"So what are you going to do?"
That was the question, wasn't it?
Three weeks ago, I'd chosen this. Chosen the partnership track and the corporate life and the slowly suffocating death of everything that made me feel alive. But standing in this bathroom, looking at my reflection, I finally understood whatSam had been trying to tell me. I wasn't living. I was just surviving. And barely even that.
"I don't know," I admitted. "But I can't keep doing this."
I returned to the conference room twenty minutes later, composed and professional, and finished the presentation. But something had broken inside me, and I couldn't put it back together. That night, I sat in my apartment—my expensive, soulless apartment—and stared at the partnership offer on my coffee table. Three years of eighty-hour weeks. A partnership track that required complete dedication. A life that looked perfect from the outside and felt like dying on the inside.
Or...
I thought about Sam's cabin. About mountains and adventure and a man who'd seen straight through my armor to the woman underneath. About feeling alive for the first time in years, even when I was terrified. About the choice I'd made, and whether it was too late to unmake it.
Chapter 9
Sam
The crack of gunfire echoed across the valley as I emptied another magazine. Reload. Breathe. Fire.
I wasn't thinking about her.
Wasn't thinking about the fear in her eyes when I'd asked her to choose. The way her voice had broken when she said she needed to go back.
The way I'd let her leave without fighting for her.
"Jesus Christ, Sam."
Neil stood at the edge of my property, hands in his pockets, watching me destroy paper targets like they'd personally wronged me.
"What?" I chambered another round.
"You're going to shoot a hole through the mountain."
"Not your problem." I raised the rifle.
Neil crossed the distance and grabbed the barrel, forcing it down. "It is when you've been out here for six hours. When Kevin said he saw you free-soloing at midnight. When Shane found you passed out drunk yesterday."
I yanked the rifle away. "I'm handling it."
"You're destroying yourself."
"Same thing."
Neil followed me as I stalked toward the cabin. "We need to talk about her."
"No, we don't."
"Sam—"
I spun on him, and whatever he saw in my face made him stop. "What do you want me to say? That I told her I loved her and she left anyway? That I begged her to stay and she chose a helicopter over me? That I finally put myself out there and she still walked away?"
My voice had risen to a shout.
"I gave her everything. Showed her who she could be. Made her mine. Told her I loved her. And when I asked her to prove it—to stay—she couldn't do it."
"Did you really give her everything?" Neil's voice was quiet. "Or did you give her an ultimatum?"
I froze. "What?"
