Chapter 15 #2
He'd assumed. He'd respected her stated wishes without ever challenging them, without ever asking if those wishes were real or just armor she'd built to protect herself from wanting things she was afraid to lose.
He'd let her go because he thought that's what she needed.
But maybe what she needed was someone who wouldn't let her run.
Maybe what she needed was someone who'd fight.
The condo felt different when he got home.
Still quiet. Still ordered. Still painfully empty.
But Tarmek moved through it with new eyes, seeing the traces of Edie everywhere.
The indent in the couch cushion where she'd curled up to sketch.
The faint paint stain on the kitchen counter he'd never quite managed to scrub away.
The empty space on the bookshelf where she'd shoved her paperback romance novels between his hockey statistics volumes.
Evidence.
He found another hair tie in the bathroom, wrapped around the handle of his hairbrush. He found a forgotten earring in the soap dish—a tiny emerald stud that matched the team colors. He found glitter.
So much glitter.
It sparkled from impossible places: the grout between bathroom tiles, the fibers of his doormat, the seams of his leather couch. He'd vacuumed three times since she left, and somehow the glitter persisted, tiny green and gold specks that caught the light like evidence of magic.
"Craft herpes," she'd called it once, laughing at his expression of horror. "Glitter never truly leaves. It's the gift that keeps on giving."
He'd complained about the mess.
Now he found himself hoping he'd never get it all.
The bedroom was worse.
His sheets were clean—he'd washed them twice, unable to sleep with her scent still clinging to the fabric. But the pillow on her side still held the impression of her head. The nightstand drawer still contained the hair serum she'd left behind. The closet—
Don't.
But he opened it anyway.
Empty hangers where her colorful clothes had hung. Bare shelf where her shoes had scattered. But there, shoved in the back corner, a single item she'd missed.
Her favorite sweater.
Oversized, cable-knit, the color of autumn leaves. She'd worn it constantly in those first weeks, wrapped up against the cold while she worked on early mural concepts. He'd peeled it off her body more than once, impatient and hungry and desperate to touch skin.
Tarmek pulled the sweater from the closet and pressed it to his face.
Her scent hit him like a physical blow.
Paint and coffee and something floral—the lotion she used, the one that made her skin impossibly soft. Underneath that, something uniquely her, indefinable but unmistakable.
He stood there for too long, breathing her in, feeling the ache in his chest expand until it threatened to crack his ribs.
This is pathetic.
He didn't care.
For the first time in his adult life, Tarmek Stonefist let himself feel something without trying to control it. He stood in his empty bedroom, holding a sweater that belonged to a woman who'd left, and let the grief wash over him.
Grief for the future they could have had.
Grief for the mornings he'd never wake up beside her.
Grief for the chaos she'd brought into his life, chaos that had somehow made everything brighter.
Order feels lonely.
The realization crystallized with painful clarity.
His whole life, he'd chased control. Discipline. Routine. He'd built walls around himself, convinced that structure was the only way to manage the anxiety that lived in his bones, the constant low-level fear that everything would fall apart if he stopped paying attention.
And then Edie had arrived, and she'd knocked those walls down with her bright scarves and her glitter pens and her refusal to respect his carefully organized existence.
She'd shown him that chaos could be beautiful.
That disorder could be warm.
That sharing your space—your life—with someone unpredictable could be better than perfect solitude.
And he'd let her walk away.
Idiot.
The word echoed in his skull, but it came in Edie's voice, teasing and affectionate.
The way she'd called him an idiot when he'd complained about paint on his favorite shirt.
When he'd tried to alphabetize her art supplies.
When he'd insisted on rearranging the refrigerator after she'd "destroyed" his system.
Idiot, she'd said, laughing. That's not how creativity works.
Idiot, she'd murmured, kissing his jaw. You're cute when you're grumpy.
Idiot, she'd whispered, in the dark, when he'd done something that made her gasp. Don't stop.
He was an idiot.
But maybe it wasn't too late to be a smarter one.
The mural stayed with him.
