She didn’t go into work. She didn’t even call in.

Instead, after she dropped her father off at his hotel—promising to call him tomorrow to plan dinner—she went home. She locked her doors and turned off all her lights and curled up on the couch with Peaches, hugging him tight.

She felt like crying, but also like she was too emotionally numb to squeeze out the single tear. Every part of her body felt drained, and it ached with the loss of Rhett’s warmth, with the realization she’d never feel it beside her again.

She was going to need to take a long, long break from their friendship. She couldn’t be near him, now. Not without…

His pull was too strong. They’d just keep falling into bed, now that they knew what it was like.

What they were like.

She closed her eyes, the memory of his hands an almost physical thing against her skin, her thighs clenching in response.

Stop it! She felt like pinching herself or something. She needed to stop torturing herself like this. It was over.

She looked down at her hand, realizing that the ring was still on her finger. She traced the etched gold, the little flower carvings so delicate and lovely. On the inside of the band it said To Ada, with love.

His history, on her hand. She needed to give it back.

She never wanted to ever take it off. Her eyes burned, but still, she didn’t seem to be able to cry. She wondered if she was in some state of shock.

There was a knock at her door. She frowned, getting up and peeking in the peephole.

Oh, God.

She ran a hand through her hair, worried that she looked like a giant mess, before she opened the door, her throat dry.

Maddy Daniels was standing in her hallway, her arms crossed and her foot tapping.

“You have some explaining to do, best friend,” she said.

“What did you do?”

A spike of dread filled Nat as Maddy breezed into her apartment, her nose wrinkling when she saw the container of ice cream and Peaches currently licking the rim. Nat’s best friend was five ten without her heels, and with them, she towered impressively. She was blonde and feminine in that powerful, Wonder Woman sort of way, and as she sat down in the chair across from Nat, a smile tugged on her lips.

Maddy had been Nat’s best friend for a long time. She was the sister Nat had never had, the girl she’d gotten drunk with for the first time, and absolutely one hundred percent the person she’d call if she needed to, like, get rid of a body. Her point being: Maddy knew her. Which is why it was so hard to close the door behind her and meet her gaze.

“Carter must have talked to Rhett,” she said.

“I leave for two weeks and when I come back I find that you’ve married Rhett Oakes— aka the man you’ve been secretly lusting over for like, what, ten years!”

“It has not been ten years,” Nat scoffed.

“Whatever,” Maddy said. “Numbers aren’t my strong suit. Anyway, not only have you gotten married, but you’ve gotten kidnapped! By drug dealers!”

“Technically they were drug growers and dealers,” Nat said. “And it was only. like, for an hour.”

“And then, to top it off, you leave Rhett with divorce papers, no explanation, nothing! The guy was bewildered when he called Carter.”

Nat winced. Jace had faxed them over the day before. She had thought if she’d left them there, it would be easier, re-establishing that line they’d danced so merrily across. But obviously, she’d miscalculated. Was he okay? She was just trying to make it simpler. It had to go back to simple sometime… right?

“Honey, start explaining,” Maddy said. “Because you can talk about how you married Rhett because of the water or whatever, but this lady ain’t buying it.”

Nat took a deep breath, trying to find the words to explain, and found she had none. To her horror, a tear trickled down her cheek, then another. And then she was just flat out sobbing.

“Oh, sweetie,” Maddy said, getting up and hurrying over, hugging her tight.

“I’m sorry,” Nat blubbered, finally in the safe space that only a best friend provided. “I just… I just…” More tears. God, her mascara was going to be wrecked. “I just wanted to help him,” she said in a rush. “Really, that’s how it started. Or maybe that’s what I just told myself. He made a crack about marriage being the only answer and I found myself saying, Okay, then marry me, and it was crazy, I know it was crazy, but it also worked. It got us enough time to figure out what Durbin was up to, and we beat him. But the whole time I was with Rhett…” she led out a shudder. She actually ached. She hated this. She hated him. No, she didn’t. Of course she didn’t.

That was the entire problem.

“You fell,” Maddy said softly, still keeping an arm around her shoulders.

Nat sniffed. “I’d already fallen,” she said, because if you couldn’t be honest with your best friend, who could you be honest with? “I think I never got over it, that night in New York, and I know that sounds stupid. It was one night. But that one night turned into a friendship, and that friendship had a line, and I crossed it, Maddy. I freaking bulldozed over it. The line is obliterated. I know every inch of that man’s body now, and I love it. I am doomed. And I knew I was going to be doomed! That’s what’s killing me. I knew. Deep down, I knew. And I still did it. Why?” She looked up at her friend with tear-stained eyes.

“Because you love him,” Maddy said, her face sympathetic.

“He’ll never leave the mountains,” Nat said. “And I can’t leave the city. I won’t leave my work.”

“I doubt he’d ask that of you,” Maddy said.

“But I can’t ask that of him, can’t you see?” Nat asked earnestly. “And if we can’t ask it of each other, then we’re never going to move forward. There’s nowhere to go. We’re stuck. As soon as River Run is safe, we’ll get a quickie divorce, and that’ll be it. Back to friends.”

But even that wasn’t true. Because they couldn’t go back. She could never go back. They’d become something more than friends and they’d shared things that she’d never…

We’ll never be the same again, she thought. This is all I’ll have. This handful of weeks when I got to pretend he was mine and I was his. And they’ll haunt me until the day I die. I’ll never forget… I’ll compare everyone to him.

She felt sick at the idea of another man ever touching her again, at sharing someone else’s bed, at waking up without Rhett by her side, his hand sliding over her stomach.

“I think it’s blanket fort time,” Maddy said, gently pulling her up and grabbing her coat. “And whiskey time.”

