I peered inside and felt my heart crack open. The cheese I'd raved about at dinner two nights ago, the one that tasted like sunshine and salt. Fresh flatbread wrapped in linen, still warm. A jar of pear preserves that caught the morning light, golden and luminous as captured summer. My throat went tight.
"She didn't have to—"
"She wanted to." Ruka's hand lingered on the bag, his fingers tracing the edge of the cloth like he was memorizing the texture. "She also put in the clothes. The blue ones you wore often."
My favorite outfit. The dark blue pants and tunic that had made me feel, for just a little while, like maybe I belonged here. I touched the fabric through the bag, soft and worn from the village's careful washing, and had to blink back the sting in my eyes. "Tell her thank you. For everything."
"You could tell her yourself." The words came out quiet, almost a question, almost a prayer. "If you stayed."
My chest ached like something vital was tearing loose. "Ruka—"
"I know." He stepped back, giving me space even though I could see it cost him. The morning light caught the tension in his shoulders, the way his jaw worked like he was physically holding words back. "I know you can't."
The silence stretched between us, filled with all the things we couldn't say, all the futures we couldn't have.
"I wish you could," he finally said, his eyes searching mine with an intensity that made my breath catch and hold. "Stay, I mean. I wish—" He stopped, jaw working like the words were lodged somewhere painful, somewhere deep.
"I wish I could too." The admission slipped out before I could stop it, raw and honest and bleeding. And it was true. God, it was so true it hurt to breathe around it, hurt to stand here and pretend I had a choice.
Ruka's expression softened, something hopeful and fragile flickering there like candlelight before he tamped it down. "Maybe... maybe you could visit sometime? When you have time off from the hospital." He cleared his throat, and I could hear the forced casualness in his tone, the way he was trying so hard to sound like this wasn't killing him too. "You are always welcome here. Always."
"That would be nice," I said, forcing a smile that felt like it might crack my face open and spill everything inside. "I'd like that."
The lie tasted bitter on my tongue, acrid and wrong and cruel. Because even as I said it, I knew I wouldn't come back. I couldn't. Leaving once was already tearing me apart—doing it again and again would be impossible. Better to make a cleanbreak now, cauterize the wound, than to keep ripping it open and watching it bleed fresh each time.
But I couldn't tell him that. Not when he was looking at me with that spark of hope in his amber gaze, like maybe we had a future after all. Like maybe the universe wasn't as cruel as we both knew it was.
"I should get back," I said, the words making my tongue ache. "My shift starts in a few hours, and I need to—" I gestured vaguely, unable to finish the sentence. Unable to say that I needed to go back to my real life, the one that didn't include him, the one that suddenly felt like a prison sentence.
Ruka nodded, but his feet stayed planted. Mine did too. We existed in that suspended moment, morning light painting everything gold, neither of us brave enough to be the first to move.
"Wait." I yanked open the driver's side door, hands already diving for the notepad I kept buried in the console. The page tore with a sound like ripping fabric. My pen—where was my damn pen? There. I scrawled my address and cell number, my fingers shaking so badly the numbers looked drunk, tilting and stumbling across the paper. "Here. If you ever need me—if Ardin needs me, or anyone else—"
He accepted the paper with both hands, reverent, like I'd handed him something sacred instead of my chicken-scratch handwriting. His fingers folded it once, twice, before it disappeared into his pocket. "Jordan—"
"I mean it." The words came out fierce, almost desperate. I caught his gaze and held it, pouring everything I couldn't say into that look. "If you ever need me, you come find me. Promise me."
A storm moved across his face—hope wrestling resignation, want grappling with reality. Then he moved, closingthe space between us, one hand rising to cup my jaw. His thumb traced my cheekbone with a tenderness that nearly undid me.
"Can I—" His voice cracked on the words.
I didn't wait for him to finish. Couldn't. I surged forward and kissed him.
This kiss bore no resemblance to the one before. No fire, no hunger, no unspoken promises of skin on skin. Just achingly gentle, devastatingly slow, like trying to hold water in your hands. Like goodbye tasted when you said it with your whole heart. His other hand came up to frame my face, cradling me like I was made of spun glass.
God, I wanted to stay. The wanting was a living thing inside me, clawing at my ribs, screaming that I was making the worst mistake of my life. Such a massive part of me wanted to burn it all down—the career I'd built, the debt I'd accumulated, the years of sacrifice—just to have this. To wake up to those amber eyes every morning. To finally, finally belong somewhere instead of just passing through.
But the math didn't work. My life waited in Franklin—the hospital, my cabin, student loans with my name stamped on them in permanent ink. What would I even do here? The village had Morg, had their own medicine, their own ways. They didn't need me. And asking Ruka to abandon his people, his role as chief, the home that ran through his veins? Impossible. He was rooted here in a way I'd never been rooted anywhere.
Every path forward demanded one of us sacrifice everything.
So I kissed him like it was the last time, because it was. Memorized the taste of him, tea and honey pastries and something wild. The calluses on his palms. The way he held me like I was precious, like I was worth fighting for.
When we broke apart, his eyes mirrored my own shattered heart.
"Be safe," he whispered, and it sounded like a prayer.
"You too."