48. Chapter 48
Evie
The next three days pass too quickly.
Milo makes me pancakes on his last morning. The kitchen smells of cinnamon and browned butter. My favorite mug is already waiting beside my laptop. The coffee has been made the way I like it: two sugars, a splash of oat milk because the regular kind upsets my stomach.
Batter hisses when it meets the skillet.
Milo turns the heat down when the edges color too quickly, nudging his glasses higher with the back of his wrist. His sleeves are pushed above his elbows. There’s a dusting of flour near his cheek that he hasn’t noticed yet.
Everything about this morning is horrifyingly normal except for the weight pressing down on both of us.
I sit at the kitchen table and open the inn’s booking calendar because there are still rooms to turn over, guests arriving next week, and invoices waiting to be paid. My life has the audacity to extend beyond tonight.
The reservation on my screen belongs to a couple arriving on Thursday.
Sunrise Room, three nights, late check-in.
I read their names, the dates, the special request, then realize I’ve made it through the entire entry without understanding a word.
When I begin again, Milo’s reflection appears across the dark edge of the display, and my concentration abandons me altogether.
Outside, Brindlewood has the indecency to carry on.
A delivery truck rattles past the cottage, chassis complaining over the uneven road.
Somewhere down the street, a dog erupts into furious barking and is answered by another.
Morning light lies bright across the kitchen tiles.
Nothing out there looks the slightest bit altered by the fact that Milo will be gone before tomorrow.
I hate it.
He sets a plate in front of me without meeting my eyes.
Three perfect golden circles. Steam rises off them in delicate spirals that curl and disappear before they reach the ceiling.
Cinnamon freckles the surface. The edges are browned the way I like them because during the past month he learned that I leave the soft, pale ones behind.
Beside the dish sits softened butter rather than the cold brick I usually carve straight from the refrigerator.
He must’ve remembered me complaining about it tearing the pancakes weeks ago.
I reach for the syrup just to give myself something to do. This is what losing him is going to be made of. Not only the enormous, impossible fact of his absence, but every tiny accommodation I never asked him to make and only noticed once he had already woven it into my life.
“My mom’s doing dinner tonight.” I keep my gaze fixed on the pancakes. “She called yesterday.”
He turns halfway, not quite looking at me. “You should go.”
“Or I could stay.”
“I mean it.” He slides another pancake onto my plate, even though there’s already more food than I can eat. “There’s no reason for you to be here tonight.”
There are plenty of reasons for me to stay, and both of us know it. If this were happening to anyone else, that’s what I’d tell them to do.
Stay. Say everything. Hold on until there’s nothing left.
But the arguments never reach my mouth. Because the truth underneath it is uglier. I’ve been sitting with it since I woke up this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep: I want to skip the worst of it and walk away before the ending arrives.
“Okay,” I whisper.
For the first time since he started cooking, Milo looks at me.
Relief softens his features before the expression collapses beneath everything it costs him.
His eyes remain on mine. I know that look because I’ve been guilty of it all morning.
He takes in my hair, my face, the old sweatshirt I slept in, lingering over details too insignificant to deserve such concentration.
He’s making his own collection.
I lower my gaze before my composure gives way. Across the table, he draws in a slow breath, then turns back to the stove and switches off the burner with a small, final click.
We eat in silence. The pancakes taste perfect, but I can barely swallow. He cuts his food into smaller pieces than necessary. I pour syrup with exaggerated focus, watching it pool and spread across my plate.
Every ordinary sound acquires an intimacy I never noticed before: the faint scrape of his knife against ceramic, the creak of his chair when he shifts, the soft knock of his coffee mug against the table.
I know he’ll drink from the same side of the cup until there’s a pale crescent left on the rim.
Know he dislikes the sticky residue syrup leaves on his fingertips and wipes them on his napkin after a few bites.
Somewhere along the way, these details stopped belonging to a stranger temporarily occupying my cottage and became part of the landscape of my days.
Soon they’ll exist only in memory, and there’s no way to know which pieces time will keep intact. That terrifies me almost as much as losing him.
The clock on the wall ticks.
Usually, I don’t hear it. This morning, every tick lands with a dry little click. The second hand jerks forward in tiny, merciless increments while the clock face keeps swallowing the daylight one fraction at a time.
I put my fork down. I can’t force down another bite.
This is it. This is how it ends.
Not with some magnificent catastrophe, but over pancakes, while neither of us says the word goodbye. The moment we give this ending a name, there’s no pretending we aren’t already living through it.
***
All afternoon, I’ve treated my departure as another item to manage.
Keys in my bag. Shoes by the door. Leave on time.
Don’t linger. And I’ve been very good at keeping myself occupied: two guest inquiries answered, the Clover Room’s toiletry basket restocked, an entire load of laundry folded with painstaking concentration.
All while refusing to acknowledge that half my attention is fixed on tonight.
That resolve lasts until my hand closes around the doorknob at six.
Milo catches my wrist, and I turn. His eyes meet mine. Every practiced sentence I’d prepared for this moment disappears.
He pulls me toward him. I fold into his chest before pride or common sense can intervene, my arms closing around his middle.
The embrace tightens almost immediately, one palm spreading between my shoulder blades while the other settles at the nape of my head, keeping my cheek tucked beneath his collarbone.
The knit of his sweater scratches against my face.
“This isn’t a goodbye.” I say it into his sweater, desperate to make it true.
His breathing deepens beneath my cheek, stirring the hair at my temple, but no words follow. When I ease back, his glasses have slipped low, eyes wet behind them. My hand rises on instinct to straighten the frames, fingertips lingering at his cheekbone.
Our mouths meet without the heat we usually tumble into.
The kiss is slow, almost unbearably careful, lingering long enough for the salt of tears to gather between us before Milo eases back just enough to breathe.
When he kisses me again, I slide my hand behind his neck and thread my fingers into the curls, holding him there.
We’ve kissed in laughter, in hunger, against walls and tangled in sheets.
I know the pressure of his mouth when he’s teasing me, the brief hesitation before he gives in to wanting more, the helpless sound he makes when I catch his lower lip between my teeth.
Every version of him is inside this kiss, but none of our usual playfulness survives it.
There’s still a childish part of me convinced that if I put enough of myself into this, Hell will discover there’s no easy way to remove him from me. I press my mouth to the corner of his jaw, then to his cheekbone, then back to his lips because every second spent anywhere else seems wasteful.
Eventually, the kiss slows. Our mouths separate, but Milo keeps me close, the tips of our noses brushing. His forehead settles against mine, hands moving up to cradle my face.
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” he whispers.
My mouth opens, but the words I want to say catch behind the pressure in my throat.
“Go.” Milo kisses my forehead, lingering before he finally steps back. “Evie, you have to leave.”
My keys are still clenched in my right hand. Their teeth have pressed small, distinct impressions into my palm.
I make myself walk through the door and down the path, one foot and then the other, the gravel shifting under my shoes. The evening air is cool and smells of turned earth from the garden beds, and I don’t look back.
The car door slams shut, and suddenly my breathing sounds too loud in the enclosed space.
I sit there with both hands on the wheel, looking through the windshield at the lane. His scent of cedar and light woodsmoke clings to the shoulder of my sweater where my face pressed against him. At some point, I’m going to have to wash it.
The first tear reaches my chin before I make it to the bottom of the hill.