Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
brIGGS
Three days without her, and the quiet I spent eight years building feels like a sentence.
The farm still works. Trees still need shearing. Irrigation still needs checking. Tinsel still waits by the door every morning, tail going, until he figures out we're not walking through the tree line today. Then he sighs, drops onto his bed, and looks at me with an accusation I deserve.
"I know, buddy."
Each night, I turn the porch light on. Every morning, it's still burning.
A waste of electricity, my father would say.
But the cabin next door is dark at night, no warm glow from the kitchen window, no shadow moving behind the glass, and the porch light is the only thing I can offer without crossing the line she drew.
Mom called twice. I let it go to voicemail both times. She left messages. The first one was careful, asking if I was all right, saying she noticed the truck hadn't moved. The second one was less careful.
Mom:
Thomas Parker told me the new neighbor looks like she's been crying. Have you done something stupid? Call me back.
I haven't done something stupid. I did the opposite. I gave her space. Let her go. Stood in my kitchen and watched her fold my flannel on her counter, and then I walked home with it over my arm and the words "I'm trying to love you" still warm in my mouth.
I've been trying to love this woman for fifteen years. Three more days of silence won't kill me.
Except it might. Because it's Tuesday afternoon, and I'm sitting in my barn sharpening a blade that's already sharp, watching the tree line, when Margot Hemmings walks out of the pines.
She's in pajamas. Gray sweatpants, a black tank top, bare feet on the pine needles. Hair down, unbrushed. No glasses. She's hugging herself against the cold, and she's walking directly toward my porch with the focused determination of a woman who's had a fight with herself and lost.
Tinsel spots her first. His whole body goes rigid, then his tail starts going. He's off the porch in two bounds, crossing the yard, pressing himself against her legs. She drops one hand to his head without stopping. Scratches behind his ear. Keeps walking.
I stand in the barn doorway. Blade in one hand. Rag in the other.
She stops at the bottom of my porch steps. Looks up at me. Her eyes are red rimmed. She hasn't been sleeping. There's a vulnerability in her face that I've never seen, stripped down past the sharpness, past the grudge, past the armor she's worn since the day I pulled her out of her own porch.
"I was wrong."
Two words. She delivers them the same way I deliver lumber. No preamble. No wrapping.
"About what you said," she continues. "About trying to love me. That wasn't you fixing me. That was you telling me the truth, and I punished you for it because the last two men who said something meaningful to me either lied or didn't mean it. And I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, Briggs."
The blade goes on the workbench. The rag follows. I'm down the steps, standing in front of her on the cold ground, close enough that I can see the goosebumps on her arms.
"Come inside. You're freezing."
"I need to say this first."
"You can say it inside where it's warm."
"If I go inside, I'm going to lose my nerve."
"Then I'll stand here until you're done."
Her mouth trembles. Just once. She steadies it.
"I've been telling a story about you for fifteen years.
The story where you're the villain who destroyed the best relationship I ever had.
Where you meddled and manipulated and ruined something beautiful because you couldn't stand to see Ryan happy with me.
And I've told that story so many times it became part of who I am.
My origin story. The chapter where I learned that men can't be trusted. "
She swallows. Keeps going.
"Daniel's call rattled me because it reminded me what happens when I build my world around a man. And you were fixing my porch and my pipes and sleeping in my bed, and I panicked. I thought I was doing it again. Losing myself in someone."
"Margot."
"But these past three days, all I've done is sit in that cabin you rebuilt, on the floor you put in, drinking coffee from a mug I only have because your mother brought me a welcome basket, and I've realized something.
I didn't lose myself in you. I found myself next to you.
There's a difference, and it took me three days of being miserable to figure it out. "
She exhales. Shaky. Bare feet on cold ground, arms wrapped tight, standing on my lawn in pajamas on a Tuesday afternoon.
"You said there was more to the story. About college. About Ryan." Her voice drops. "I'm ready to hear it."
This is the moment. Fifteen years of carrying this, of watching her walk away believing a version of me that was always wrong, of knowing the truth and not knowing how to deliver it without destroying something else.
"Let's go inside."
