Chapter 4 #2
I walk through the rooms slowly, trailing my fingers over furniture covered in sheets, opening curtains to let in the pale afternoon light.
The kitchen still has their coffee mugs on the rack by the sink.
The living room still has my father's recliner facing the window where he liked to watch the birds.
Cole kept everything exactly as it was. Waiting for me. Waiting for me to come home and help him figure out what to do with a lifetime of memories.
I owe him more than I can ever repay.
But I can start by being here now. I can start by not running away again.
I lock up the house and drive to the bar with the windows down, letting the salt air clear my head. By the time I pull into the Ironside parking lot, my eyes aren't red anymore. Small mercies.
The bar is quiet when I walk in. Mid-afternoon on a Saturday, the calm before the evening rush. Nash waves when I come in.
"Cole's at the shop. Will's in the office if you need anything."
Will's in the office. Where I'm supposed to be working today, going through the quarterly tax documents that have been piling up since Darla left.
I tell myself the flutter in my stomach is residual emotion from the house. It's not convincing.
The office door is open, but I knock anyway. Will looks up from his computer, and his expression shifts when he sees me—concern flickering across his features before he can hide it.
"Gemma. You okay?"
I must look worse than I thought. "I'm fine. Just had a rough morning."
He doesn't push, doesn't ask what kind of rough. Just nods and gestures to the chair across from his desk. "You want to sit for a minute before you dive into the tax stuff?"
I should say no. I should go to the side table and bury myself in paperwork the way I've been doing for weeks. But I sink into the chair before I can talk myself out of it.
"I went to my parents' house today." I hear myself say. "First time since I got back."
Will sets aside whatever he was working on, turning to face me completely. "How was it?"
"Hard." I look at my hands. "Cole's been taking care of it by himself all this time. Three years. Because I wasn't here."
The silence that follows isn't uncomfortable. Will doesn't try to fill it with platitudes or reassurances. He just waits.
"I missed their funeral." My voice cracks on the words. "Craig convinced me I shouldn't go. And I let him. I let him keep me away from burying my own parents."
"That's not on you."
I look up, startled by the certainty in his voice.
"It is, though. I could have—"
"You were surviving." His eyes hold mine, steady and sure. "Whatever he did to you, whatever hold he had, you were doing what you had to do to get through each day. That's not weakness. That's survival."
The tears threaten again, but I blink them back. "How do you know that?"
"Because I know what it looks like when someone's been broken down piece by piece. And I know it doesn't happen to weak people. Weak people don't survive it." He leans forward slightly. "You're here. You got out. You came home. That takes more strength than most people will ever have to find."
I don't know what to say to that. No one has ever framed it that way before—not as a failure I need to atone for, but as a battle I managed to survive.
"Thank you," I manage.
He nods, and the tension eases. He gestures toward the side table. "Tax documents are waiting whenever you're ready. No rush."
I stand, steadier than I was when I sat down. My eyes catch on something as I move toward the table—a photo on the windowsill, half-hidden behind a stack of folders.
I know who it is before I pick it up. But I pick it up anyway.
Will, younger by maybe a decade, with his arm around Sarah on some beach. They're both laughing at something off-camera, and the joy on their faces is so raw and real that it makes my throat tight. I remember her looking like that. At the Brotherhood cookouts. Around town and at the bar,
"She hated that picture."
I nearly drop the frame. Will is watching me, but there's no anger in his expression. Just a quiet sadness that I recognize.
"I'm sorry." I start to put it back. "I wasn't trying to—"
"It's fine." He stands, moves closer, but not too close. "I keep it there on purpose. Reminds me that she was real. That it wasn't just something I dreamed."
"I remember her," I say softly. "She was always so kind to me. That last Christmas before I left, she gave me a bracelet she'd made. Said every woman should have something beautiful that was just for her."
Will's expression flickers. "That was Sarah."
"I still have it. Kept it hidden from Craig because—" I stop. Because he would have made me throw it away. Because he would have twisted it into something ugly. "Because I wanted one thing that was just mine."
"She would have liked knowing that."
I set the photo back on the windowsill carefully. "You two were what I thought love was supposed to look like. When I was younger, watching you together, I used to think—" I shake my head. "It doesn't matter what I thought."
"Tell me."
His voice is gentle.
"I thought if I could find someone who looked at me the way you looked at her, I'd be okay.
I'd be safe." I laugh, but there's no humor in it.
"And then I found someone who made me feel like the center of his world, and I thought I'd found it.
I didn't realize until too late that being the center of someone's world can mean being trapped there. "
Will is quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is rough.
"Sarah and I weren't perfect. What we had was real, but it wasn't easy.
She struggled with depression before she got sick, and the illness made it worse.
Some days she couldn't get out of bed. Some days she couldn't stop crying.
" He looks at the photo. "I'm not supposed to say that.
I'm supposed to remember her as perfect.
But she was human. Complicated and difficult and absolutely worth it. "
"How long were you together?"
"Fourteen years. Married for twelve." He pauses. "She got sick about eight years in. Fought it for as long as she could."
I do the math in my head. Six years of illness. Five years since she died. More than a third of their marriage spent fighting.
"I don't know how you did it," I say. "How you stayed."
"I loved her." He says it simply, like it explains everything. Maybe it does. "And she needed me. What kind of man would I be if I walked away from someone who needed me?"
The question lands somewhere I wasn't expecting. Craig needed me too—needed me to reflect his ego, to absorb his moods, to be less than him so he could feel like more. That's not the same thing. I know that now.
"The right kind of need is different," I say slowly. "Isn't it? The kind that makes you more instead of less."
"Yeah." Will's eyes meet mine. "It is."
I'm suddenly aware of how small this office is. How close he's standing. I should step back, put distance between us, retreat to the safety of tax documents and numbers that don't make my heart race.
I don't move.
"Will, I—"
The office door swings open, and I step back without meaning to. Nash pokes his head in. "Hey, Will, we've got a delivery out back and the guy's saying the order's wrong. You want to deal with it or should I?"
The moment shatters. Will's expression smooths into something professional.
"I'll handle it." He moves toward the door, then pauses. "Gemma. You good, or do you need more time?"
"I'm okay." The words come out steadier than I feel. "Go. I'll be fine."
He nods and disappears through the door. I stand there for a moment, heart pounding, trying to figure out what just happened.
Nothing happened. That's the problem. Nothing happened. I wanted it to, and I don't know what to do with that.
I force myself to move to the side table, to sit down, to pick up the first folder in the stack. The numbers blur in front of my eyes.
Sarah's photo watches me from the windowsill. I wonder what she'd think if she could see me now—the girl who used to watch her with envy, sitting in her husband's office, feeling things she has no right to feel.
Maybe she'd understand. She always seemed like she understood things other people missed.
Or maybe I'm just telling myself that because it's easier than admitting I'm falling for a man who still keeps his dead wife's picture in his office.
I pull another folder toward me and start sorting receipts. It's not an answer. But it's something to do with my hands while I figure out what the hell I'm doing with my heart.