Page 203 of That Rush

The latch releases with a hard click. Cool night air enters the silent house.

His voice is rough. “Do you need a ride?”

“My car is here.”

“Right.”

I step onto the porch, then turn back. “I love you.”

His eyes close briefly. “I know.”

The porch light steals the color from his face, leaving it pale and drawn. He watches each steady step I take toward my car, his expression gutted, as if he’s just seen proof of a truth he always suspected.

I keep walking because if I stop, he will see how completely I already have.

The drive back to my cabin takes twenty-three minutes. I know because the clock changes once before I reach the county road and again as I turn beneath the pines.

I keep both hands on the wheel. The radio stays off. My phone sits facedown in the cup holder, a silent temptation close enough that I could call Aiden without pulling over.

I do not touch it.

The restraint feels less like strength with every mile. It feels like holding a door shut while everything I love pounds against the other side.

Calling him would be easy. I could tell him to take it back, turn around, and come get me. I could offer the answer he wanted and let relief carry us through the beautiful lie.

Then tomorrow, I would wake inside a promise I made because losing him terrified me.

I pull into the gravel drive and switch off the engine. My porch light spills across the empty hammock. No boots wait beside the door. No truck settles behind mine. The quiet I spent years creating waits exactly where I left it.

Tonight, it feels merciless.

I make myself get out, lock the car, and climb the steps. The cabin key catches once because my hand is shaking. Aiden’s key knocks against it on the ring, a small metallic sound that breaks the silence.

Inside, I set the keys on the kitchen counter.

His rests beside mine.

I look at them until the edges blur. Aiden gave me that key with such certainty. He trusted me in his home, around his daughter, and inside the daily life he protects. I accepted it because I wanted every part of that access. I still do.

Wanting it never meant I stopped needing this key too.

I drop my purse on a chair and find the paperback Aiden has been reading on the end table. The page is marked with a folded scrap of paper. He claims he only reads romance to identify the hero’s mistakes, but he always reads far past the point of proving his argument.

My thumb slips between the pages. I can hear his dry voice telling me the man quit too soon. I can picture the scrape across his knuckle in the photograph he sent. I remember the care he took, choosing an angle he knew would affect me.

The book closes against my palm.

On the refrigerator, Josie’s drawing hangs beneath a library magnet. Sprinkle wears a purple crown and brown work boots, a perfect mix of Josie’s two worlds. Josie wrote her name across the bottom and added mine beneath it when she decided the picture belonged here.

I touch the corner of the paper.

That is what undoes me.

My legs give out, and I sink to the kitchen floor. The paperback lands beside me. I press one hand over my mouth, but the first sob tears through it anyway.

There is no one here to mistake my composure for indifference. No one to watch me stay calm while the man I love decides he can’t keep building with me. Not without a future I’m afraid to promise. I fold over my knees and cry until my ribs hurt, until I cannot see the drawing above me. I cry until every steady step I took away from Aiden leaves my body at once.

I wanted to run back.