t get to do this.” I jabbed a finger at his chest. “You don’t get to hold me like that, touch me like that, look at me like I’m the most important thing in your world, and then turn around and tell me it was a mistake. That’s cowardice, Kade. Pure and simple.”
His jaw tightened. “I’m trying to protect you.”
“From what? From you?” I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You’re so afraid of ending up like your parents that you won’t even try. You’ve already decided how this ends, so why bother starting, right? Better to be alone and miserable than risk feeling something real.”
“You don’t understand—”
“I understand perfectly.” I was on a roll now, the words pouring out faster than I could stop them.
“You’ve been here six months. You’ve watched half the men in this town find love—real love, the kind that lasts.
The fire captain and the mayor. Kross and Sydney.
All those guys on the logging crews with their wives.
Happy. Settled. Building lives together.
” I threw my hands up. “But you’re so determined to believe love is a trap that you can’t see what’s right in front of you. ”
He stared at me, silent. A muscle jumped in his cheek.
“I’m not asking you to marry me,” I continued, softer now but no less fierce. “I’m not asking for forever. I’m asking you to have dinner with me. To see where this goes. To stop being so damn afraid of something that might actually make you happy.”
The silence stretched between us, thick and heavy. I could hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears, could feel the adrenaline slowly draining from my limbs. I’d said my piece. Laid it all out there. Now it was up to him.
Kade looked away, his throat working. When he spoke, his voice was rough, barely above a whisper.
“And if it falls apart?”
I blinked. “What?”
“If we try this.” He met my eyes again, and I saw something I hadn’t expected.
Fear. Real, raw fear. “If we go to dinner and then another dinner and then suddenly we’re a year in and it all goes to hell.
If we end up like them—screaming, destroying each other, wishing we’d never met.
” His voice cracked slightly. “What then?”
The anger drained out of me, replaced by something softer. He wasn’t being cruel. He wasn’t trying to hurt me. He was terrified—genuinely, bone-deep terrified of repeating the only pattern he’d ever known.
I stepped closer and took his hand. His fingers were cold, stiff, but he didn’t pull away.
“Then at least we tried,” I said quietly. “At least we were brave enough to find out. I’d rather have something real that might hurt than spend my whole life wondering what I missed because I was too scared to reach for it.” I squeezed his hand. “Wouldn’t you?”
He looked down at our joined fingers. I watched the battle play out across his face—fear versus want, cynicism versus hope, the walls versus whatever had cracked open inside him when he held me.
The seconds ticked by. The space heater hummed. Outside, a car drove past, probably headed to some Valentine’s dinner, and I thought about how strange it was that my whole future might be decided in this cramped construction trailer that smelled like sawdust and cold coffee.
Then Kade let out a long, shaky breath.
“Okay,” he said.
My heart stuttered. “Okay?”
“Dinner.” He lifted his head, and something in his expression had shifted. Still guarded, still wary, but with a flicker of something new underneath. Something that looked almost like hope. “We’ll start with dinner. See where it goes.”
I stared at him, not quite believing it. “You mean it?”
“I mean it.” He pulled me closer, his free hand coming up to cup my face.
His thumb brushed my cheekbone, gentle, reverent.
“I can’t promise I won’t screw this up. I can’t promise I won’t panic and try to run.
But I…” He swallowed hard. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.
And I don’t want to let you walk out that door without at least trying. ”
The tears I’d been holding back finally spilled over—not from sadness, but from relief. From the overwhelming rush of being seen, being chosen, being worth the risk.
He kissed my forehead, soft and lingering, and I melted into him, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing my face against his chest. His heart was pounding as hard as mine.
“I know a place,” I mumbled into his shirt. “For dinner.”
“Yeah?”
“The roadhouse. Right across the street.” I tilted my head back to look at him. “They do a really good steak. And it’s Valentine’s Day, so they probably have some cheesy special we can make fun of.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. Almost a smile. “Sounds like a plan.”
“Fair warning, though.” I smoothed my hands down his chest, straightening his rumpled flannel. “Everyone in town is going to see us together. And people in Wildwood Valley talk. By tomorrow morning, half the population will have us engaged.”
“Let them talk.” He caught my hands, brought them to his lips, and kissed my knuckles. “I spent six months trying to be invisible. Maybe it’s time I stopped hiding.”
Something warm bloomed in my chest—hope and affection and the giddy, terrifying thrill of new beginnings.
We gathered our things. I stuffed my notepad and reading glasses back into my bag while he straightened the last of the scattered papers on his desk. The trailer looked almost normal again, like nothing had happened here except a routine budget review.
But everything had happened here. Everything had changed.
Kade held the door open for me, and I stepped out into the February evening.
The sun had set while we were inside, and Wildwood Valley had transformed.
Strings of red and pink lights glowed along the power poles.
The roadhouse across the street was warm and inviting, its windows fogged with the heat of a full house.
Laughter and music drifted through the crisp air.
Valentine’s Day. I’d started this morning thinking I’d spend it alone, drowning in paperwork, trying not to be bitter about a holiday I didn’t care about anyway.
Now I was walking across the street hand in hand with a man who’d just agreed to take a chance on me. On us.
Kade’s fingers tightened around mine as we approached the roadhouse door. I glanced up at him, caught the nervous set of his jaw, the way his eyes darted toward the crowded interior.
“Hey,” I said softly, stopping him before we went inside. “We’ve got this.”
He looked down at me, and something in his expression softened. “Yeah,” he said, almost like he was surprised to realize it was true. “I think we do.”
He pushed open the door, and we stepped into the warmth together.