Chapter 41
Ruby
I MANAGED TO MAINTAIN some version of calm for a week.
The inn kept me busy—workers and Dave to wrangle, renovations in the final stretch, advertising to push, vendors to charm, my staff to prepare, art and décor to pick.
My days were loud with tasks, and there was also my newfound nightly hobby—more a necessity than a hobby—I’d walk the beach for hours until exhaustion was heavy enough to knock me out after a quick shower.
I even drove to my mom’s house for an afternoon. Another day, I visited Aunt Amy in Riviera View to give her the renovation update. Anything to avoid sitting still long enough to think about Sebastian and the frostbitten pit where my heart should have been.
When my friends asked about him, I flipped the conversation. Encouraged Rio to monopolize it with wedding plans until she forgot to breathe, let Evangeline spam it with flower arrangement ideas, and Daphne to send eye-rolling emojis about all of us.
And through all of it, I was having phantom pain.
I missed more than his touch, his scent, his smile. I missed his steadiness. His eyes, the look in them. The way he saw straight through every flimsy thing I pretended not to feel.
No, I can’t see my life without him, I wanted to shout my response to Evangeline’s unforgotten question. But I have to. At least until we could go back to normal.
Yeah, I still believed in that. Or tried to convince myself I did. I kinda had to.
At one especially low point, I opened Tinder, my go-to let’s-have-fun app. The low point wasn’t opening it. It was realizing I couldn’t even remember why I’d ever wanted to be with someone who wasn’t him.
Worse. I couldn’t picture myself with anyone else.
So what’s your problem, idiot? I yelled at myself in my head. Catch a flight to Houston, or at least pick up the goddamn phone.
What we had was supposed to be a fun ride, smooth and safe.
But staring at the phone now felt like standing in a plane’s open door—parachute on, everyone swearing I’d be fine if I jumped.
I wanted to. God, I did. But all I could see was the terrifying drop, the endless sky, the splintering impact waiting below.
Logic whispered I’d survive. My gut swore I wouldn’t.
So I froze, fingers inches from the phone, too unsteady, too not enough to bridge the distance between my heart and my courage, between me and him.
Early the next week, my phone shoved forward the notifications I’d been dodging.
One of them said Sebastian was tagged in a post. The preview didn’t say whose, but I figured it was some NASA PR thing—because of course even NASA had PR.
I hadn’t opened it for days. If I saw his face, the ache might undo me completely.
Now, my thumb hovered, resisting, before I finally tapped it open.
He’d been tagged by an account I didn’t know.
A group picture filled the screen—Sebastian, smiling, but his shoulders angled slightly away, polite and distant.
Nathan, his friend I knew from stories and pictures, stood behind him, arm looped around a woman at his side, the two of them looking like a happy couple.
And bracketing Sebastian were two other women, each leaning toward him and smiling widely.
I knew him well enough to see it: the set of his shoulders, the tension in his jaw muscle, the smile that wasn’t the real thing.
But none of that mattered to the fist that clutched my heart. Because it could be real. Someday, some woman—maybe even one of these—could step into his orbit and stay there.
My blood burned with jealousy, my heart wrecked at the thought of another woman who wasn’t me, filling his days with tenderness, consuming his nights, owning his heart, and giving him what I said I couldn’t.
I slammed the phone face-down on the counter, pulse hammering, like I’d just dropped a live grenade.
I just stood there, longing for him with everything in me, yet too paralyzed to move an inch closer.
My days blurred by with endless to-dos, while underneath it, the yearning festered. The picture was etched behind my eyelids long after I shut it away, smoldering alongside the hollow ache of missing him.
One day or three or five later—I couldn’t tell anymore—Sandra peeked into my office.
“Should I take out the holiday decorations from storage? Just for the cabins, maybe?”
I blinked at her, no idea what she was talking about.
“Halloween,” she said, taking a few steps inside. “Are you okay, Ruby?”
“Oh. Right.” I tried to sound casual. “Yeah, sure. I’ve got some skull string lights, a few plastic pumpkins we can scatter around, jack-o’-lanterns for the cabin steps, maybe some fake cobwebs for reception.”
“Yeah,” Sandra said slowly, her eyes scanning my face. “That’s what I meant. Are you okay?”
“I’m great. Did you see how well everything’s going upstairs? They’re almost ready for painting and ...” I trailed off. Like I couldn’t remember what the hell I was blabbering about.
That calm I’d been clinging to started feeling like the sea pulling back before a tsunami—water rushing away in eerie silence, exposing everything it shouldn’t, the air going heavy, dark, and strange. You know what’s coming. You just don’t know how much it’s going to destroy when it hits.
“Yeah,” Sandra repeated. “I’m sure Sebastian would love seeing the progress.”
“Yeah,” I echoed, not sure if the smile I aimed for actually landed or if I’d just bared my teeth like a lunatic.
“I’ll go take care of the decorations now,” she said, efficient again now that she wasn’t flirting with Sebastian.
Halloween already. How the hell did that happen? Time had been both fast and sluggish—the renovations dragging on forever, but Labor Day still felt like last week. Maybe the weeks Sebastian had been here didn’t even count as real time, just a suspended bridge between before and after.
Halloween. “You should go as Superman. With those shoulders, and that chest, and these abs ...” I’d told him once—three years ago? Four?—that he could pull off the costume so well, every single woman would be on him. Then, teasing, “Are there single ladies in NASA?”
I could still see his grin, hear the warm chuckle. “I don’t do costumes, but I’ll keep it in mind. And yes, of course there are.” The memory unspooled in perfect detail—I could almost feel now the heat of his skin under my palms, the hard planes of muscle shifting beneath my fingers.
Back then, it had taken me a second to realize the last part was answering my single-ladies-in-NASA question. Now the image of other women—from work, from Nathan’s picture, Julie from the café, any woman laughing with him, touching him—cascaded over my heart like hot lava. It burned fast and deep.
But when the ashes flickered away, what remained was the truth: I didn’t want him because someone else might. I didn’t want to win him from anyone. I wanted him because he was already written into me.
And the only thing that could steady the fire before it consumed me was knowing I could carry that truth on my skin until I was brave enough to say it out loud.