“I—I…can’t be the kind of guy she needs,” I stuttered, still in shock.

She loved me? She’d actually said that?

“Says who?” Mattie’s eyes narrowed. “When you have to actively fight this hard to be away from someone, that means something.”

Everything started clicking into place. It was like slow motion and the speed of light all at once.

Frankie loved me. Probably not nearly as much as I loved her, but it was a start. I had this all wrong.

You didn’t let go of the ones you loved. You showed up over and over again, even when they didn’t ask you to.

What the hell was wrong with me? I didn’t have any ties. I was going off to be a rafting guide, for Christ’s sake. And then in a few more months, I’d be on to something else temporary. I had no ties holding me in place.

Well, except for one.

At some point, Frankie had tied a string right around my heart—the kind that couldn’t be severed. As I stood here, that string was getting pulled more taut by the second.

No wonder I was in so much fucking pain.

“I think I have to go,” I said, my voice rising.

Mattie scanned my face as Giles’s eyes widened.

Bev let out a low chuckle. “Seems like some sense is finally getting knocked into you,” she said.

I reached out, gripping Mattie’s shoulders. “What’s her flight info?” I asked.

She smiled broadly. “You mean it? You’re really going after her?”

“What’s her flight?” I demanded again, panicking I had already let so much time pass.

Mattie checked the time on the clock against the wall.

“She’ll be landing in Denver in the next twenty minutes or so, but she’s got a layover.”

“There’s another flight to Denver that leaves in an hour,” Bev chimed in, typing on the lodge’s computer. “I don’t know if you can make it, but…”

I was already sprinting for the door.

I heard yells of, “Go get her!” at my back.

Who the fuck cared if she was meant for some hotshot job in New York? I was wrong when I said I didn’t belong in a big city. I belonged where she was. I was aimless and she was my direction. If she didn’t want me to follow her to New York, then she’d have to tell me herself. Because I wasn’t going anywhere without her.

I wasn’t about to let Frankie get away like some sort of coward. I had been running from what was real my entire life.

This time, I wasn’t going to let the realest thing that had ever happened to me slip through my fingers.

THIRTY-FIVE

Frankie

My foot tapped incessantly against the marble-tiled floor.

We’d had to wait on the tarmac for over an hour, and I’d almost suffocated being stuck inside that hot plane. The moment I’d gotten off my flight, I’d made a beeline for the ticketing counter. Apparently, everyone going to Atlanta had some dire need to speak with a customer service representative, because the line was still ten people deep.