Chapter 22
The dress was all wrong.
Miller stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, tugging at the neckline of the green wrap dress she'd bought two years ago for a colleague's wedding.
It was supposed to be flattering—Sienna had said it brought out her eyes—but tonight it just looked like she was trying too hard.
Which she was. Which was the whole problem.
It’d been a full three weeks since she’d driven away from Astoria’s house with tears streaming down her cheeks.
Twenty-one days of getting up, going to work, coming home, and lying awake in the dark.
She'd lost seven pounds without meaning to.
Her running times had gotten faster because she couldn't seem to stop pushing, couldn't find the pace that used to feel meditative instead of punishing.
And tonight, she was going on a date.
Lisa from the civil litigation department had cornered her in the break room on Monday, bright-eyed and conspiratorial. "I know someone perfect for you. Smart, funny, gorgeous—she's a corporate attorney at Whitfield Miller had ordered a beet bruschetta with goat cheese that she picked at without really eating it.
The conversation flowed easily enough, and they talked about Cara's work in mergers and acquisitions, a funny story about a client who'd tried to negotiate deal terms in the middle of his daughter's ballet recital, and her recent trip to Portugal.
Miller laughed in the right places and asked questions.
But underneath it all, there was nothing.
No spark, no flutter, no moment where the air changed or her pulse quickened or she caught herself leaning closer without meaning to.
Cara touched her arm to emphasize a point, and Miller felt the pressure of her fingers without any of the electricity that should have followed.
She kept waiting for it to kick in, for something to shift and the switch to flip the way it had with Astoria.
Instead, she found herself listing all the ways Cara wasn't Astoria.
The way Cara's laugh was bright and easy instead of rare and startling.
The way her gaze was warm but didn't feel like being seen all the way through.
The way conversation required effort—pleasant and good, but effort all the same—instead of feeling like something inevitable.
The entrees came. Miller cut her salmon into smaller and smaller pieces.
“You okay?” Cara asked. “You seem a little distant.”
“I’m sorry.” Miller set down her fork. “It’s been a long few weeks at work. I’m not great company tonight.”
“You’re fine.” Cara smiled, but there was something knowing in her eyes. “Though I’m getting the sense this might not be the right timing.”
Miller should have denied it. She should have rallied, tried harder, and given this a real chance. Cara was smart and kind, normally exactly her type, but she couldn’t make herself pretend anymore.
“I think you might be right,” Miller said quietly. “I’m sorry. That’s not fair to you.”
Cara studied her for a moment. “Someone else?”
Miller’s throat constricted as she managed a nod.
“Recent?”
“Recent enough.”
Cara reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “Then you shouldn’t be here. You should be wherever she is.”
“It’s complicated.”
“It usually is.” Cara picked up her wine glass. “For what it's worth, whoever she is, I hope it works out. You seem like someone who deserves to be happy.”
Miller paid the check over Cara’s protests. They said goodbye on the sidewalk with a brief hug that felt like what it was: two strangers who would remain strangers. Then Cara walked toward her car and Miller walked toward hers and the night blanketed around her.
She sat in the driver’s seat without starting the engine yet. The parking lot was half-empty, the streetlights casting orange pools on the asphalt. Through the restaurant window, she could see their table being cleared, the evidence of the evening erased like it had never happened.
For three weeks, she’d told herself she’d get over it and the ache would fade. She believed that if she just kept moving forward, eventually she would stop feeling like she’d left something vital behind.
It wasn’t working.
Miller pressed her forehead against the steering wheel and sat in the silence, alone with the truth she’d been running from: she wasn’t going to get over Astoria. Not in three weeks, not in three months, maybe not ever.
She started the car and drove home through the empty streets, the radio off and the windows up.
Tomorrow, she’d go through the motions and try again, but tonight, she would let herself feel the full weight of what she had lost.
The next evening, Miller drove to the trailhead outside town.
She’d been here hundreds of times—the forest path that wound through Douglas firs and Western red cedars, the packed dirt trail that followed the ridge before looping back down toward the parking lot.
It was four miles if she took the short route, seven if she pushed to the overlook. Tonight, she needed the seven.
The air was thick with the late July heat, the kind that didn’t break even after the sun dipped below the treeline. Miller stretched against her car, laced up her running shoes tighter than necessary, and started moving before her body was ready.
The first mile felt like a punishment. Her legs burned, her lungs protested, and sweat soaked through her tank top before she'd even reached the first switchback.
She pushed harder anyway, her feet pounding against the dirt, trying to outrun the restlessness that had been crawling under her skin since last night.
The date, Cara’s knowing smile, the way she said, “You should be wherever she is.”
Miller forced herself to run faster.
The second mile blurred into the third. The trail climbed, and her thighs screamed.
She welcomed it—the physical pain simpler than everything else, something she could measure and push through and eventually leave behind.
A bird startled from the underbrush. Her breathing turned ragged.
The trees pressed close on either side, the evening light filtering green and gold through the canopy.
She thought she could do this. Move on, find someone else, prove to herself that what she’d had with Astoria was just one chapter in a much longer story.
But sitting across from Cara last night, she’d felt the truth she’d been avoiding settle into her bones: there was no moving on.
There was no someone else. There was only this: the hollow ache that had taken up residence in her chest, the space that used to be filled with stolen hours and whispered conversations.
The trail crested at the overlook. Miller stopped, putting her hands on her knees as her lungs gasped for air.
The valley spread out below her, the distant lights of Phoenix Ridge just starting to flicker on in the dusk.
She'd stood here dozens of times, watching the sunset, feeling small in a way that was comforting.
Tonight, it just felt empty.
She sank down onto a boulder at the trail’s edge, her legs shaking from the excruciating climb and the sweat cooling on skin. The forest sounds crept back in: birds settling, insects humming, the rustle of wind through branches.
And then, without any warning, she was crying.
Not the desperate, gasping sobs from that night in her car when the wound had been fresh and bleeding. This was something quieter, deeper, the kind of crying that came from acceptance and grief rather than shock.