Chapter 13 Imani
IMANI
Idon’t know why I’m still standing here.
The smart thing to do would be to take my plate to the sink, thank him for breakfast, and retreat to my room. Escape while I can. Keep the walls up where they belong.
But he asked about my hopes and dreams. And the way he’s looking at me right now, like my answer actually matters, like he genuinely wants to know...
I haven’t had someone look at me like that in a long time.
“You really want to know?” I ask, stalling.
“I really want to know.”
I set my plate down on the counter and lean against it, arms crossed. Not defensive. Just... steadying myself. Because if I’m going to do this, if I’m going to open up to this man who’s been nothing but confusing since I arrived, I need something solid to hold onto.
“There’s this chair,” I start, feeling ridiculous. “At Cozy Corner Furnishings in town. Green velvet. Deep seat, curved back, the kind of chair you could curl up in with a book and disappear for hours.”
He doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t look at me like I’m crazy for starting with furniture.
“It costs four hundred and forty-nine dollars,” I continue. “I’ve walked past that shop window a dozen times since I moved here. Every time, I stop and look at it. Every time, I do the math in my head. How many more shifts until I can afford it. How many more weekends cleaning cabins.”
“That’s why you took this job,” he says. “The double pay.”
“That’s why I took this job.” I let out a breath. “It sounds stupid when I say it out loud. Getting excited about a chair.”
“It doesn’t sound stupid.”
“It’s just...” I search for the words. “When I moved here, I had nothing. A suitcase of clothes and enough money for first month’s rent. My apartment is empty. Secondhand couch, folding table, bare walls. It doesn’t feel like a home. It feels like a place I’m passing through.”
He’s quiet, listening.
“That chair is the first step. The first piece of something that’s actually mine.
Something I chose because I love it, not because it was cheap or convenient or someone else’s castoff.
” I shake my head. “I want to build a home. A real home. Room by room, piece by piece. A place that’s completely mine, that no one can take away from me. ”
“Why would someone take it away?”
The question cuts closer than he knows.
I look at the window, at the snow still falling outside. I don’t want to tell him this part. Don’t want to crack open the wound that’s barely healed.
But he shared his scar with me. The least I can do is share mine.
“I was with someone,” I say quietly. “For five years.”
I feel him go still across the room.
“Darnell.” Even his name tastes bitter. “We met when he was working part-time at a grocery store, trying to figure out his life. I was the one who encouraged him to go back to school. I helped him study, proofread his papers, picked up extra shifts so he didn’t have to work as much.
When he graduated, I was in the front row cheering louder than anyone. ”
I can feel Tolin watching me, but I don’t look at him. If I look at him, I might not get through this.
“Then came the job search. I helped him with his resume, practiced interview questions with him every night. When he finally landed his dream job, I threw him a party. When he saved up enough for a car, I went with him to the dealership. When he started talking about buying a house, I spent weekends going to open houses with him, imagining our future.”
I have to stop and breathe. Push through.
“Our future. That’s what I thought it was. Five years of building a life together. Five years of being his biggest cheerleader, his support system, his everything.”
“What happened?”
The gentleness in his voice almost breaks me.
“He got everything he wanted. The job, the car, the house.” I finally look at Tolin, and the look on his face nearly breaks me. “And then he dumped me. Said he needed to ‘find himself.’ Said I was ‘too much’ and he needed ‘space to grow.’”
“Imani...”
“He was married within a month.” I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “One month. To a woman he worked with. They’d been seeing each other for over a year. The whole time I was helping him build his perfect life, he was planning to live it with someone else.”
Tolin’s hands are gripping the edge of the table, his fingers digging into the wood.
“I was just the stepping stone,” I say. “The woman who helped him get where he wanted to be. And once he got there, he didn’t need me anymore.”
It’s quiet in the kitchen. The fire crackles in the other room. Outside, the wind howls.
“That’s why you gave up on love,” he says finally.
“I gave up on being a fool. I spent my whole life going after men, thinking if I just tried hard enough, one would stay. But I was always the one who got hurt. Always the one left behind for someone else.”
“They were idiots.”
“Maybe.” I shrug. “But after a while, you have to stop blaming them and start looking at yourself. What was I doing wrong? Why did I keep ending up in the same place?”
“You weren’t doing anything wrong.”
“I was.” I meet his eyes. “I was choosing men who didn’t deserve me. I was giving everything I had to people who only took. I was so desperate to be loved that I forgot to love myself first.”
Neither of us speaks for a moment.
“So I stopped,” I continue. “I stopped dating. Stopped looking. Stopped hoping. I moved to Shadow Wolf Creek because I wanted a fresh start. A quiet life. No drama, no heartbreak, no men who see me as a placeholder until something better comes along.”
“And the home you want to build?”
“That’s for me.” I feel the conviction settle into my bones. “Every piece of furniture, every decoration, every inch of that apartment. It’s going to be mine. Something I built for myself, by myself. No one can take it away because no one helped me get it.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is rough.
“I want to kill him.”
I blink. “What?”
“Your ex. Darnell.” His voice is low and hard. “I want to find him and rip his throat out for what he did to you.”
I should be alarmed. A few days ago, I would have been. But instead, I find myself biting back a smile. I shouldn’t like hearing that as much as I do.
“That’s... a little intense.”
