Page 30 of Awakening the Wild
"I love you,” she said miserably.
"No, you don't." The words felt like swallowing glass, but they needed to be said. "You love the idea of me. The fantasy of being swept away by some protective mountain man. But when reality hits, when choosing me means actually sacrificing something that matters to you, you hesitate."
"That's not true."
"Then choose." I crossed my arms over my chest, forcing myself to remain impassive even as my heart shattered. "Rightnow. Me or the cottage. Us or your independence. What's it going to be?"
She opened her mouth, closed it again, her face cycling through desperation and panic and something that looked like grief. The silence stretched between us, heavy with everything we'd built and everything we were about to lose. "Why can’t I have both?”
I turned away from her, unable to look at her face any longer. “I've waited my whole life for someone to choose me first. I'm done waiting." I walked out of my own kitchen, leaving her standing alone among the wreckage of everything I'd thought we were building together.
Outside, the mountain morning was crisp and clear, the kind of day that usually filled me with peace. Instead, all I felt was the familiar emptiness of abandonment, the bitter confirmation that nothing good lasted.
Especially not for men like me.
I'd offered her everything—my home, my heart, my future. And when tested, she'd chosen fifty acres of dirt over forever with me.
The joke was on me for thinking this time would be different.
For thinking I was finally worth choosing.
Chapter 9
Tonya
I stood frozen in Kevin's kitchen, his words echoing in my head like accusations I couldn't escape.
Choose. Right now. Me or the cottage.
I've waited my whole life for someone to choose me first.
The door had barely closed behind him before fury ignited in my chest—white-hot and consuming. How dare he? How dare he twist my moment of panic into some grand betrayal? How dare he make this about him being abandoned when I was the one standing here watching everything I'd built crumble around me?
I wasn't trying to choose between him and the cottage. I was trying to figure out how to keep both without letting Michael win. There was a difference, and Kevin was too wrapped up in his own wounds to see it.
My hands shook as I grabbed my jacket. I wasn't doing this. Wasn't going to stand here and let him paint me as the villain in his abandonment story when all I'd done was hesitate for thirty seconds while trying to think.
I found him out back, splitting firewood with the kind of controlled violence that meant he was working through something dark. Each swing of the maul was precise, brutal, final—like he was trying to split more than just logs.
"Stop," I called out. "Just stop and listen to me."
He kept working. Split. Stack. Repeat.
"Kevin Pike, you stop right now or I swear to God—"
He stopped. Didn't turn around, but he stopped.
"You don't get to do this," I said, my voice shaking with anger and tears. "You don't get to walk away and make me the bad guy."
"I'm not making you anything." His voice was flat, emotionless. "You made your choice clear enough."
"I didn't make any choice! I was thinking. Trying to figure out how to outmaneuver a man who's spent two years controlling every aspect of my life." My voice cracked but I pushed through. "And you took my silence and turned it into some proof that I don't love you."
He finally turned, and the pain in his dark eyes nearly brought me to my knees. "You hesitated."
"Of course I hesitated! He threatened to take the one thing I've built with my own hands. The one piece of proof I have that I'm not the helpless woman he made me believe I was." Tears were streaming down my face now but I didn't wipe them away. "But you know what I didn't do? I didn't say yes. I didn't agree to go back with him. I didn't choose the cottage over you."
"You didn't choose me either."