The relief that burst inside her made her cry even harder. “I missed you,” she said.

“I missed you too,” Maddy said. “I have hilarious honeymoon stories, but we’ll talk about those later.

By the time Maddy had decided on what food to order, Nat had changed into a pair of bamboo yoga pants and a slouchy sweatshirt with the neck cut out. It was one from college, soft and worn from repeated washings, and it enveloped her like a hug.

“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed as Maddy as they had built their blanket fort, just as they’d done when they were kids. It was silly, but there was something incredibly comforting about it, and they’d kept up the little tradition whenever things really hit the skids in their lives.

Of course, nowadays, they were using cashmere and chenille blankets rather than twin-bed sheets printed with Snoopy characters. They slipped inside the cozy den, sitting cross-legged like little girls, their stemless wine glasses carefully balanced on their knees.

Maddy took a sip of Chardonnay and nodded her approval. “Have you told him how you feel?”

Nat shook her head.

“And he hasn’t told you.”

“I don’t even know if he feels the same way,” Nat said.

Maddy rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. The first time I met him, he could barely keep his eyes off you. Carter and I joked about it the entire ride back. When even Carter notices the chemistry between two people, you know it’s obvious.”

Nat glowered at her and Maddy smirked. “Don’t worry about his feelings,” she said. “He has them. I’m sure he’s expressed them in… other ways already.”

“Oh my God, Maddy,” Nat said.

“How was it?” Maddy asked, wiggling her eyebrows in an entirely exaggerated manner. If Nat wasn’t in a delicate blanket fort surrounded by expensive cashmere, she would’ve flicked some red wine at her.

“I’m not talking about this!”

“Hey, what’s said in the blanket fort stays in the blanket fort,” Maddy said.

“It’s not just about the sex,” Nat said. “It’s about… the intimacy.”

“Elaborate,” Maddy said, cutting a meatball into pieces.

“We were pretending to be newlyweds so Durbin didn’t cry fraud or something, so we had to act all loved up. And staying at River Run and being in the same house with him, it was just…” She paused, not knowing what she was really saying. “I love my life,” she said, like she needed to remind herself. “I love my job. But I loved it there with him, too.”

“That’s okay, you know,” Maddy said.

“But it’s not,” Nat said. “It can’t be.”

“Why not?” Maddy asked.

“I told you. My life. My job.”

“Why can’t it become your lives and both your jobs?” Maddy asked.

“Um, remember how he despises the city, and I can’t run a sex toy company out of the mountains?” Nat asked and then flushed, because that was bitchy. “Sorry,” she said.

Maddy waved her apology away. “If you want it bad enough, Nat, you could make it work.”

“I don’t see how,” Nat said hopelessly. “He loves that place. and for so many good reasons. The animals depend on him. And that land is him—it’s his heart. How can I ask him to walk away from his heart, even part time, for a place he despises and that makes him positively twitchy? Have you seen him in a city? He hates it. He hates the noise and air, and he’s just this big ball of tension the whole time.

“I can’t see him changing,” she went on. “Which means that I would be doing all the changing. And I am a lot of things, Maddy… I try to be a good boss and a good friend and I’d like to be a good wife someday, but I can’t sacrifice who I am, even for love.”

“You say you can’t see him changing,” Maddy said. “But have you even asked him?”

Nat sighed. “Well, considering we haven’t even talked about our feelings, I think it’d be a little weird to be like, Hey, Rhett, want to come live in the city with me part-time?”

“Right,” Maddy said, circling the rim of her wineglass with her finger. “Hmm. I still think you at least need to talk about it, Nat. You never know what a person is willing to do unless you ask. I know it’s scary, just laying everything out on the table and putting all your fears out there, but if he’s the one, isn’t that worth the risk?”

“What if love isn’t enough?” Nat asked, feeling and sounding so damn small. That was her fear. What if it wasn’t enough? What if she leapt and he caught her, but then they stumbled? What if it wasn’t a sure thing? What if he resented her for being so stubborn? What if she resented him?

“Sometimes love isn’t easy,” Maddy said. “Sometimes love takes a little more work. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth every second of that work. If the last few years have taught me anything about love, it’s that it’s worth fighting for. Carter’s love changed my life. It didn’t change me, but it made me more me. Free to be me, I guess. And when I saw what he was willing to do for Olivia, I realized that I had just started to scrape the surface of loving him, of learning what love is. Not all sacrifice is bad, Nat.”

“I know,” Nat said, thinking about how Carter had given up a kidney for his little sister. “I just feel so lost. I told myself I had this all under control, but then he kissed me and I was gone.”

“That good, huh?”

“You can’t even imagine,” Nat said sincerely.

Maddy laughed. “It’s like that with the right one,” she said. “I felt like my head was about to blow off during my first kiss with Carter.”

“Is he okay with you spending all this time with me? You two just got back.” Nat said, realizing she’d been totally hogging Maddy. She knew now that her best friend was married, things were going to be a little different. She wouldn’t have as much free time. That’s why Nat was so grateful they worked together now, so they’d get to spend more time together than typical best friends.

“Oh, he’s still sleeping off the jet lag,” Maddy said. “He’s terrible at re-setting his clock. He’ll probably be awake at three a.m. again, making dinner.”

Nat smiled at the mental image, so, so glad her friends were back. The last few weeks without them had been… eventful.

There was a knock at the door. “Food!” Nat said. “I’ll get it. I think I am actually a little hungry.”

She climbed out of the blanket fort and walked to the door, opening it without looking in the peephole.

“Oh,” she said, when she saw it wasn’t the delivery boy.

It was Rhett.