Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
MARA
The morning after is perfect. That's the problem.
Holden makes eggs. Scrambled, with cheddar and fresh chives from a pot on his windowsill that I didn't notice last night because I was too busy being carried down a hallway.
He cooks shirtless, flannel pants hanging low, copper threading through his beard catching the sunrise.
His kitchen smells like butter. His coffee is still terrible but I drink it anyway because he made it for me, setting the mug down next to my plate without a word, his knuckles brushing my shoulder as he passes.
We eat on the porch. The rocking chair for me, the steps for him. Mountains everywhere. A creek I can hear but can't see. Air so clean it almost stings. His hand rests on my bare ankle. Thumb moving in slow circles against my skin.
Perfect.
Then his phone buzzes on the porch railing.
He glances at it. Doesn't pick it up. But something crosses his face. Fast, there and gone. A flinch. His thumb stops moving on my ankle.
"Everything okay?"
"Darren. My vet tech. I've got a call at the Parsons ranch this afternoon." He stands. Takes both plates. "I should shower."
Casual. Normal. Except his voice has flattened. The warmth from thirty seconds ago pulled behind a wall so fast I almost miss the shift.
Almost.
While he showers, I carry my mug inside. Set it by the sink. And there on the counter, screen still lit from Darren's text, is his phone.
The notification has cleared. What's underneath is his text thread list. My name sits at the top. Below mine, Annika Briggs. The thread preview shows a single message, timestamped five years ago.
Head is really bad tonight. Come home soon?
My stomach drops. Not because of the text.
Because of its position. Second. Below mine.
And I understand, with a clarity that buckles my knees, what that cost him.
Every night for five years, his dead wife's last words sat at the top of his phone.
The first thing he saw every time he opened it.
A digital headstone he carried in his pocket.
My texts moved her down.
He chose that. Chose me above her last words. And now, standing in his kitchen with wet hair, he looks at me looking at his phone, and his face goes completely blank.
"Holden."
"Don't." One word. Quiet. Final.
"I wasn't trying to—"
"I know what you saw." He takes the phone. Slides it into his pocket. Won't look at me. "I need to get to the Parsons ranch."
"Can we talk about this?"
"There's nothing to talk about." He pulls a shirt on. Grabs his keys from the hook by the door. "Stay as long as you want. I'll be back tonight."
The door closes. His truck starts. Gravel crunches down the logging road.
And I'm standing alone in a cabin in British Columbia with the taste of his terrible coffee in my mouth, wondering if I just watched a man choose his grief over me.
Three hours pass.
The cabin is quiet. Not the warm quiet from this morning. The old quiet. The five years of silence quiet. Every surface whispers about a woman I never met who died in the room where I slept last night.
My bag is by the bedroom door. Still packed because I didn't unpack. Because some part of me knew, even while he was inside me, even while he said stay, that wanting something and being ready for it aren't the same thing.
By noon, I've decided to leave. Wrote a note on the back of a vet supply invoice from his counter.
Holden. I didn't come here to compete with a ghost. I came here because you're the first person who ever made me feel like myself. If you need more time, take it. I'll be at Bean and Bloom in town until 4. If you don't come, I'll drive home. No hard feelings. You changed my life either way. — Mara
I set the note on the kitchen table. Grab my bag. Walk to the car.
The drive to Crimson Hollow takes twenty minutes. Bean & Bloom is warm inside. A woman behind the counter with natural hair and flour on her apron takes one look at my face and slides me a honey cinnamon latte without being asked.
"You look like you need this more than conversation," she says. Her nametag reads Sage.
"Thank you."
"You're the candle woman, aren't you?" She leans on the counter. "Holden called ahead this morning. Asked me to make sure you were taken care of if you came into town."
The latte blurs. He called ahead. Before the phone, before the wall, before he walked out. He called a woman in town to take care of me.
"He does that," Sage says, reading my face. "Grumpy as hell, but when he cares about something, the whole mountain knows."
I'm on my second latte when the door opens.
3:47pm. Thirteen minutes before my deadline.
Holden fills the doorframe. Mud on his boots, dried blood on his forearm from whatever he did at the Parsons ranch. His eyes find me immediately. Blue. Raw. Terrified in a way I've never seen on a man this large.
He crosses the café in four strides. Doesn't sit down. Stands in front of my table, breathing hard, smelling like hay and sweat.
"You left a note."
"You left first."
"I know." His jaw works. The words come out rough, dragged from somewhere deep. "I saw your name above hers. On my phone. And it scared me because for the first time in five years, I didn't feel guilty about it."
The café is silent. Sage has disappeared into the kitchen. Just us and the hiss of the espresso machine.
"Mara, I'm not good at this. I've been dead for five years and you drove here and made me alive again, and I don't know what to do with that except panic.
So I panicked. And I left. And I got halfway to the Parsons ranch before I pulled over because I couldn't see the road through—" His voice cracks. He clears his throat. "I couldn't see."
My hands are shaking. The latte is cold.
"Annika would have liked you," he says. "She would have loved your candles. She read romance novels, you know. Stacks of them. She would've said I was being an idiot."
"You are being an idiot."
"I know." He drops to a crouch in front of my chair. Takes my hands. His are calloused, rough, warm. "Stay. Not for tonight. Stay because I want to wake up tomorrow with your music playing in my kitchen. Stay because you make me want things I buried, and I'm done burying them."
"That's what you said last night."
"Last night I meant it in bed. Right now, I mean it in a coffee shop in front of a stranger with flour on her apron who is definitely listening from the kitchen."
"I am!" Sage calls.
The laugh breaks out of me wet and messy. His thumb swipes a tear off my cheek. Those blue eyes, the ones I imagined for two months, the ones that went cold this morning when fear took over, are wide open.
"I love you, Mara. I've loved you since you texted me about a golden retriever at 10pm on a Tuesday. I loved you before I knew your face. I love you more now that I do."
"I love you too." My forehead presses against his. "Your coffee is still terrible."
"Stay and fix it."
"Okay."
His mouth finds mine. Soft this time. Slow. A kiss that says I'm sorry, I'm scared, I'm here, I'm not leaving. My hands slide into his hair. His arms wrap around me. The café chair scrapes against the floor.
Somewhere in the kitchen, Sage is definitely crying.
And Holden Briggs, the grumpiest man on this mountain, is smiling. Actually smiling. Full and real and devastating.
I'm staying.