Chapter 13
Blair
I couldn’t sleep.
Even after the bar had emptied and Greyson walked me to the creek with that familiar warmth in his eyes and that nickname, my honey bee, still buzzing in my chest, I lay wide awake in Madison’s guest room. That kiss was unforgettable, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I curled into the comforter, my laptop warming my legs, the blank document on the screen daring me to start.
But it wasn’t just the writing that kept me awake.
It was him. His voice. His eyes. He looked at me like I wasn’t something broken that needed fixing, but someone strong enough to piece herself back together.
I hadn’t let anyone see me like that in a long time.
And that terrified me.
“You’re stronger than you know, honey bee.”
Greyson’s words kept circling my mind, gentle but anchoring. I’d come back here thinking I’d keep my head down, take care of Madison, maybe finish my novel. I hadn’t planned on opening myself up to anything deeper. Especially not him. Not again.
But the way he’d stood there tonight, not pushing, just present, I felt something shift in me, a loosening of that knot I’d carried since college.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard.
Chapter Twelve, I typed.
Then, slowly, she didn’t believe in returning home. But sometimes, home waited anyway.
It poured out of me after that. Maybe not perfectly. Perhaps a little jagged. But real. I let the fictional version of the girl in my novel say the things I hadn’t yet figured out how to say aloud. About pain. About betrayal. About how coming home didn’t mean you were weak.
It meant you were brave enough to face what you left behind.
At some point, I closed the laptop and tiptoed downstairs for tea. Madison was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter in her robe with a tired smile and a hand on her belly.
“You’re up late,” she said.
“So are you.”
She shrugged. “The baby doesn’t let me sleep much these days.”
We sat in silence for a moment while the kettle heated. Then, she turned to me and said, “You’re different around him.”
“Greyson?”
She nodded. “It’s like…you remember who you are when you’re with him.”
I wrapped my fingers around the warm mug she handed me and stared into the steam. “It’s terrifying.”
“What is?”
“Feeling this much. Again.”
Madison gave me a small smile. “Maybe it’s not about feeling again. Maybe it’s about feeling for the right person this time.”
That landed hard in my chest.
She was right. And that scared me more than anything.
Later that morning, after Madison returned to bed, I opened my laptop again. Not to write the novel, but to open a draft email. The one I hadn’t dared to send.
It was to a small publishing house that focused on debut women writers. I’d researched them a dozen times. My new manuscript was ready, or at least, ready enough.
I attached the first three chapters. My hand trembled as I hovered over the send button.
“Don’t be scared,” I whispered.
And then I hit send. The rush that followed wasn’t relief. It was terror. But also something else.
Hope.
I closed my laptop and climbed into bed just as the sun began to rise over my hometown, the one I never thought I’d return to, and now couldn’t imagine walking away from again.
Not just because of Greyson. But because of me. Because I was finally letting myself be whole again.