29. Ember #2
“My job isn’t a nine-to-five, Emmy. It’s dangerous.
I spend half my life walking into burning structures, dealing with flipped log rigs, and making calls that dictate whether a crew gets home in one piece.
I already have Sophie at home waiting for me.
She already has to carry the stress of a dad who might not walk through the door.
I can’t do that to you, too. I can’t ask you to sit across the driveway and take on that kind of weight, and I sure as hell can’t handle the pressure of worrying about what this life would do to you while I’m out on a call. ”
I stare at him, my heart breaking, but the unfairness of it makes a flash of hot anger rise up through my sadness.
This conversation feels so one-sided. He’s telling me what’s happening and I don’t seem to get a say.
“Stop doing that,” I shake my head. “Stop deciding things in my place, Brooks. You don’t get to stand there and look at me and decide what I can and cannot handle, or what’s too much stress for me, or how much weight I’m allowed to carry.”
My face feels hot with anger now, but underneath it is something worse—embarrassment. Because somewhere along the line, I stopped feeling like the fun little summer distraction and started feeling stupidly hopeful instead.
“I’m protecting my daughter,” he interrupts, his voice dropping into a harsh, fierce whisper.
“I spent years picking up the pieces of my daughter’s life after Lauren started traveling.
I am not going to confuse her. I am not going to let her see some neighbor drifting in and out of our house because I lost my head during a heatwave. ”
“Drifting in and out?” I repeat, my voice trembling. “Is that what you think this is? I’ve been your stupid little secret, Brooks—hiding in the kitchen, waiting for your texts, acting like I didn’t exist the second you had to put on that uniform.”
His eyes flare, and for a second, his expression cracks. He steps toward me, his hands reaching out as if to catch me. “Emmy, don’t say that. It isn’t—I never saw you as a secret. I was trying to—God, I was trying to keep some of the best parts of my day away from the mess.”
He stops himself, pulling his hands back as if he’s been burned, his face hardening again. “But that’s exactly the problem. Now people are starting to notice. It’s bleeding into the job, and it’s bleeding into my house. This can’t keep happening. This has to end, Ember.”
There’s a moment of silence before I whisper, “I’m not asking you to neglect your daughter or your job. I just thought we were… I thought we were building something.”
“Building what?” he asks. “You’re a girl who won the lottery and bought a farm on a whim, Emmy.
You’re temporary. Look at this place. Look at you.
This valley… this is my whole life. It’s her whole life.
I can’t risk her getting attached to someone who’s going to realize by November that the snow is too deep, the mud is too thick, and the electricity goes out for three days at a time. ”
The words land like a slap.
After weeks of him learning every inch of me like I mattered.
Temporary.
“You don’t know that,” I say, a tear finally slipping down my cheek. “You haven’t even given me a chance to show you I can stay. You’re just deciding for both of us because it’s easier to be alone.”
“It’s safer,” he corrects me.
He looks down at the wooden board in my hands, at the neat little wedge of cheese I’d cut so carefully before I walked over, and for a split second, I see a flash of the man from this morning.
His chest heaves, his fingers twitching against the door frame like he wants to reach out and wipe my tears away, but he forces his hands into his pockets instead.
“Let’s just… go back to how things were,” he says, his voice flatting out again. “It’s better for both of us.”
“Is it?” I ask, my voice trembling. “Is it really better for you, Brooks? To just live in this perfectly structured, lonely little box where nothing ever surprises you?”
“Yes,” he says.
He doesn’t hesitate, and that’s the part that hurts the most. There’s no doubt in his eyes. Just a cold, stubborn determination.
“Go home, Ember.”
I stand on his porch, holding a piece of dairy product like a fool, while the man I thought was opening up to me closes every single shutter in his soul.
The rejection is heavy, a dull, crushing weight in my chest that makes it hard to draw a full breath.
I nod once because if I open my mouth again, something humiliating is going to come out.
Like please.
Or don’t do this.
I don’t wait for him to close the door. I turn around and walk down the steps. I don’t look back at his window. I don’t look at the light.
When I get back into my kitchen, the room feels massive. Cold. The box fan is still whirring on the floor, rattling against the baseboard, but the air feels dead.
The block of goat cheese is still sitting on the counter where I left it. Because of the heat in the room, the hours of standing out in the humidity, it’s completely melted now.
The edges have collapsed, the pale, clean structure turning into a soft, ruined mess that’s past the point of saving.
It looks exactly how I feel.
I grab the cheese, walk over to the trash can, and drop it inside.
He wants to go back to how things were? Fine.
He wants to be the grumpy, professional fire chief who ignores his neighbors? He’s got it.
I am not going to beg a man to take a risk on me.
I sit down at my kitchen island, pulling my knees up to my chest, staring into the quiet, dark farmhouse and as the last of the light completely fades from the valley I feel painfully na?ve.
I keep trying to find the moment I should have known better. The sentence I misheard. The touch I translated into something it was never meant to mean. As if heartbreak is just a puzzle that can be solved backwards.
I feel like the kind of heroine people yell at in books. The girl who mistakes intensity for permanence. Who thinks if a man touches her gently enough, it must mean he plans to stay.
I always rolled my eyes at women in books who fell too fast. Who built entire futures out of lingering looks and almost-kisses.
Turns out it’s very easy to become that woman when someone spends weeks touching you like you’re already precious to them.
Heartbreak, apparently, is a lot less poetic than I expected.
No violins. No dramatic rain. Just an ordinary evening where your hand still reaches for a phone that has nothing new to say. A tiny, humiliating moment that reminds you how quickly another person can become a habit.