Page 8 of Secrets in the Deep

“How… I mean, how was it?”

His gaze locked on the peach tiles in the kitchen, muscles frozen as he remembered. Her eyes. Her voice. “She was Emi. She was everything I remember her being.”

“Oh, Ryan. Are you okay?”

Zac had asked him the same question. And he’d lied, not because he enjoyed lying to a man he considered a brother. Because he hadn’t had the emotional bandwidth to be honest in that moment.

But with Nora…he couldn’t lie. The two of them had been through hell together growing up. They were honest, always.

“No. It hurt.” It hurt so fucking much he felt it through every bit of his body. It had all hit him at once. The love he’d walked away from. The future that should have been theirs.

And he had no one to blame but himself.

“Ryan…I don’t know if this is the right thing to say, but there are a million places she could be right now. And out of all those places, she’s in Montana. In Deep River, withyou. That has to be for a reason.”

“To torture me.”

“No. We wouldn’t have survived our childhood only to be tortured by past loves. This might be your time for a second chance.”

“Nora, she’s one of the biggest actresses in the world. Her home, herlife, is not here in a small town in the middle of nowhere.”

“Maybe you should lethermake that decision. You already?—”

“I’m sorry, Nora. I have to go.”

She sighed. “Okay. Talk again soon. And by soon, I mean you’ll receive another five texts within the hour, and I expect a response for every one of them.”

A half smile curved his lips. “Okay.”

“I love you, big brother.”

“Love you too, Nora.”

He hung up and downed more of the water, Nora’s words playing over in his mind.

Second chance.

She could be anywhere, but she was here.

He shook his head. He couldn’t think like that. He couldn’t let himself believe, even for a second, that there might be a chance. Because hope was a dangerous thing. Hope could bring a man to his knees. Even a man who’d lived through hell and walked out of it alive.

He stepped out the back door, but before starting his run, he lifted his phone and searched for her name in his contacts. A name he hadn’t sought out in so many years.

Emi.

There was a red heart emoji next to it, and a crown. Two emojis she’d selected the first night they’d met, when she’d typed her name and number into his phone.

He clicked into the messages, the last one dating over five years ago. Even after he’d broken them, destroyed everything they’d had, he’d still texted her. Checked in.

She never responded. To any of them.

He shouldn’t message her now. What good would come from it?

He did anyway.

Ryan: Hey. It was good to see you today, Emi. You look well. Really well. Hopefully, spending time together here in the same town can heal some old wounds.

He hit send and immediately wanted to undo it. To delete the message because what the fuck would she even say in response?