That night, lying awake in a bed that felt too big, Tarmek thought about what Edie had created. Not just the art itself—though that was extraordinary—but what it represented.
She'd changed Greenwood Hollow.
Maybe not in obvious ways, not in ways that would show up on maps or census records. But she'd left her mark on this place, on these people, on the fabric of a community that had welcomed her without hesitation.
Kids in the art program now called her by name, asked when she'd be back, showed off the techniques she'd taught them.
Sam had started talking about expanded community outreach, inspired by how easily Edie connected with fans of all ages.
Even Coach Morrison—gruff, no-nonsense Morrison—had mentioned how much "energy" the mural brought to the arena.
She'd woven herself into the tapestry of this town.
Just like she'd woven herself into his life.
And she was planning to cut herself free.
Why?
He knew the answer, or thought he did. She'd told him, in bits and pieces, during late nights and lazy mornings. The childhood spent moving. The instability that taught her roots were dangerous. The accumulated evidence of years that said leaving was safer than staying.
But she doesn't want to leave.
The realization settled over him like certainty.
She'd painted herself into the mural. She'd called his condo "home." She'd built rituals with his team, relationships with his community, a life she kept insisting was temporary even as she sank deeper roots with every passing week.
She didn't want to leave.
She was just terrified to stay.
And you let her run.
Tarmek sat up in bed, suddenly unable to lie still.
What had he done, really, when she'd started pulling away? He'd given her space. Respected her wishes. Let her pack her bags and move back to her camper without a single word of protest.
He'd thought he was being supportive.
But maybe he'd just been taking the easy way out.
Maybe fighting for her would have been harder—messy, emotional, requiring vulnerability he'd spent his whole life avoiding. Maybe the reason he'd let her go wasn't respect at all, but fear.
Fear of rejection.
Fear of being too much, too intense, too desperate.
Fear of needing someone who might not need him back.
Coward.
The word stung because it was true.
He'd hidden behind respect and understanding, using her stated wishes as an excuse to avoid the terrifying work of actually fighting for what he wanted. And what he wanted—what he'd wanted from the moment she'd smiled up at him from that chaotic pile of art supplies—was her.
All of her.
Forever.
The thought should have been terrifying. Commitment, permanence, building a life with someone who'd spent years running from both—that was the kind of risk he'd always avoided.
But somehow, lying in his empty bed, surrounded by traces of the woman who'd changed everything, Tarmek found that the terror had transformed.
It wasn't fear anymore.
It was determination.
She's not leaving.
The thought crystallized into certainty.
Not without a fight.
He didn't know how to fight for someone.
Didn't know the words or the gestures or the grand romantic moments that people in movies always seemed to pull off effortlessly.
He'd spent his whole life expressing care through actions rather than declarations, through protein shakes and fixed heaters and silent presence rather than speeches.
But maybe that was okay.
Maybe Edie didn't need speeches.
Maybe she just needed someone to show up. To stay. To prove through consistent, stubborn presence that he wasn't going anywhere, no matter how hard she pushed.
Actions, he thought. She understands actions.
Tomorrow, he'd start fighting.
But tonight—
His hand found the hair tie in his pocket, the one he'd rescued from the key hook this morning. He turned it over in his fingers, feeling the soft fabric, the elastic stretch that still held shape despite years of use.
Such a small thing.
Evidence of a life lived in motion, always moving, never staying long enough to accumulate permanence.
He'd give her permanence.
He'd give her roots so deep she'd never want to run again.
And if she still wanted to leave after that—if she truly, honestly, with full knowledge of what she was giving up, wanted to climb back in her camper and drive away—then he'd let her go.
But not before she understood what she was leaving behind.
Not before she knew, really knew, that someone was willing to fight for her to stay.
Tarmek set the hair tie on his nightstand and closed his eyes.
For the first time in days, sleep came easy.
He had a plan now.
He had hope.
And tomorrow, he'd start showing Edie Anderson exactly what she meant to him—not through words she wouldn't believe, but through actions she couldn't ignore.
The mural had shown him who she really was.
Now it was time to show her who they could be.
Together.