Page 95 of Unforgettable
“We’ll figure it out,” he said one night.
“I know,” she replied.
But there was something quieter beneath it.
Less certain.
The first canceled visit didn’t seem like much.
“Something came up,” he said. “I can’t get away this weekend.”
“That’s okay,” she told him.
And she meant it.
The second one lingered longer.
“I tried,” she said. “I just … I couldn’t get out of it.”
“I understand.”
And he did. But understanding didn’t make it easier.
This time it was painful for them both. The loneliness cut deep, sucked the joy from their souls.
Days turned into weeks.
The rhythm they had built tumbled into something less defined, solid, and less certain.
One night, Randi fell asleep with her phone still in her hand, a long-awaited conversation unfinished.
When she woke up the next morning, there was a message waiting.
Sorry. I must’ve missed you.
She stared at it longer than she should have.
Because she hadn’t missed him.
He had just … stopped.
In Montana, Brew stood outside one evening, the sky stretching wide and endless above him, the same stars they had once stood beneath together.
He remembered that night. The promise they had made to move forward together. It was a commitment each one of them desired most of their adult life.
He exhaled slowly. The word felt different now. It wasn’t gone entirely. It still lingered … strained.
Back in Minnesota, Randi stood in her studio, brush in hand, staring at a canvas she couldn’t seem to finish.
The image was there, recreated from a snapshot she took on the ranch. The feeling was gonebecause Brew wasn’t in it, with her, holding each other under a Montana moon.
She set the brush down and slowly stepped back. And for the first time since all of this had begun, she wondered if distance wasn’t just space. She had the power to quietly undo what had once felt certain.
Neither of them said it out loud or gave it a name at that very same moment more than eight hundred miles apart.
But they both felt it.
That undeniable pull.
