Page 129 of Chasing the Sun
Just quiet, radical love in the background of my life. Ipressed a hand to my sternum, like maybe I could hold my heart in place before it split open entirely. I had never loved him more than I did in that exact moment.
“Are you okay?” Helen called, but I was already moving out of the kitchen, desperate for air.
A breeze rolled in from the lake, rustling through the orchard behind me. I turned toward the barn, now glowing soft and blue in the late-morning sun, and felt the full weight of what I’d just learned settle over me like a blanket of starlight.
The man I loved had given up his dream to protect mine.
I closed my eyes and let the emotions wash over me—gratitude, awe, and something deeper. Something that tasted like wonder. Like coming home to the kind of love I hadn’t believed existed.
He saw me. All of me. And he chose to lift me up anyway.
As soon as I walked out of the kitchen, I saw him.
Fresh from the hospital, Cal was already wielding an axe, grunting and ripping down the fence between the Drifted Spirit and the cottage.
Splintered wood lay in piles around his boots, the posts yanked clean from the ground and tossed like bones. His flannel sleeves were shoved up to his elbows, exposing his forearms—tan and flecked with dirt, veins tight from the grip of a crowbar. His jaw was clenched, his movements rough and deliberate, like each plank he tore away was a confession.
I didn’t say anything at first.
Just watched in stunned awe.
This was the man who had built walls his whole life—between who he was and what he wanted, between the innand the land, between me and the idea of staying. Now he was tearing one of them down, board by board, like he couldn’t live with it standing there another second.
My heart cracked open.
I stepped forward, boots crunching over gravel and broken fence posts, until I was close enough to see the sweat clinging to his hairline, the way his chest rose and fell like he’d run a marathon.
“Busy morning?” I asked. “You look like shit.”
He looked up, startled, eyes wild for half a second before they softened.
“Elodie,” he said, his voice low and raw.
I pointed at the wreckage at his feet. “This is a little dramatic, don’t you think?”
He dragged a hand across his forehead, eyes scanning mine. “I couldn’t look at it anymore. That fence—it was never about keeping things neat. It was about pretending I could hold two lives separate. The inn. The farm. Me. You.” He sighed. “But they’re all tied together now. Whether I like it or not.” He shook his head, shoulders dropping, before he flashed me a playful wink.
I exhaled, my breath catching on something too big to name.
“I know about JP,” I said quietly.
His expression didn’t flicker. It didn’t shift into guilt or deflection, but he stilled. Soft and so heartbreakingly open.
“I figured you might figure it out,” he said with a shrug. “Eventually.”
“You pointed him to me,” I said, voice breaking on the last word. “You knew what he could do. You had the chance to take it for yourself, and instead ...”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. My throat was too tight.
Cal stepped forward slowly, carefully, like he wasn’tsure if he had permission. “I wanted you to win, El. Even if it meant I didn’t.”
I stared at him, this man who’d given up a dream so I could chase mine, and I felt my knees weaken under the weight of it.
“You didn’t say anything,” I whispered.
He nodded once. “Because it wasn’t about me.”
I laughed. Just a little. It sounded broken, but bright. “Damn it, you’re infuriating.”
