Chapter 5 Sedona
CHAPTER FIVE
Sedona
FIVE YEARS LATER
I’m tossing a sweater into my suitcase when I hear the front door unlock.
The click echoes through the apartment. When I step into the living room, I find Cole—perfectly pressed suit, blond hair pushed back from his forehead, tie already loosened.
“Hey, babe,” he says as he walks toward me, leaning in to kiss me. His arms wrap around me.
I let him hold me because I need a whiff of his scent to comfort me, but behind the starch of his shirt and his warmth is the smell of Le Labo Patchouli 24. He always smells like that—smoky, heavy patchouli with a synthetic twist.
Not him. Not the Beta scent he’s buried under layers of cologne because all the other lawyers at his firm do it too.
I’ve told him more than once that I prefer his natural scent. There’s a calmness to it, a kind of grounding warmth.
He always laughs it off, saying masking is part of the culture in his office, like it’s some kind of badge of honor. So I let it go.
I let a lot of things go.
He lifts my chin and kisses me again. “How’re you holding up?”
“Not great,” I say. My voice comes out tight.
“You know you don’t have to go,” he says.
A flash of heat snaps through me. We’ve been through this three times in the last forty-eight hours, and each round makes me feel less like he’s comforting me and more like he’s trying to talk me out of something vital.
“He was still my father,” I say.
“I know.” He drops onto the sofa, unbuttoning his cuffs as if he’s settling in for the evening instead of preparing for a flight. “I’m just saying—”
But the thought cuts off in my mind because I see something I should’ve noticed the moment he walked in: There’s no suitcase. No duffel bag. No garment bag. Nothing.
My stomach plummets. “Where are your clothes?”
He hesitates. That little lean forward he does when he’s about to deliver bad news in a gentle tone, like he’s preparing to walk me through a disappointing verdict.
And I already know.
“You’re not coming with me,” I say, the words scraping out of my throat.
“Babe, it’s complicated—”
“It’s my father’s funeral.” I don’t shout often, but it rips out of me before I can stop it.
“Sedona, calm down—”
“Don’t tell me to calm down! We’ve been dating for a whole year. A year, Cole. And you can’t be there for me for one day? Not even one?”
He rubs his face. “I just landed the biggest case of my career. The partners are watching everything I do right now. I can’t just bail on them.”
“You’re bailing on me.”
“That’s not fair.”
My chest tightens like something inside is collapsing. “He’s my father. He… he wasn’t perfect. He drank too much. He shut everyone out. He never forgave me for leaving. But he was still my father, and this is all I have left to do for him. And I wanted you with me.”
Cole stands, frustration sharpening his features. “You and your father weren’t even close. Why is this suddenly so important?”
The words land like a slap.
“That doesn’t matter. He’s dead, Cole. And you’re my boyfriend. You’re supposed to be the person who shows up for me during one of the hardest periods of my life.” How the hell does he not get that?
He moves around the room, grabbing his briefcase, straightening his tie like he’s protecting himself behind layers of professionalism. “I’m sorry, but I can’t lose this case. I have to be smart about my future.”
“My father just lost his entire future!” I shout. “And you can’t spare one day?”
He lifts his hands. “I said I’m sorry. But nothing I do will change anything for him now.”
The room feels unfamiliar. Cold. Small. Wrong.
“Get out,” I say.
“Sedona—”
“Please get out before I say something I’ll regret.”
He stares at me for a second, maybe weighing whether to argue, but then he turns and walks out. The door shuts behind him with a dull thud, and the quiet after is louder than anything he said.
My legs give out, and I fold onto the edge of the sofa. Tears flood before I can stop them. I try to breathe, but everything inside me hurts—anger, heartbreak, grief twisting together until I can’t tell one from the other.
That’s how Clara finds me an hour later—crumpled on the floor, surrounded by half-packed clothes, mascara smudged under my eyes.
“Damn, baby,” she says, dropping her bag and falling to her knees beside me. “What happened?”
I choke through the whole story.
The fight. The perfume. The excuses. The way he turned the whole thing into something trivial, like my grief didn’t matter. Like I didn’t matter.
Clara listens, her hand rubbing circles on my back. When I finish, she breaks out in a violent snort.
“Fuck that guy,” she says. “Seriously. Fuck. Him.”
A sad laugh sputters out of me. Clara helps me up, wipes my cheeks, and stands.
