“Do not look at me as though I have lost my reason,” I murmured, sliding onto the bench beside a woman I had never met. “For the next quarter of an hour, I need you to act as though you are mine.”

Part 2

I did not wait for aunt Barbara to finish her apologies.

I turned on my heel and walked out of the house.

The drive back to the city was a blur of traffic and cold anger.

Three years ago, I had sat still and let the world arrange my humiliation around me.

I had let Megan dictate the terms of my life.

I swore I would never again be a passenger in my own story.

I pulled into the gravel lot of my company headquarters.

My security team scrambled as I bypassed the elevators and headed straight for the garage.

I tossed my suit jacket into the passenger seat of my fastest car.

The upstate bus route was long, and the roads were terrible, but I knew the schedule.

The miles unspooled behind me in the failing light.

I pushed the engine harder than I had ever dared before.

I had a great deal of time to think, which was the absolute last thing I wanted to do.

I thought of Brenda’s grave hazel eyes that had never simpered or lied to me.

I thought of the phrase in her letter that had opened me up like a blade.

“Do not follow me.”

She was protecting herself.

She was terrified of staking her whole heart on a man she believed was just using her to spite an ex.

Megan had told her a version of the truth, dressed up as the whole truth.

It forced me to look at what my fake arrangement had actually become.

I realized, passing the fourth county line, that I had stopped performing weeks ago.

The frown I had worn like armor for three years was gone.

The reason was a quiet woman who fed sparrows and argued with me about literature.

I loved her past all sense or safety, and I had been too much of a coward to tell her.

The sky turned a deep, bruised blue by the time I saw the taillights.

It was the upstate coach bus, idling in the parking lot of a rural diner called the roadside diner.

I slammed on the brakes, the tires kicking up gravel as I swerved in front of it.

I killed the engine and stepped out into the freezing air.

The bus driver froze with a piece of luggage in his hands.

The few passengers stretching their legs turned to stare at the man in the rumpled tuxedo.

Brenda was standing near the diner doors with a single worn suitcase at her feet.

She saw me and went perfectly still.

She did not run, and she did not smile.

She only lifted her chin in that steady, bracing way.

I stopped an arm’s length from her.

The entire parking lot was watching us.

For once in my life, I didn’t care who saw me bleed.

“You read my letter,” she said quietly.

“I read it four times,” I rasped.

“I read everything you write four times.”

I took a shaky breath, stepping closer.

“You began as a device, Brenda.

I won’t insult you by pretending otherwise.

But somewhere between that fern and the letters you wrote me, you stopped being the thing I needed and became the person I want.”

Her eyes filled with tears, though none fell.

“Belief is a luxury I cannot afford, Craig,” she whispered, her voice trembling.

“If I believe you and I am wrong, I have nothing to fall back on.

I dare not stake my whole self on whether this lasts.”

I looked at the woman who had quietly put me back together.

I had driven four hours to lay my entire life at her feet, but was it enough to make her stay?