“Just go home, Coop. There’s nothing more you can do here. You heard the doctor—they’re not going to bring him out of the coma for at least another few days, at the earliest. Go home to your kids, get back to your life. Make sure your crew doesn’t build a bar in my living room. I’ll call you the minute I have any news.”

Coop sighs, scrubs a hand over his face, and nods. It’s been three days since Theo had surgery. His vital signs are stable, but he’s still in critical condition. The doctors look at him like they can’t believe he’s still alive, and though that makes me want to punch them all in the face, it gives me a grim kind of hope. If he’s made it this far, maybe he’ll make it all the way.

“You gonna be okay here?” asks Coop, his face creased with worry.

“Okay or not, I’m not going anywhere.”

He looks at me for a long time. “You know, his parents both passed. He’s an only child, no real family to speak of.”

I whisper, “I know. You said.”

“My point is that he’s lucky to have you.”

My laugh sounds hollow. “No, Coop. I’m the lucky one. You have no idea.”

He looks like he wants to say something more, but then he shakes his head and exhales heavily, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “I’ll check on the Buttercup on my way home, see how everything’s goin’. I’ll call you later tonight.”

He pulls me from the chair I’m sitting in beside Theo’s bed and gives me a bear hug. Then he clasps Theo’s hand in farewell. “See you soon, buddy,” he says, his voice choked.

He turns and lumbers out, tears shining in his eyes.

Suzanne has already been out to bring me a change of clothes and have a breakdown at the sight of Theo. I had to take her into the hallway and prop her up in a chair so she could catch her breath.

Colleen and I have been talking on the phone every day. I have a feeling we’re going to become very good friends, no matter what the future holds.

Craig was charged with DWI and spent two days in jail. Depending on the outcome with Theo, other charges might be pending.

As for me, I’ve been sleeping in chairs and drinking too much coffee, and spending a lot of time on my knees in the hospital’s quiet little chapel, bargaining with God. Which is about as useful as trying to bargain with the earth to spin in the opposite direction, but it gives me something to pass the time.

Three days turn into four, four into seven. I check into a hotel near the hospital and rent a car. I receive daily updates from the doctors, but learn nothing new. I exist in a strange twilight zone of fluorescent lights and cafeteria food, endless terror and crushing guilt.

I crucify myself over all the things I should’ve told Theo while I had the time.

We always think we have enough of that precious commodity, until fate steps in and proves us wrong.

Then, on the tenth day after Theo’s accident, I get an early phone call from Coop.

“How’s it goin’? You been over to the hospital yet?”

“I was just on my way over. I’ve already talked to his doctor, though. Still no change.”

“Well, uh…I think you should, uh…” He clears his throat. “There’s somethin’ I want you to take a look at. Come on out to Seaside today.”

I’m combing my hair, still wet from my shower, but fall still when I hear the strange note in Coop’s voice. “What is it?”

Coop draws a breath. “It’s not somethin’ I could explain. You need to see this, Megan. I wouldn’t make you leave him if it wasn’t really important.”

“Is it the Buttercup? Is everything okay?”

“It’s not the Buttercup. We’re makin’ good progress on the house. This is…a lot more important.”

“Coop,” I say flatly. “I hate mysteries. And my nerves can’t take any more drama. What the fuck is so important that I have to come back to Seaside to see?”

Coop says quietly, “What I found in Theo’s barn.”

Goose bumps erupt all over my body. I think of that big, shiny chain threaded through the door handles of the ramshackle barn, and shiver.

“Theo uses his house as Hillrise’s headquarters—it’s like a showroom up there, just a beautiful example of his work—and I had to get some paperwork from the office for a client. Copy of an old invoice for their taxes. Anyway, I couldn’t find it in the computer, so I thought maybe we’d have it in storage in the barn.”

“And?” I prompt impatiently when he stops talking.

His answer is so soft, I have to strain to hear it. “And now I guess I know why Theo never let me go out there.”

“Coop,” I shout, “give me a slight fucking break, would you? What’s in the goddamn barn?”

He says simply, “You.”

His voice is so strange, it’s starting to scare me. “I don’t understand.”

“Me neither. I’ll meet you there at noon. I’ll text you the address.”

He hangs up before I can say I already have it.

* * *

I make the ninety-minute drive to Seaside in an hour and ten. When I tear into the driveway at Theo’s house, Coop is already there. He leans against his truck with his arms folded over his chest, gazing down at his boots. When he looks up and our eyes meet through the windshield, my heart stops.

Because my big, burly, confident Coop looks scared as shit.

I shut off the car and get out, the keys shaking in my hands. He speaks as soon as I’m within earshot.

“Did you ever meet Theo before you moved here?”

Suddenly, I’m breathless. My heart starts to hammer. “Why do you ask?”

He works his jaw, looking off into the distance for a moment. Then he pushes away from the car and pulls a set of keys from his pocket. “Let’s go in.”

I follow in rising panic as Coop ambles toward the barn, gravel crunching under his boots. It’s a bright, beautiful day, the air clear and cold. Coop unlocks the shiny padlock on the chain around the barn doors and drags the unwieldy wooden doors apart. They groan on rusty hinges, cantankerous as old men. With a jerk of his chin indicating I should follow, he disappears inside.

