She nodded.

“Good night,” she whispered.

“Good night.”

After

She just sat at the table, immobile. Frozen. Her mind caught in a cascade of memories from the past. When things had been easy with him. When things had been beautiful with him. When they had kissed like it was inevitable, and she had hoped.

But he had her scarf.

It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Because you know where this ends.

Yeah. And she was beginning to feel like one of her favorite genres of country song. The one where you felt tempted to sleep with an ex that you shouldn’t touch. But...

Yeah. It was tempting.

Not that he’d made any kind of gesture that indicated he was interested in doing that. She had to make sure not to confuse the intensity of the feelings that she felt around him, and the way that it picked at her creativity with actual desires.

She was smarter than that. She knew better than that. She was not the same girl that she’d been the first time she met him.

She heard footsteps and looked up. He was standing in the doorway of the dining room, and he was holding it in his hands. And it was the weirdest thing. Because she had actually forgotten what the scarf looked like.

Because it didn’t really matter.

It wasn’t the point. It had been literal, but it had been a metaphor.

It was the one thing she had put in the song that held hope.

She’d hoped he’d kept it. That he hadn’t just thrown it out. That it was everything he’d said. That he hadn’t been able to throw it away because it had felt like finishing something.

Ending it.

And yes, they had ended it.

But it wasn’t over for her. Not really. And she wondered if it wasn’t really over for him either.

“Here,” he said. He extended his hand and she stood up, walking over to him. Her footsteps were somehow muted and loud at the same time. And she reached out and took hold of the edge, but he didn’t release his hold on it easily. Or quickly.

Until he did.

“Feels better to give it back to you than to get rid of it.”

She studied this man, and tried to figure out...who he really was. Because he claimed he didn’t do emotions or connections. And he claimed he wasn’t sentimental. And God knew she had experienced the destruction of what it was like when he was finished with the relationship.

Yes.

She had been destroyed by that.

But this man... The one standing there holding on to her scarf like it meant something. The man who had it with him on... He didn’t live here. He had packed it to come here. For this day. For this business trip.

And you have the cactus he gave you.

Yes. And everything else.

She wondered how many women he’d had. How many women he’d kissed since he’d last kissed her.

There hadn’t been anyone for her.

Suddenly, it was far too easy to remember all those old feelings. Far too easy to feel them. Far too easy to simply exist in them. Like no time had passed at all. Like he was still her lover, and not the man who had broken her.

She had tried so hard to turn it into a kind of complicated destiny. That if she hadn’t been with him, she wouldn’t have the song. She had turned it into an integral step in her life.

But it didn’t feel like that here. It just felt like regret.

And like unfinished business.

Except maybe that was the story she was telling herself now because he was there and he was beautiful. And she still wanted him, no matter how much she tried to tell herself she didn’t. It was painful. It immobilized her. She suddenly ached with it. Was on fire with it. And thought that it might burn her alive.

But it wasn’t the kind of heat that they’d experienced when it had been new. When she’d been terrified and trembling, but so in need of it.

She knew. And she wanted it anyway.

Wanted him anyway.

So she took a step back, clinging to the scarf. “Thank you. For this.” She wanted to forget everything. Everything that she knew.

About him. About heartbreak. About pain. She wanted to forget all of it. And jump into something she knew she shouldn’t.

But she kept remembering all those times back then. When he’d made it very clear when she brought up sex that he wasn’t offering.

Except he had wanted it.

No. Don’t go there.

“I’m tired,” she said. “I’ll go... I’ll go to my room now.”

“Yes. See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow.”

Chapter 7

He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t sleep because all he could do was think of her. He couldn’t sleep because everything kept rolling through him like a thunderstorm. Memories, things from the past, and need from now.

He got out of bed quickly, and went over to the window, looking out at the snow falling below. It was coming down thicker and harder now, and the wind was unforgiving.

They could be stuck up here for days. And he...he didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do with that.