28 FORREST

If you’re not careful, sometimes life can trick you into believing you’re living in the best parts of a romance novel. I’ve read enough of them now to know how it goes. Every touch and sidelong glance become blazes on a trail leading to a summit so high, you feel unbound by gravity. Like you could step off the edge and simply float with the person you’ve found to love. And so you do. You take their hand and leap. And even as you fall, neither of you feels afraid, because for once in your life, you’re not alone. Not until the cold hard ground of reality rushes up to flatten you.

Or at least that’s how it feels when Margot and I return and find out my dad suffered a tonic-clonic seizure while we were on our way back to North Star.

We had just parked at the lodge and gotten within range of the satellite service when my phone picked up all of Jo’s frantic voicemails describing Dad’s seizure. Explaining that she was driving him and Scout to Talkeetna, where an ambulance was meeting them to take him to Anchorage. It only happened about an hour ago, while Margot and I were driving, and if I hurry, I won’t be too far behind them. So I’m packing, even though I haven’t taken off my coat from the road trip I just finished. My hands can’t seem to grab my dad’s clothes fast enough; I should have had an emergency bag of his things ready to go. If I’d only been here, I could have helped. I could have—

“What can I help pack?”

Margot’s voice cuts through the storm of my thoughts like a ray of light, making me wince. She’s standing in the doorway of my father’s rooms, determined to help, but even looking at her is a reminder of how selfish I’ve been. Indulging in fucking fantasies at a ski resort while I should have been here when my dad needed me most. I can’t stop imagining him, disoriented and asking for me while I was away with Margot, making plans to abandon him. It produces such a volatile mixture of panic, guilt, and fear in my gut that I fumble the pile of clothes in my arms. “Goddamnit,” I mutter, dropping into a crouch to pick it all up.

In a moment, Margot is by my side, and the smell of gardenias nearly breaks me. “Let me help,” she says, gathering socks and worn flannel like they’re the tattered remnants of my composure. Her light brown eyes dart over me, and I hate that I’m making her nervous, but I can’t seem to get a grip.

Usually, I can remain calm in an emergency. But that capability has gone offline. In fact, everything seems to be offline except the high-pitched ringing that isn’t just in my ears but in every cell of my body. Because I’m not only dealing with a crisis—I’m dealing with it after waking up from a fever dream, the consequences of which include a $2.5 million research grant I had no right to accept, and the soon-to-be-broken promises I made to a woman I’m head over fucking heels in love with.

“Forrest, please,” she says after we pack the clothes in the suitcase. She places a tentative hand on my tense forearm. “Talk to me.”

Her touch is even harder to bear than her home-at-last scent because I don’t deserve it. After all my posturing, I’m about to break her goddamn heart, like every other bastard in her life. I flinch away, wincing at the hurt in her eyes. For a moment, neither of us breathes. She’s staring at me like she just needs one word. One word to reassure her that we’re okay. But I can’t give it to her. So I turn away, packing the daily journals I keep about my father’s health and progress. Journals that have been left empty the last two days.

“Okay,” she says to my cowardly back. “I’ll go check if we need anything from downstairs.”

I glance up in time to see her turning away, and I blurt, “You don’t need to come.” It’s the first full sentence I’ve said since we got the news, and my voice comes out hoarse and abrasive.

“Of course I’m coming,” she retorts, but I can see the alarm building behind her brave eyes.

I stare at her for a beat too long, dragging out the last moment before I ruin everything. Before she knows I don’t have it in me to bring her to Anchorage with me. Not when she’s the source of all my joy and all my negligence.

“No,” I tell her. “You’re not.”

She takes a half-step back, and I watch her expression quickly flicker from surprise to hurt before she grips on to anger. “I think I’ll make that decision for myself, thanks. We’ll have plenty of time to argue about it in the car.”

She turns again, clearly not wanting to give me the chance to make this worse. I’d give anything not to. Anything to keep pretending my father’s seizure hasn’t changed everything.

“Margot.”

She looks back at me, her eyes terrified but defiant, and my breath lodges in my chest. “I’ve already texted Bear,” I choke out. “He’s coming, so you won’t be alone. He’ll—” I pause, my heart picking up reckless speed. “He’ll take you to the airport so you can go home.”

Her beautiful eyes are glossy with unshed tears as she shakes her head. “You don’t have to do this. You think you’re protecting me from having to care for one more sick person, but—”

“No, it’s not that,” I interrupt, running a heavy hand through my hair. “I just—”

“Just what, Forrest?”

Her voice is a trembling, naked thing I can barely hear over my galloping heartbeat, and panic robs me of all tact. Instead of letting her down easy, the words that bolt from my throat are blunt and graceless. “I just can’t afford any more distractions.”

She jerks like I’ve dealt her a blow. “I’m a distraction ?” she repeats, audibly winded.

In a moment of horrible clarity, I understand the full impact of my words. To Adam, she was too committed to her sister. To her father, too much of a responsibility. To her readers, too heartless. And now, despite all my empty promises, I’ve told her she’s too much for me too. Self-loathing winds its way through me like a viper, sinking its teeth in.

“If I hadn’t taken you to the resort, I would’ve been here to help,” I try to explain. “If I hadn’t let myself get so carried away, I could have seen this coming. I would have been prepared.”

“So this is my fault,” she snaps back, and I get whiplash from how quickly things are nosediving.

“I didn’t say it was your fault,” I say, my voice rising to match hers. “What I’m saying is that my dad needs me, and I can’t have you around because there’s no room for anything else when I’m near you, Margot!” My eyes go wide and desperate. “No room to think, no room to breathe, and right now I need to think. I need to breathe.”

The edges of her blur, softening in my standing tears until I can almost pretend she isn’t looking at me like the worst thing that’s ever happened to her.

“And the grant? Was that just another distraction too?” she asks.

I walk toward her, unable to stop my feet. She goes rigid, and I half-expect her to turn away. But when I stop in front of her and slide my hand into the side of her hair, she chokes back a small sob.

“What would you do if it were Savannah?” I ask thickly, meeting her tear-filled eyes with my own.

She bites down on her trembling lip and gives the barest shake of her head.

“Say it,” I press, blinking moisture from my eyes until it runs down, soaking into my beard.

This is it. The reason I love her and the reason I can’t have her twined together like barbed wire and velvet around my chest. We’re two sides of the same mirror, perfect reflections of each other, unable to breach the glass.

She takes a shuddering breath as my thumb brushes her lower lip. I know her answer before it leaves her in a broken whisper. “I would stay.”

When I kiss her, salty and unbearably sweet, I tell her what’s too painful to say out loud. That I’m going to rescind my grant acceptance. That our hope for a future together was a fool’s dream. When I press my forehead to hers, her face cradled in my hands, I tell her that I’ll be with my father until the end.

And I know that when I leave without a single look back, she understands this was always going to be another Happily Never After.