It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. Hazy rays of light filter through cracks in the wood roof, lending the interior an otherworldly air.

Empty horse stalls line one side of the long room. On the other side, a tall, rickety wooden ladder leads up to a loft. Discarded pieces of lumber litter the dirt floor, and several of the wide beams supporting the roof show signs of water damage. A whisper of animal musk—dried dung from long-dead horses—hangs in the air.

So does the sharper, newer tang of oil paint and acetone, scents I’d recognize blindfolded.

“Doesn’t seem like a good place to store documents,” I tell Coop, trying to keep my voice steady though my pulse is racing and I’m starting to sweat.

“Guess Theo moved ’em out when he took up his secret hobby.”

He’s standing next to the ladder, looking at me with that odd, unnerved expression. I don’t bother asking which hobby he’s referring to, because I already know.

I look up at the loft, then back at Coop. He says quietly, “I hope you don’t spook real easy, ’cause this near scared the livin’ daylights outta me.”

He starts to climb.

I watch until he reaches the top and steps off the ladder, then I follow. When I get to the top, Coop grasps my hand to help me off, then steps back without a word, watching me closely to see my reaction.

But he’s already disappeared. I’m alone, all alone in what can only be described as a shrine.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of oil paintings in different sizes are stacked upright, leaning against the barn walls. More crowd every inch of the walls, hung haphazardly from nails. More are scattered carelessly on long rustic wood tables and all over the floor, piles and piles of them, an unending sea of canvas.

Some are unfinished. All are unframed. And every one of them depicts the same subject in various clothing, poses, and stages of undress:

Me.

Me walking in a vineyard with a glass of wine. Me in a bubble bath, laughing. Me riding a horse, washing the dishes, reading a book.

Me walking down the aisle in my wedding dress, holding a bouquet of purple sweet peas, the light of true love aglow in my eyes.

He even got the details of the scalloped neckline and the seed pearls on the bodice right. I press a hand over my thundering heart as tears threaten to crest my lower lids.

Coop’s quiet voice barely penetrates my cocoon of shock and memory. “They’re dated. I didn’t check them all, but enough to gimme the willies.”

I find enough presence of mind to turn my head and look at him.

Keeping his gaze steady on mine, he says, “Theo painted these before you moved to Seaside, Megan. The oldest one I found, near the back of that stack in the corner, is dated one month after his accident five years ago. How’s that possible?”

I drift over to the nearest table and run my fingertips over a half-finished painting of me sleeping, my hair spread over the pillow, a small smile on my lips. There’s a frenzied quality to the style, lots of quick, short strokes, as if he raced through it, abandoning it halfway in dissatisfaction.

You make all my broken parts bleed.

How awful it must have been for him, how terrifying, to finally see in flesh the person who’d been haunting all his waking hours like a ghost. No wonder he looked at me with such fury that first night at Cal’s Diner. He probably thought he was losing his mind.

I murmur, “Maybe he painted them since we met and dated them wrong. He’s been ill, you know that.”

Coop snorts. Spreading his arms wide, he says. “He painted all these since September? I don’t think so. And I found other weird shit in his office in the house too.”

“Like what?”

“Like two hundred fuckin’ recipes for key lime pie. Like an entire folder of clippings from magazines of pictures of Denver fuckin’ omelets. Like almost five years’ worth of invoices from some hydroponic flower growers in Holland and Japan—he’d been having flowers delivered here every week from halfway round the world! Like what the fuck is wrong with all the flowers in Oregon?”

Sweet peas aren’t always in season here.

I turn my face to a ray of light slicing through a crack in the roof and close my eyes.

“And he has all this fancy French wine in a closet—cases of the stuff—and he doesn’t even drink wine! He hates it!”

I form a mental picture of the elegant label of the Château Corton Grancey that Cass and I always drank on our anniversary. The wine we first enjoyed on our honeymoon, served to us by the old man we picked up on the side of a country road who turned out to be the head of one of the oldest and finest wineries in France. I whisper, “Burgundy’s always a good investment. Especially a grand cru.”

There’s a short pause, then Coop says, “I never said it was from Burgundy.”

I look at him.

His eyes intense, he adds more quietly, “Or a grand cru.”

“He told me he’d been collecting,” I hear myself lie, knowing the truth is impossible.

After a long time wherein we simply gaze at each other, Coop looks down at his feet. “You’re right. He’s been sick. This is all just…evidence of that. And him askin’ me how he could remember someone he’d never met, and his obsession with the Buttercup, and him never speakin’ another word after his accident…that’s all part of his sickness too.”

He glances at my wedding band, then once again meets my eyes. “Right?”

There’s a moment, one brief moment where I consider telling him and letting the chips fall where they may. But the moment passes when I decide this thing is so unbelievable, the weight of trying to understand it has almost broken Theo and me—it would be wrong to burden Coop with the knowledge of it too.

Some mysteries are meant to live in the dark, quiet places of our hearts, kept safe and sacred.

“You’re a good friend, Coop. And a good man. And now I have to go, because I need to be there when he wakes up.”

I hug him hard, then scramble down the ladder and run to my car, my spirit soaring and my heart on fire, adrenaline pumping through my veins. I tear out of the driveway so fast, a spray of gravel spits out from the tires.

I have to get to that hospital as soon as I can.

I need to be there when my midnight valentine comes back to me.