Page 216 of That Rush

Mom rests one hip against the window seat. “Because you were sure about her.”

“I am sure about her.” The answer comes easily. Her answer is the one I cannot claim. “I treated that certainty like permission. Everything I did was supposed to show Paige I wanted her, but I built the whole thing without asking her for the blueprints.”

Axel looks toward the separate entrance. “And now?”

“Now the room is hers if she wants it. She can use it every day, once a month, or never. It doesn’t require her to move into my house or give up the cabin. She gets every key.”

Adrienne wipes a streak of paint from her wrist. “What are you going to say to her?”

“The truth.”

“That narrows it down to several thousand words,” Axel says.

“I’ll keep it under several hundred.”

“Smart. She works with books. She knows when a man needs an editor.”

Mom walks over and presses a kiss to my cheek. “Then we’ll finish the room, and you can figure out what you need to say.”

She gives me neither suggested lines nor assurance that Paige will forgive me. She picks up the drop cloth and begins folding it while Dad carries the empty paint cans outside.

Axel drives the final screw through the top bracket. I test the case once, then again. It doesn't move.

Adrienne switches on the reading lamp. Warm light spreads across the shelves, window seat, desk, fireplace, and the clear path to a door Paige can close.

The room is quiet, private, and waiting, exactly as Paige imagined it. Whether she ever steps inside belongs to her.

By the time everyone leaves, the sun has slipped behind the mountains.

I sit on the new porch with the envelope of keys beside me and Paige’s number open on my phone. The room glows through the window behind me, complete with the adjustable lamp and the blanket Mom insisted would save Paige’s ass.

Finishing it was easier than making this call. Wood follows measurements. Shelves stay where I secure them. None of it tells me if Paige will answer, or if she'll hear anything beyond the fact that I understood too late.

I press call before another hour convinces me the words need to be perfect.

She answers on the fourth ring.

“Aiden?”

Hearing my name in her voice hurts more than twelve days of silence did.

“Hi.”

“Is Josie okay?”

“She’s fine. She’s spending the evening with my parents.” I tighten my grip on the phone. “She doesn’t know I’m calling. This is between you and me.”

“Okay.”

Her caution is quiet, but I hear it. I put it there.

“I get why you left,” I say, the words tight in my throat. “I pushed you out. I ended things because you wouldn’t sign off on a future I’d already planned without you.”

The silence that follows stretches until I can hear wind moving through the grass below the porch.

“Yes,” she says.

“The key, the holidays… I told myself I was making room. But I was just making decisions for you, and I never asked if that was an ending you even wanted.”