“Dylan, wait?—”
“Saturday’s off,” she said, hand on the door, autumn air rushing in like cold clarity. “Find someone else to climb your mountain.”
She left him standing in his beautiful house with its promise of permanence, drove through the ranch with her vision blurred by tears she refused to acknowledge. The road unwound beneath her tires like all the roads of her childhood—leading away, always away, because staying had never been safe.
Victoria’s words echoed in her head like a prophecy she’d been too naïve to see coming. At home, Dylan stood at her window looking out at Main Street, at the life she’d started building without meaning to. The lampposts cast pools of gold on the sidewalks where she’d learned to walk slowly, where she’d discovered that not all conversations had to end in goodbye.
But maybe Victoria was right. Maybe patterns carved in childhood were too deep to escape.
Her phone rang. Aidan’s name on the screen like an accusation.
She let it go to voicemail.
Then it rang again. This time she answered, anger overriding the hurt that threatened to hollow her out completely.
“What?”
“You forgot something,” he said, his voice rough with emotion she couldn’t quite name.
“What did I forget?”
“That I fell for you before I ever read that letter. That I’ve been falling for you since you walked into my garage and I saw those big violet eyes. Even when you told me my organizational system was chaos, and that you’d only work if country music was on the radio. That my grandfather’s hunt didn’t create these feelings—it just gave me the courage to acknowledge them.”
Dylan sank onto her couch, surrounded by the evidence of roots she’d grown without permission—books she’d bought instead of borrowed, curtains she’d hung, a future she’d dared to imagine. “Aidan?—”
“No, listen. Please. I should have told you about the letter from the beginning. But I was scared you’d think exactly what you’re thinking now. That this was about the ring, the tradition, the expectation. It’s not. It never was.”
“Then what is it about?” The question came out smaller than she’d intended, vulnerable as a confession.
“It’s about you. It’s about the way you see beauty in broken things and make me want to see the world through your eyes. It’s about how you’ve never once looked at me like I was anything other than exactly who I am—not an O’Hara, not the charming one, not the middle one, just Aidan. It’s about the fact that I can’t imagine my life without you in it, and that has nothing to do with my grandfather or his riddles or that ring sitting on top of a mountain.”
Dylan closed her eyes, feeling the weight of five years’ worth of careful distance crumbling like a dam she’d built to protect herself from exactly this—from wanting something so much that losing it could break her. “I don’t know what to believe.”
“You’ve got things to think about,” he said. “Because this isn’t all about me. And maybe you don’t want to hear this yet, but maybe you’re looking for an escape. Maybe you’re expecting things to crumble so that gives you the excuse you need to pull up stakes and move on like you always have. It takes courage to stay, Dylan. It takes courage to put down roots. You’re not a coward.”
“You’re right,” she said softly, her heart constricting in her chest. “I don’t want to hear that yet.”
“Then we both have some things to think about this week. Come with me Saturday. Not for the ring, not for the hunt, but for us. Let me show you this isn’t about fulfilling some requirement. It’s about choosing each other.”
The silence stretched between them, filled with everything they’d said and everything they hadn’t.
“I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I can ask.”
After they hung up, Dylan sat in her painted apartment, surrounded by the small rebellions against her own nature—the restoration shop that would open in two weeks, the roots she’d started growing in soil she’d never trusted before. The ring waited on Eagle’s Point like a question mark against the sky. And somewhere between Victoria’s calculated cruelty and Aidan’s raw honesty, between the fear that had kept her safe and the hope that might destroy her, Dylan had to decide what she believed.
What she wanted.
Who she was brave enough to become.
Thursday brought no clarity, only the slow torture of Victoria’s presence woven through Laurel Valley like a golden thread designed to remind everyone what they’d lost.
Friday afternoon, Dylan’s phone rang.
Sophie’s cheerful voice greeted her. “First of all, let me apologize. I had no idea that Victoria was going to call you and invite you for coffee. I thought she sincerely wanted to apologize.”
“No worries,” Dylan said. “Truly. It was very enlightening. It was probably better to go ahead and get it out of the way.”
