“Then I have some responsibility for how I behaved before the message.”
“Before.”
Freya emphasized.
“Not for the message.”
“No.”
“Not for believing it.”
Evan looked up.
“I’m less sure about that.”
Freya stared.
He continued.
“I knew the wording felt wrong.”
“Then why did you believe it?”
“Because we had been fighting.”
“Because you were exhausted.”
“Because you had accused me of treating your dad like an obstacle.”
“I thought maybe you had finally decided I was.”
Freya looked away.
She had said that.
At the hospital.
“You make everything sound like a logistics problem.”
That had been her exact sentence.
Evan had gone still.
Then said:
“I’m trying to help.”
She answered:
“I don’t need you to optimize my father.”
Awful.
True to the moment.
Later, when he left, she thought he had chosen not to stay.
He thought she wanted him gone.
Then Tessa sealed the misunderstanding.
Freya sat across from him.
“If Tessa had not sent that message, do you think we would have stayed together?”
Evan’s eyebrows rose.
“You’re asking that now?”
“Yes.”
He thought.
That surprised her.
Most romantic answers arrived too quickly.
“I don’t know.”
Freya felt both relieved and hurt.
Evan continued.
“I loved you.”
“I still loved you the morning I got that message.”
“But we were not doing well.”
“No.”
“You thought every suggestion I made was pressure.”
“You thought every hesitation I had needed a solution.”
“Yes.”
He smiled sadly.
“We were excellent at caring for each other when nothing was on fire.”
Freya almost laughed.
“That is unfair.”
“Is it?”
“No.”
She smiled slightly.
“Accurate.”
Evan leaned back.
“I think we would have had a hard conversation.”
“Maybe broken up.”
“Maybe not.”
“But it would have been ours.”
There.
Freya’s eyes filled.
“That is the part I cannot get past.”
“I know.”
“She took the choice.”
“Yes.”
“And now everyone keeps acting like the tragedy is that we lost three years together.”
Evan looked at her.
“It isn't?”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“The tragedy is I do not know what I would have chosen.”
He became quiet.
That was the sentence nobody else understood yet.
Leah believed the obvious answer was reunion.
Brooke had already said:
“If you two were manipulated apart, that is literally a second-chance romance.”
Freya wanted to throw a shoe at her.
Life was not obligated to restore an alternate timeline.
The Freya who might have moved to Seattle at twenty-nine no longer existed.
The Evan who wanted her there no longer existed either.
Three years had happened.
Not stolen emptiness.
Lives.
Evan had moved.
Freya had stayed.
Martin recovered.
Freya changed jobs.
Evan built bridges and retrofit projects across the Pacific Northwest.
Freya dated two people.
Evan had lived with someone for ten months.
History did not disappear because the original fork in the road had been manipulated.
Freya asked:
“Were you happy in Seattle?”
Evan looked surprised.
“Sometimes.”
“Did you date?”
“Yes.”
“Serious?”
“One.”
She hated the tiny pain.
Then hated herself for feeling entitled to it.
“What happened?”
“She wanted to move to Portland.”
“You didn't?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“My mom got sick.”
Freya stared.
“What?”