Morris is in the parking lot when I come back out.
Morris, the moose, is standing directly behind Marco’s rental car, blocking it completely. Not hitting it. Not destroying it. Just standing there with the specific stubbornness of a moose who’s decided that this vehicle is not leaving. I’ve seen Morris eat a porch railing, charge a delivery van, and sleep through a thunderstorm without flinching, but I’ve never seen him take a political position. Apparently Marco has inspired civic engagement in the local wildlife.
I walk past him without stopping.
The workshop is where Gabby finds me at three-thirty. She’s walked over from the vendor meeting. Her hair is down. She’s wearing the dress from the competition—the blue one that makes everything about her sharper. She looks like someone who’s been steeling herself for a difficult conversation.
“We need to talk about Marco,” she says immediately.
“I know,” I say.
“He called me. He said he came to Alaska to convince me to come back to Austin. He said he made a mistake and he wants to try again. He said that what we had was good and that I should give us another chance.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing yet,” she says. “I wanted to talk to you first because—” She stops. She’s looking at me like she’s trying to see if I’mstill here or if I’ve already left. “—because I wanted to know what you think.”
“I think you know what you want,” I say, and I’m being careful with my voice because if I let it crack, everything cracks.
“That’s not an answer,” she says.
“What do you want me to say?” The words come out sharper than I intended. “Do you want me to tell you to stay? Do you want me to convince you? Do you want me to act like your ex-husband flying to Alaska to win you back is not a major situation?”
“I want you to tell me what you’re feeling,” she says.
And that’s the thing about Gabby. She wants honesty. She wants realness. She doesn’t want me to sit in my silence and let her guess what I’m thinking. She wants me to break the silence and let her in.
But the silence is where I live. It’s where I’ve lived since the day my parents got in a bush plane and didn’t come back. It’s where I’ve lived since I learned that people leave, that closeness is temporary, that letting someone matter is the same as giving them power to destroy you.
So I don’t say anything.
Her face changes as she realizes that the man she loves—the man who said he loves her—is choosing to retreat instead of engage. She tries to fill the silence with words, because that’s what she does when she’s scared.
“Jace?” she says quietly. “Talk to me.”
I turn away. I pick up a piece of wood that I’ve been working on—a frame for something, I don’t remember what anymore—and I start sanding it. The motion is familiar. It’s what I do instead of feeling things.
“I’m asking you to talk to me,” she says again. “I’m asking you to use words instead of shutting down.”
“I’m not shutting down,” I say. But I am. I can feel it happening. The walls are going up. The careful distance is asserting itself. The safety net of silence is tightening around me like it’s a living thing.
“Then what are you doing?”
“I’m standing here watching you try to decide between the man you married and planned to be with for the rest of your life and the man you settled for because you were scared and you ended up in Alaska and I was convenient.”
It’s not true. I don’t actually believe it. But fear is a thing that says untrue things through your mouth and makes them sound real.
She flinches like I’ve hit her.
“That’s not fair,” she says.
“None of this is fair,” I say. “You had a 60-day clause that was always about testing the town. You had a 60-day window where you get to live here and see if you can make it work with the quiet furniture maker while the city life is still waiting in Portland. And now your ex shows up and he’s reminding you that that life is real and available and doesn’t require you to change everything about your expectations.”
“I’m not going back to Marco,” she says.
“You might,” I say. “And if you do, I need you to know that it’s okay.”
It’s a lie. It’s the opposite of okay. It would break me in ways that I’ve spent years since my parents died protecting myself against. But I’m saying it like it’s true because I’m trying to be the good guy here, the one who lets her go, the one who doesn’t burden her with his own fear.