“Okay,” she says, rolling her shoulders like she’s gearing up for battle. “We’re finishing this packing so we don’t miss the flight. We meet with the funeral director at eleven tomorrow, and I am not letting you face that alone.”
She took PTO for this. She rearranged her entire week for me. Cole couldn’t even rearrange his afternoon.
I swallow hard. Clara and I lost touch for a really long time, but I found her again right when I needed her the most.
She folds the clothes I balled up earlier, finds my charger, and tucks my toiletries into the front pocket of my bag. I follow her, doing the motions she assigns me because I can’t trust my brain to think straight on its own.
“Sweetheart,” she says gently, “your dad loved you.”
I shake my head. “Not always.”
“He did. He just didn’t know how to show it without screwing it up.”
Maybe. Maybe not.
My father changed the day my mother died. Something in him broke, and the alcohol filled the cracks. He became sharp, moody, unpredictable.
And when I left town—when I left Billy—my father took it personally. He said I abandoned him. Maybe I did. Maybe, in a way, he abandoned me first.
I zip my suitcase fully and sit on the edge of my bed.
“I can’t believe Cole didn’t come,” I whisper.
Clara snorts. “Cole’s an asshole, babe. I’ve always told you that you can do better than him.”
She did. She did say that after he missed my birthday. I had been so ready to break up with him, but I knew how much his career meant to him. He had missed my birthday because he’d been stuck at the office.
In true Cole fashion, though, the next night, he got us dinner reservations at the Hyatt Regency. He ended that night by getting us a presidential suite in which he had laid me down and eaten me out for two hours straight.
It had been so hard to stay mad at him after that.
Now, I remember why I should have broken up with him in the first place. My boyfriend’s a fucking flake. He’ll always pick his job over me.
“He met my dad,” I say. “He knew how hard this was for me.”
“And he didn’t show up.” She points to the door.
“So who cares? We’re going. You’re gonna bury your father, handle the estate paperwork, and we’ll be back in New York in three days.
You’re not moving back, you’re not reopening old wounds, you’re not getting sucked into that place. We’re in and out. Three days.”
Three days.
I can survive three days.
Even if going back means walking into the same streets where I broke Billy Carson’s heart. Even if the thought of seeing him sends a lightning bolt of something dangerous and unspoken through my chest.
Even if leaving him was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I grab my suitcase handle. Clara grabs her keys.
We lock the apartment and head downstairs, and as the evening air hits my face, I tell myself the same thing over and over:
I’m going home, burying my father, and leaving again. I can survive three days.
The inn should feel like a soft landing after that brutal flight, but the moment I step inside, the air lodges in my lungs.
Exhaustion crashes through me in a wave strong enough to make my knees slacken, and for a heartbeat, I really believe I’m about to cry right in front of the woman behind the counter.
Hours in airports, with recycled air, trying to keep myself from spiraling will do that to a person.
Clara leans against the counter, eyelids heavy, her hair pulled back in a crooked bun that’s barely hanging on. She looks as tired as I feel, and something inside me tries to rise up to protect her from even this small disappointment.
But the receptionist just smiles apologetically and repeats herself. “Every room in town is booked. Fall Festival started yesterday. People came in from all over, and we filled up by noon. The other inns did too.”
I press my fingers against my temple, a dull ache blooming from lack of sleep. This isn’t how I imagined my first moment back in this town.
I thought maybe we’d check in, toss our bags on the floor, shower, and lie down for… however long it takes to remember how to breathe normally again. But reality has never cared much about my plans.
Clara tries to smile, but the corners of her mouth barely move. “We can just rent a car and nap in it.”
Her voice is so drained it almost breaks something inside me. She doesn’t want to push the idea, but she’s running on fumes.
“We have a few hours before the meeting anyway,” she adds softly.
I look at her for a long second, my best friend who stayed glued to my side the entire flight, who didn’t even complain once when turbulence made my entire spine lock up. She’s trying to stay positive, but she looks like she could fall asleep leaning against the wall.
“That won’t work,” I murmur.
She lifts her brows, ready to regroup, ready to problem-solve even when she’s swaying on her feet.
“I have a better idea,” I say.
I don’t let myself think too hard about it. If I give my mind even one inch of space, the nerves will spill out everywhere.
Instead, I grab her wrist gently and pull her toward the rental counter.
We rent a Nissan Sedan—nothing fancy, just something that won’t break down on the uneven rural roads I grew up driving.