She nods. Lets me lead her up the steps. Inside, the woodstove is going. Warm. Tinsel claims his spot on the rug. I pour her coffee from the pot, guide her to the kitchen chair. She wraps both hands around the mug.
Then I sit across from her and tell her the truth.
"Ryan was cheating on you. The whole time. From about three months into your relationship through the end."
The mug stops halfway to her mouth. She sets it down carefully.
"Multiple women. Girls in the dorm. Someone from his econ study group. A bartender at that place on Virginia Street. He bragged about it in the room when you weren't there. To me. To whoever else was around. He didn't think it was a big deal."
Her face is very still. Her hands stay on the mug.
"I tried to tell him to stop. Told him it was wrong, told him you deserved better.
He laughed it off. Said it didn't count because you'd never find out, and he still came home to you, so what was the harm.
" My jaw aches from how tight it is. "And I couldn't figure out how to tell you without destroying my friendship with him.
Which I know sounds pathetic. It was pathetic.
I was twenty one and I was loyal to a guy who didn't deserve it. "
"So you tried to break us up."
"I tried to make it end without saying why.
I showed up at your dates. Made myself impossible.
Created enough friction that maybe you'd get fed up with the drama and walk away on your own.
I thought if the relationship ended because of external pressure, you'd be hurt but you wouldn't be humiliated. "
"Instead, I hated you."
"Yeah. And Ryan let you. He chose your side publicly, cut me out, and I lost my best friend and any chance of being believed. You left college thinking I was the problem. Ryan graduated, moved on, and never had to answer for any of it."
Margot stares at the table. Her thumb traces the rim of the mug. The woodstove crackles. Tinsel's breathing is the only other sound.
"Why didn't you just tell me." Quiet. Fragile.
"Because I thought you'd believe him over me.
And you would have. He was charming. I was his grumpy roommate who didn't talk enough and worked on a tree farm on weekends.
If I'd said 'your boyfriend is cheating on you,' he'd have turned it around.
Said I was jealous. And you'd have stayed with him longer, hating me even more. "
"You don't know that."
"I do. Because it's exactly what he did when things started falling apart. He told you I was the problem. And you believed him."
She flinches. Small but visible.
"I'm not saying this to hurt you. I've never wanted to hurt you. I was a kid who watched his best friend treat a good woman like garbage, and the only tool I had was showing up and being loud about it. I did the right thing in the worst possible way. And I've carried that for fifteen years."
The kitchen is quiet for a long time. Margot doesn't speak. Her hands stay on the mug. Her eyes stay on the table. I watch her process it. The editor brain working through the text, checking for inconsistencies, testing the narrative against everything she already knows.
When she looks up, there are tears on her cheeks.
"You tried to protect me."
"Badly."
"But you tried."
"Yes."
"And then I spent fifteen years hating you for it."
"You didn't know."
"I should have." She wipes her cheeks with the heel of her hand.
"The signs were there. With Ryan. I look back now, after Daniel, after learning what a checked out man actually looks like, and the patterns were the same.
Ryan never answered his phone when I was around.
He had study groups that ran until two AM.
He smelled different when he came home some nights.
" Her voice catches. "I saw it. I just didn't want to. "
"That's not your fault."
"Maybe not. But blaming you for it was." She meets my eyes. Direct. Red rimmed. Open. "I'm sorry, Briggs. For fifteen years of a story that was never true."
My chest breaks open. Quietly, somewhere deep, a fracture that's been holding for a decade and a half finally gives. I reach across the table. Take her hands. Her fingers lace through mine, warm from the mug, trembling.
"I need to tell you something else."
"Okay."
"I fell for you in college. Before Ryan ever did.
Sophomore year. You walked into our dorm room with an armload of books, you laughed at something I said about the dining hall, and I forgot how to breathe.
But you were already with him. And I was loyal to a man who didn't deserve it. So I buried it."
Her lips part. A small sound. Her hands tighten on mine.
"I've loved you for fifteen years, Margot. Every version. The twenty year old with the glasses and the books. The woman who drove three hundred miles with a cat and a bottle of Merlot. The one who told me to go to hell on her broken porch. All of them. Every single one."
She stands up. Comes around the table. Puts her hands on my face. Her palms are warm. Her thumbs trace my jaw, my beard, the bones underneath.