The Road Back to Us

Whoever said that falling out of love with your husband was easy lied.

I had spent six years trying to do exactly that, only to find that nothing had changed when I found myself back in Willow Falls after tragedy struck.

It was important to stay focused on why I was really there and not on the unresolved problems that lingered between us. But the more time we spent together, the harder it was to ignore those buried feelings, which kept threatening to resurface.

Cole wasn’t the problem; he was the most amazing man I had ever known. It was that he deserved far more than I could give him, a truth I carried even if he refused to believe it. We had suffered so much loss together over the years that it had left a permanent mark on both of us.

I never planned to return to Willow Falls, but fate shattered my world by taking my brother and leaving me to raise three kids who barely knew me. Cole, on the other hand, had been in their lives from the very start, and I couldn’t ask him to leave. They needed him as much as I did while I stumbled through trying to balance work and family life.

Living with Cole and sharing a bed with him was almost my undoing. It wasn’t just the intensity of his gaze or the comforting promises he made when my world felt too heavy to bear. It was that I longed for his touch, but knew I didn’t deserve it. Cole had always kept a torch burning for me, even when life tried to extinguish it.

As much as I wanted to let my guard down and trust that we might have a future, I found myself too terrified to try. Our marriage had been in trouble for so long, I wasn’t sure anything could fix it. But the closer he got, the more I found myself wanting to try.

Suddenly, everything’s changing, and we’re faced with making decisions I’m not sure I’m ready for.
They say there’s no hurt in trying, but I carry the scars that are deeply embedded in my heart from doing so.
No matter how much we love each other, it might not be enough to fix the one thing we need to fix: us.

Content warning:

Death:
Side characters, including parents, sibling, and sister-in-law—not shown on page
Housefire resulting in the death of a sibling—not shown on page
Childbirth—sister-in-law, not shown on page
Miscarriage:
Main character, not shown on page nor described in detail—only mention of
Accidental Pregnancy
Marriage in trouble:
Separation and reconciliation