Chapter 13
Dear Aubrey,
Have you ever looked back and asked yourself how you got here?
I have, so many times over the years. Sometimes I turn to trace the path behind me and can’t say how it led me to this place.
The funny thing is, I laid every stepping stone myself. I’m responsible for every crooked turn, every dead end I stumbled
into, every blind alley I had to squeeze out of. And so I have no one but myself to blame for the fact that I didn’t end up
where I wanted to go.
I sometimes wonder what the turning point was. With which choice did the road diverge? How many steps would I have to retrace
in order to make it all turn out differently, to see what life would have offered you and me?
Too many, I’m sure. And of course, I can never retrace anything.
But that’s the strange and beautiful thing about life: every once in a while, it offers us another chance.
Even when we lose ourselves in the twisting detours and unmarked side streets, we sometimes still manage, miraculously, to stumble out in exactly the place we belong.
That’s what reconnecting with you has felt like.
I’m sorry I didn’t get it right when we were younger. I hope you’ll forgive me for that, and I hope you realize I paved my
path without knowing what I was doing. I put the stones down in all the wrong order, staked the signposts in mixed-up directions,
then had the audacity to wonder how I’d managed to wander so far afield.
But the other day, seeing you again after so many years, I wondered if maybe I’d somehow reached my destination, after all.
All this to say . . . I hope you’ll give me a second chance. Or maybe a first one, a new one. Turns out, I’m a much better
wayfinder than I used to be.
Gallant
During her second week back in Henderson, Aubrey buzzed with barely contained energy.
She logged countless hours on what she’d affectionately come to think of as her manifesto, and did Pilates daily, but each night, she forewent her logic puzzles in favor of reading Gallant’s letter. Again. And again.
And again.
Days had passed since their date. As promised, he hadn’t contacted her, which relieved her. She needed the breadth of the
week to absorb what he’d written. To accept that he was, in fact, far more skilled at putting things onto paper than at saying
them out loud. Because, while his efforts to impress her at dinner had done little to pique her interest, the letter revealed
a whole new side, one she found both vulnerable and arrestingly human.
Now she felt herself hovering, just like with Nick all those years ago. She stood on the cusp of something immense, something
she both craved and feared. She only needed . . .
Well, who knew. A push, maybe.
On Thursday night, after even an extended Pilates session failed to quiet her mind, Aubrey ventured out her front door. Her
ankle had healed, so she turned up her collar and let the chilled wind push her down whatever street it chose.
She wandered Henderson, Gallant’s letter like a burning weight in her pocket, and absorbed the scenery with eyes that felt
both new and old. So much had changed. So much hadn’t. The corner of Ivy and Harkness sported an unfamiliar café with Edison
bulbs and exposed-brick walls, but old man Sajak’s yard still had four rusted-out cars piled like checkers, probably the same
ones that had teetered there when she’d been born. Five blocks later, she saw that the Siegels’ ramshackle bungalow had finally
been torn down, yet the steel mill kept watch over the empty lot, as it always had and likely always would.
Aubrey memorized the changes, superimposing a new mental map over the old. Sometimes, things stayed the same. Other times—she
fingered the letter—they metamorphosed.
Two blocks later, she rounded a corner and came face-to-face with a plate-glass window. The building looked newly constructed,
the window offering a view of a gym-like space, complete with red floor mats and a cage-like structure at the back.
She stopped. Strange. The place didn’t have much equipment, just a few punching bags, plus lots of open space, and—
Oh.
Blood rocketed into her cheeks. Nick was in there.
She hadn’t seen him since that night at her house, and now she took an involuntary step back. A glance at the gym’s door revealed Wilder’s MMA Academy in arched red letters.
Which made a strange sort of sense. She’d seen MMA fights on bar TVs over the years, and now had no difficulty imagining Nick
involved in a sport that included blood and punching and sheer, unbridled intensity.
Thankfully, his attention was elsewhere, so she stood on the wind-scoured sidewalk and watched. Inside, Nick shared a mat
with a broad-shouldered Black man, discussing something that clearly displeased him. Dark brows slashed over eyes like smoldering
coals. The overhead lights accentuated the planes of his face, his tank top clinging to every line and ripple. He knocked
gloved knuckles together, then said something that prompted his friend to clasp a compassionate hand on his shoulder.
Aubrey’s heart caved in. Nick Thacker had been beautiful in high school, but now he’d grown into something else entirely,
some otherworldly being that shot fist-sized holes in her ability to draw breath. He hardly even looked real. More like some
scowling warrior angel, or an errant god with a world to overthrow. And yet nothing about his glower intimidated her. It was
so real. So him, enough that her belly turned a slow pirouette.
Skeletal leaves skittered past. God, had she ever been free of him? She’d thought so, but standing here now, she understood
that part of her had never left this place. Her work in New York had meant the world, but it had also served as an escape.
A way to ignore the fault lines along which she’d fractured long ago. So had her boyfriends.
Distractions, every one.
Because all this time, a secret sliver of her had been waiting.
A last, starved hope had stowed away, whispering that someday, Nick would come for her.
That she could pass her time with mathematical men all she liked, but in the end, she would always belong to a dark-eyed tempest with words swirling in his bloodstream.
One glance through that window, though, and the depth of her foolishness became clear. Nick had told her he didn’t have regrets. Straight to her face. He’d taken those words of his, honed them to a killing point, and skewered
her with them.
Meanwhile, Gallant was the one who’d reflected about the road not taken.
The wind gusted, blowing wet against Aubrey’s cheeks. She glanced around for rain, then realized she was crying.
She let it happen, because something was ending, right here in this moment. Some small, bitter death was taking place as the
imaginary future she’d nurtured for seventeen years curled away into the shadows.
Nick glanced up, startling when their eyes connected. Aubrey offered a wilted smile. Hopefully he couldn’t see her tears from
this distance.
He started for the door, but she hastened away. She turned a few aimless corners and, once certain he hadn’t followed, pressed
her back against a building and pulled Gallant’s letter from her pocket. The wind tried to snatch the paper away, but she
held on and fished out her cell, finally making use of the phone number he’d left at the bottom.
Gallant answered on the third ring. “Aubrey?”
“Hey.” The word sat softly on her tongue, rich with her tears.
“Uh, hey.” Cautious hope infused his voice. “How are you?”
“Good. I read your letter.”
“Oh.” A few beats of silence unfurled. “And?”
“And . . . what’re you doing? Right now?”
His breath caught. “Drinking wine. And wishing I had someone to drink it with.”
She screwed her eyes shut and took a fortifying breath. “Well, maybe you do. Could you come pick me up?”
“Of course. Where are you?”
She rattled off the intersection, then hung up and tipped her head back against the wall of the hair salon she’d taken shelter
beside. Nick might be her past, but the time had come to move forward. To stop holding back. To stop waiting.
Time to turn her gaze to the road ahead. And maybe, just maybe, it led to the man who’d written her this letter.