I secured the panel and turned around to see Willow twenty feet away, her hair rippling to the side with the mountain breeze. How the hell was I going to find the strength to let her go? She deserved so much better than the rumors and the comments—than me.

She didn’t say a word as she walked forward to the table I was using during construction, and she came no farther after she put something on top of the plans. Then she walked back to the house.

I stared at the small object she’d delivered like it was a bomb and waited for the damn thing to go off. She hadn’t shoved it at me or forced me into a conversation. She’d given me the choice, which was what had me reaching for it.

I unrolled the long scroll of paper and barely caught the white onyx rook piece as it fell free from the center of its wrapping.

It was the partner to the black one I’d given her the night Charity had announced her pregnancy. Not that I’d actually given it to her, since I hadn’t been speaking to her at the time. I’d left it on her windowsill, telling her silently that no matter what I’d said or done over that shitty summer, she could still depend on me.

Even if no one else could.

She wasn’t going to back down or let my words from this afternoon end what we’d barely begun. My shoulders drooped in simultaneous relief and outright despair. No matter how many times I told her that I’d eventually ruin her, she wouldn’t believe me—or worse, she didn’t care.

She was choosing me.

Against my better judgment, I stretched the paper out and read what she’d printed on it.

“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”

I knew I’d find her in the library. With the book. Where we’d spent countless hours as children, silent companions while we both ran from whatever drove us there in the first place. Her need to paint, to create in a family that only valued an analytical mind, and my need to live in someone else’s world for a few hours.