Page 25 of Startup Fire

“What does that mean?”

“It means I don't know if I can keep trying when you're not meeting me halfway.” She paused in the doorway. “Figure out what you want, Wayne. Because right now, I don't think you even know.”

Then she was gone, her car starting up and pulling away before Wayne could find the words to make her stay.

He stood alone in his barn—the space that had felt so full and warm just hours ago—surrounded by the work they'd created together. Jess's glass pieces cooling in the annealing kiln. His metalwork waiting on the bench. The scattered tools from the demonstration they were supposed to perfect together.

Evidence of what they'd been building. What he'd just destroyed.

Wayne sank onto his work stool and dropped his head into his hands.

She was right. She was absolutely right.

He'd panicked. At the first sign of complication, the first hint that their lives might get messy and intertwined, he'd retreated behind his walls and pushed her away.

Just like he always did.

Amanda had broken him. Had made him believe he wasn't enough. And instead of healing, instead of learning to trust again, he'd just built bigger walls and convinced himself it was safer that way.

But safe wasn't the same as happy. Safe wasn't waking up with Jess in his arms. Safe wasn't watching her work across from him, wasn't the sound of her laugh, wasn't the way she looked at him like he was worth something.

Wayne looked at the heart pendants hanging on his workbench—the ones he made every year for his mother's memorial fundraiser. Every single one crafted with love and grief and the promise to keep going, to keep creating, to honor her memory by living fully.

How could he honor his mother's memory while refusing to actually live?

He pulled out his phone and stared at Jess's contact information. His fingers hovered over the keyboard.

I'm sorry. Please come back. I love you.

But the words felt inadequate. Too little, too late. And Jess had asked for space.

Wayne set down his phone and looked around the barn. At the inspection report Wygant had left on the workbench—“Exceeds all safety requirements.” At Jess's glass pieces, beautiful even in their unfinished state. At his own metalwork, solitary and lonely.

He'd spent years convincing himself that alone was better. Safer. Smarter.

He'd been wrong.

Now he just had to figure out how to prove that to Jess—before she decided he wasn't worth the fight.