I should have known better than to answer Julia's call where he could hear me.
The words keep looping through my head, the exact phrase I used that sent everything crashing down. "I don't know how long I'm staying." Said it like this place was a vacation rental. Like these people, this life, was temporary.
Ethan's been avoiding me for two days now.
Not the obvious kind of avoiding. He still makes coffee. Still sits at the breakfast table. Still exists in the same rooms I'm in. But there's this gulf between us that wasn't there before, wide and cold as the ravine behind the cabin.
I'm washing dishes, hands buried in soap suds that've gone lukewarm, when I hear his boots on the hardwood behind me. My shoulders tense. I hate that they do that now, hate that I'm bracing for impact every ti
