My hands are shaking. I grip the reins harder.
She stares at me like she’s seeing a stranger.
“So you’re saying,” she says carefully, “that because my dream finally came true, you don’t want me anymore.”
I flinch. “It’s not?—”
“That’s exactly what you’re saying,” she cuts in, voice rising. “You told me last night that you wanted a future. That you weren’t going to let this be a closed chapter. That you’d fight.”
“I shouldn’t have,” I say, hating myself. “I got carried away. It was… a storm. A bubble. Up there, everything feels possible. Down here is where reality is.”
Her eyes shine, furious and hurt. “Reality is that sometimes things are hard and you find ways around them. You of all people should know that. You literally rebuild roads for a living.”
“This isn’t a road I can fix with a chainsaw,” I say quietly. “You’ll resent me. I’ll resent your job. It’ll rot from the inside out.”
“You don’t know that,” she snaps. “You’re just afraid.”
“I’m being realistic.”
“You’re being a coward.”
The word hits like a slap, because it’s true in all the ways that matter.
“I won’t hold you back,” I say, jaw tight. “You’ve worked too hard. This promotion… it’s everything. You should be there for it. Fully. Not worrying about some guy on a mountain who can’t sleep when he hears carols because it sounds too much like?—”
I cut myself off.
She’s breathing hard now, cheeks flushed with something that has nothing to do with cold. “You don’t get to decide what I can or can’t handle,” she says. “Or what I want my life to look like. You don’t get to walk away and tell yourself it’s for my own good like that makes it noble.”
“I’m not noble,” I say. “I’m tired. I know what I can carry and what I can’t. I can’t do this. Not the way you deserve.”
She swallows hard. “So that’s it? You’re choosing the mountain over me.”
“I’m choosing the only life I know how to survive in,” I say, voice low. “You deserve more than half of me. And I… don’t have more to give.”
The words hang there.
Ugly.
Final.
Behind us, Donner stamps a hoof, impatient. The bells jingle softly.
Ivy looks away, blinking fast. When she turns back, her jaw is set.
“You know what?” she says, voice shaking. “If you’d just told me you needed time… or that you were scared… or that you wanted to try and didn’t know how… I would’ve worked with that. I would’ve bent. I would’ve found ways. Because you’re worth it to me. You were worth figuring it out.”
My throat burns.
“But this?” she goes on. “You making the choice for both of us? You deciding I’d be better off without you? That you’re somehow protecting me by breaking my heart before anyone else can? That’s not selfless, Rhett. That’s you being afraid to risk being happy.”
She lifts her chin, eyes blazing.
“Youarea coward,” she says quietly. “Not because you’re staying on your mountain. But because you’re too scared to see if you could have more than just surviving.”
I don’t defend myself.
Because she’s right.
