Page 21 of Consumed By The Forbidden Mountain Man

I'm afraid of standing in another driveway watching another woman leave.

But Ivy isn't Claire. Claire was calculated. Claire planned her exit for months. Ivy is raw, impulsive, brave. She quit a job that was killing her without a backup plan because she refused to keep lying to herself. She entered a pie competition with her dead grandmother's recipe because a grumpy neighbor left a note on his door.

She didn't walk away this morning because she was giving up. She walked away because I asked her to.

My porch light is on. I don't remember turning it on this morning.

Through the trees, her porch light is off.

For the first time since she got here, her porch light is off.

That's worse than a slammed door. Worse than yelling. She turned her light off.

I sit in my truck for a long time. Engine cooling. The mountain going dark around me.

Then I go inside, heat up leftover pasta I don't taste, and sit at the kitchen table staring at the pie ribbon on my fridge.

Told you, I said to her when she won. Hand on her back. Like I was proud. Like I had any right to be proud of this woman who doesn't belong to me, who I have no claim on, who I just told to take a step back.

My phone buzzes.

Tony:

Saturday around noon. Bringing steaks. Can't wait.

I don't respond.

The cabin is quiet. No laughter from next door. No boots on my porch steps. No second coffee cup.

This is what I asked for. This is what I wanted.

It's terrible.

CHAPTER SIX

IVY

Wednesday passes. Thursday passes. Two days of sitting in my cabin with my notebook open and nothing written.

My porch light stays off. His stays on.

That detail shouldn't matter. It's a sixty-watt bulb on a timer he probably forgot to turn off. But every night when I close the curtains, I see the glow through the pines, and it makes my chest ache in a way I refuse to give a name.

Holly Pearce finds me at the general store Thursday afternoon buying coffee for one. She takes one look at my face.

"Honey. Come sit."

We sit in the bakery section of her shop. She gives me a cinnamon roll the size of my head and doesn't ask what happened. Just sits across from me with her hands wrapped around her own coffee, waiting.

"I did something stupid," I say.

"Did it involve the man next door?"

"Is it that obvious?"

"Sweetie, the whole town's been watching you two since the bonfire."

Great. So my humiliation has an audience.