“I’m a bear shifter. We’re intense about the people we—“ He stops abruptly, like he’s caught himself saying too much.
“The people you what?”
He shakes his head, looking away. “Nothing.”
I should let it go. I should back off and retreat to my room before this conversation goes any further.
But I don’t move.
“Tolin.”
He looks at me, and I see it there—raw and vulnerable and terrifying, this pull I can’t explain.
“I don’t understand what’s happening here,” I admit. “A few days ago, you were screaming at me about a chair. You crushed my phone. You ripped the door off my car. And now you’re making me breakfast and asking about my dreams and threatening to kill my ex.”
“I know.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.”
“Then help me understand.” I take a step toward him without meaning to. “Because I keep telling myself to stay away from you. I keep reminding myself of all the reasons I should hate you. But every time I try to put walls up, something pulls them back down.”
He stops breathing for a second.
“I feel it too,” he says quietly.
“Feel what?”
“The pull.” He stands slowly, and the kitchen suddenly feels very small. “Like a current running through the air. Something I can’t explain.”
I can hear my own pulse now. “What is it?”
He takes a step toward me. Then another. Until he’s close enough that I have to tilt my head back to look at him.
“I don’t know,” he lies. I can tell it’s a lie. There’s something he’s not telling me. Something big.
But I don’t push. Because right now, standing this close to him, feeling the heat radiating off his body, I’m not sure I want to know.
“This is crazy,” I whisper.
“Probably.”
“I don’t do this. I don’t open up to people. I don’t tell strangers about my failed relationships and my dreams about furniture.”
“I’m not a stranger.” His voice is low, rough. “Not anymore.”
He’s right. Somewhere between the screaming match and this quiet breakfast conversation, he stopped being a stranger. He stopped being the monster who trapped me here.
Now he’s just... Tolin. A man with a scar and too much pride and a loneliness that mirrors my own.
“I still don’t trust you,” I say.
“I know.”
“I’m still angry about the phone. And the car door. And the way you spoke to me.”
“You should be.”
“And I don’t understand any of this. The way you’ve changed. The way I feel when I’m around you. The way I can’t seem to stay away even when every logical part of my brain is screaming at me to run.”
He reaches out slowly, giving me time to pull back. His fingers brush my cheek, tucking a curl behind my ear. The contact sends heat racing through me.
“I’m going to earn your trust,” he says.
“I’m going to prove to you that I’m not like the men who hurt you before.
I’m going to spend every day showing you that you’re not a stepping stone.
You’re not a placeholder. You’re not ‘too much’ or ‘not enough’ or any of the bullshit they made you believe. ”
My eyes are burning. I blink rapidly, refusing to cry.
“You don’t even know me.”
“Then let me.” His hand drops from my face, but he doesn’t step back.
“Let me know you. The real you. Not the woman who scrubs floors and keeps her head down and never asks for anything. The woman who dreams about green velvet chairs and homes of her own and a life where she finally gets to be first.”
A tear escapes despite my best efforts. I wipe it away quickly.
“Why?” I ask. “Why do you care?”
He’s quiet for a moment. When he answers, his voice is barely above a whisper.
“Because I think you might be the reason I finally stop punishing myself.”
That knocks something loose in me. I don’t have a response for that. Don’t know what to do with what I’m feeling.
So I do the only thing I can think of.
I reach out and take his hand.
His fingers close around mine, warm and solid. His whole body goes still, like he’s afraid any movement might make me let go.
We stand there in the kitchen, hand in hand, the snow falling outside and the fire crackling in the other room. Two broken people who’ve spent years guarding themselves, finally letting go.
“This doesn’t mean I forgive you,” I say.
“I know.”
“And it doesn’t mean I trust you.”
“I know.”
“But...” I squeeze his hand gently. “I’m willing to try.”
The smile that breaks across his face changes him completely. The hard lines soften. The darkness in his eyes lifts. For a moment, I can see the man he must have been before the scar, before the exile, before years of solitude turned him into the grumpy bear everyone in town avoids.
He’s beautiful.
The thought catches me off guard. I push it away, filing it somewhere I don’t have to examine too closely.
“That’s all I’m asking,” he says. “A chance to try.”
I nod, not trusting my voice.
We stand there a moment longer, neither of us wanting to be the first to let go. Finally, I release his hand and step back, needing space to breathe.
“I should...” I gesture vaguely toward the hallway.
“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “I should probably start on the dishes.”
“I could help—“
“No.” Sharp enough that he immediately smiles. “No cleaning, remember?”
Right. The no cleaning rule that still makes no sense.
“Fine.” I back toward the hallway. “But this doesn’t mean you get to do everything. I’m not helpless.”
“I never thought you were.”
I pause in the doorway, looking back at him. He’s standing in the kitchen, morning light catching the scar on his face, looking at me like I’m something precious. Something worth fighting for.
No one’s ever looked at me like that before.
“Tolin?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For listening. For not... I don’t know. For not making me feel stupid for wanting a chair.”
His expression softens. “Your dreams aren’t stupid, Imani. They’re beautiful. And you’re going to have all of it. The chair, the home, everything you’ve ever wanted.”
I don’t know what to say to that. So I just nod and slip down the hallway to my room, my heart beating too fast and my mind racing.
Something has shifted between us. Something I can’t name and don’t want to examine too closely.
But for the first time since I arrived at this cabin, I’m not counting the hours until I can leave.