For seven days, I allowed myself to believe in miracles.
The ridge was quiet, the air was sweet with the scent of thawing pine, and Silas was... he was everything. He woke me up with coffee and kisses that tasted like woodsmoke and honey. We spent the week in a haze of soft blankets and sweet promises.
For a week, I didn't think about Julian. I didn't think about the city. I felt like a girl who had finally found the shore after a lifetime of treading water.
But the mountain has a way of reminding you of everything tha has been buried, comes out eventually.
We were sitting on the porch, the sun beginning to dip behind the peaks, when a familiar silver sedan pulled into the drive. My stomach did a slow, sickening roll.
Elena.
She stepped out of the car, looking perfectly put-together in a cream-colored wrap dress, but her face was pale, stripped of the smug pity she'd worn the last time I saw her. She didn't look like a rival; she looked like a woman who was carrying a heavy weight.
Silas stood up, his hand dropping from my shoulder. His posture went rigid, the mountain man returning to his defensive stance. "Elena. I thought I made things clear."
"You did, Silas," she said, her voice trembling as she stopped at the foot of the porch steps.
She didn't look at me. Her eyes were fixed on him, wide, terrified, and desperate. "I didn't want to come here. I tried to handle it. But I... I went to the doctor yesterday."
The silence that followed was so thick I could hear the blood rushing through my own ears.
"I'm pregnant, Silas."
The world didn't stop, but it certainly felt like it slowed down to a crawl. I looked at Silas. I watched the blood drain from his face, watched his jaw set in that familiar, agonizing line of duty. He didn't say it was impossible. He didn't call her a liar. Because Silas Mercer was a man of his word, and even in his week of "distraction," he had been his own brand of thorough.
"Are you sure?" Silas asked, his voice a low, hollow thrum.
"Seven weeks," she whispered. "I... I know we're over. I know you want her. But I couldn't let you find out from someone else."
I stood up slowly, my legs feeling like they were made of lead. "Seven weeks," I repeated. My voice sounded tiny, like it was coming from the bottom of a well. "That means... that night. The night I was at Julian's."
Silas turned to me, his eyes full of a sudden, desperate pleading. "Alina, listen to me. I was lost. I thought I'd lost you—"
"I don't care why you did it, Silas!" I snapped, the "vicious" energy returning to my limbs like a lightning strike. "You spent a week telling me I was your future while you were carrying a souvenir from the week you gave up on me! You're so big on 'responsibility,' aren't you? You're so fucking noble."
"I'll take care of her," Silas said, stepping toward me, his hands reaching out. "But I love you, Alina. We can work through this. It doesn't change what we have."
"It changes everything!" I screamed, shoving his hands away. "You wanted a simple life, Silas. You wanted peace. Well, congratulations. You got a station wagon and a white picket fence and a woman who doesn't swear when she burns the toast. You got exactly what you deserved for being a coward."
"Alina, please—"
"Don't 'please' me! I am done being the mess you try to manage!" I turned and bolted for the house, grabbing my bag. I didn't pack. I didn't care. I just needed to be away from the smell of his pine and the sight of that blonde woman holding the life I thought I was finally allowed to want.
I pushed past Elena on the porch. She looked at me with a flash of guilt, but I didn't give her the satisfaction of a witty remark. I didn't have any left.
I threw myself into my car and gunned the engine. Silas was yelling my name, running after the car, but I didn't look back. I didn't look at the rearview mirror until I was miles down the ridge.
I drove straight to Martha's.
The diner was dark when I pulled in. I stumbled into the house, my breath coming in jagged, dry sobs. Martha was in the kitchen, and when she saw me, she didn't ask a single question. She just opened her arms and let me collapse into them.
"He's having a baby, Martha," I choked out, the words tasting like salt and iron. "The sweet man got himself a legacy."
I sat at the small kitchen table, staring at the floral wallpaper that I'd started to hate. I felt the familiar, dark pull in the pit of my stomach.
Silas was a father now. He was tied to the ridge by a different kind of root. He was gone.
And in the silence of Martha's house, my mind did something it promised it never would. It traveled forty floors up. It went back to the glass and the citrus and the man who didn't want a family or a legacy, only a love to call his own.
I have no one, I thought, my fingers tracing the scars on my palm. I have absolutely no one.
Except, perhaps, the monster of a man who was currently three thousand miles away, waiting for me to realize that the ridge was just a graveyard with better scenery.