Read Chapter 35: The Break

The bonfire had burned down to embers, and the last of the festival guests had drifted back to their rooms, their laughter fading up the stairs like smoke. Maren stood at the window in the great room, watching the orange glow die in the snow. Her reflection stared back at her, hollow-eyed, the ghost of the night still pressing against her ribs.

She heard his footsteps before she saw him. Julian’s boots were quiet on the floorboards, but she knew the weight of him now, the particular rhythm of his approach. She didn’t turn.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said.

“I’ve been busy.” She kept her voice flat. “The festival took a lot of organizing.”

“Maren.” He stopped beside her, close enough that she could feel the warmth coming off him. “I’m not going to pretend I don’t know what this is about.”

She finally turned. His face was half in shadow, the firelight catching the sharp line of his jaw. He looked tired. Maybe he’d been sleeping as poorly as she had.

“What is it about, Julian? Enlighten me.”

“Natasha.” He said it plainly, without flinching. “You’ve been different since she got here. And I know you heard us talking that day.”

Maren’s throat tightened. She’d hoped he would let it lie, let her push him away gracefully. But he was standing there, forcing her to look at him, and she hated how much she wanted to reach out and touch his face.

“I heard you,” she admitted. “You didn’t say no.”

“I didn’t say yes either.”

“You didn’t have to. I saw your face.” She pulled her arms tighter across her chest. “She’s offering you everything you want, Julian. A reason to write again. A future. And what do I have? A struggling inn, a pile of my grandmother’s secrets, and”—she laughed, bitter—“a business partner who looks at me like I’m a problem he can’t solve.”

“You’re not a problem.” His voice was low, urgent. “You’re the only reason I’ve written a word in months. The only reason I’ve felt like myself at all.”

“Then why didn’t you tell her no?”

Julian opened his mouth, then closed it. The silence stretched between them like a rope pulled taut.

“Because I didn’t know what I wanted,” he said finally. “Until tonight.”

He stepped closer. Maren’s heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her fingertips.

“I stood across that bonfire from you,” he said, “and you told me we were nothing but business partners. And I realized I’d rather have stayed frozen in that shed than hear you say it again.”

“Julian—”

“No, let me finish.” He took her hands. His palms were rough and warm, and she wanted to cry. “Natasha is brilliant. She’s everything a writer should want—connections, vision, a way out of this place. But she’s not you. And I don’t want London. I don’t want a month of co-writing in some cold flat with someone who thinks my family’s tragedy is just a story she can mine for a screenplay.”

Maren shook her head. “You don’t mean that. You’ve been writing again. She’s the reason you picked up your pen at all.”

“No.” Julian’s jaw tightened. “I picked up my pen because I was trying to make sense of my father. Because I found letters in this house that made me doubt everything I knew about him. And then I found you, and you made me want to write something true for the first time in my life.”

She searched his face for a lie, for the polite exit he might be crafting. But his eyes were steady, open, raw.

“What about your father?” she asked quietly. “All those secrets.”

“I don’t know what he was hiding,” Julian said. “And maybe I never will. But I know what I’m hiding from.” He released one of her hands and touched her cheek. “I’m in love with you, Maren.”

The words landed like snowfall—soft, sudden, all-consuming. She let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

“I’ve been trying not to say it,” he continued, his thumb tracing the curve of her cheekbone. “Because of everything. Because I don’t know if we’re related. Because our parents lied to us. Because you keep pushing me away. But I can’t pretend anymore.”

Maren closed her eyes. For a moment she let herself feel it—the warmth of his hand, the weight of his confession, the terrifying possibility that she could have this.

“What if it’s too complicated?” she whispered.

“It is too complicated.” He laughed, soft and rueful. “It’s the most complicated thing I’ve ever been part of. But complicated and wrong are different things. And I don’t think this is wrong.”

She opened her eyes. He was so close that she could see the flecks of amber in his irises, the faint lines around his mouth from nights spent staring at the ceiling.

“I’m scared,” she admitted.

“Me too.”

“I told you we were never anything more than business partners.”

“You did.” A ghost of a smile flickered across his face. “I’m choosing to forgive you for that.”

Maren laughed despite herself. “You’re impossible.”

“I’m an impossible man who is very much in love with you.” He tilted his head. “I told Natasha to go to London alone.”

“You did?”

“Tonight. After the bonfire. She asked if I was serious, and I said I was.”

Maren’s heart cracked open. She thought of Natasha’s sleek confidence, her easy charm, the way she’d looked at Julian like he was a prize she’d already won. And he’d turned all of that down. For her.

“Slow,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “We go slow. We figure out the past before we rush into a future.”

“Slow is good.” Julian’s hand slid to the back of her neck. “I can do slow.”

He kissed her then—soft and tentative and full of promise, nothing like the near-miss under the mistletoe. This was a beginning, not a question. She melted into him, her hands curling into the fabric of his coat, and for a long moment the world outside the inn, with all its buried letters and half-truths, simply didn’t exist.

When they pulled apart, his forehead rested against hers.

“I want you to read them,” she said. “Clara’s letters. All of them. We figure this out together.”

Julian nodded slowly. “Together.”

The phone rang.

They both went still. The sound cut through the warmth like a blade, and Maren felt a cold dread pooling in her stomach. She pulled back, and Julian let her go, his face shuttering into—

She crossed to the desk where the landline sat, an antique relic Arthur had never replaced. She picked it up.

“Maren Cole speaking.”

A voice crackled on the other end—a woman, foreign-accented, speaking in careful English. Maren listened. Her hand tightened on the receiver. Her gaze found Julian’s across the room, and she saw the question in his eyes, the flicker of fear that he’d just risked everything on her and was about to pay the price.

She set the phone down. The click was deafening.

“There’s a hospital in Geneva,” she said. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. “Your father’s caretaker found him unresponsive this morning. She says he passed in his sleep, peacefully.”

Julian didn’t move. He looked like a man standing on a precipice, waiting for the ground to give way beneath him.

“Julian.” Maren stepped toward him, her hand outstretched. “I’m so sorry.”

He blinked. Once. Twice. Then he looked at her with eyes that had gone distant, seeing something beyond her, beyond the room.

“He knew,” Julian said. “He knew about us. About Clara. He kept his secrets to the very end, and now he’s gone, and we’ll never—”

His voice broke. He turned away from her, pressing his palm against the windowpane, staring out into the frozen dark.

“He left,” Julian whispered. “He left without giving me any answers.”

Maren stood behind him, her hand hovering over his shoulder, uncertain. The warmth of moments ago had leached away, replaced by something colder. The beginning she’d allowed herself to feel had been snatched away before it could bloom.

“We’ll go,” she said. “We’ll bury him. And we’ll find whatever he left behind.”

Julian turned to face her. His eyes were wet, but his voice was steady.

“What if there’s nothing left but questions?”

Maren didn’t have an answer. She only knew she wasn’t going to let him face the silence alone.