And I realize all at once—because of something as simple as Tess taking time out of her day to make sure that I’m okay—that I want her to be that person. I want to let her into all the cracked pieces of my heart, to let her make me whole again, something that I’m starting to think only she can do.

“What the fuck am I doing?” I ask incredulously.

Nate looks confused. “I’m sorry?”

“Sorry,” I offer. “I just…I need to do something. Are we all good here?”

He nods. “Oh yeah. We’ve got everything we need.”

“I really appreciate this,” I tell him. “Seriously. Thank you so much.”

“It was my pleasure,” he says with a smile. He gives me a wink. “Now go get her.”

My mouth gapes. “How did you…?”

“I have my ways,” he says with a shrug. He leans in closer. “Between you and me, Tess’s poker face is shit. And since she sounded as grim as you look right now…it’s not hard to connect the pining dots.”

“I…” I laugh incredulously. “Of course. Thanks again.”

He waves me off. “Go, go. I can see myself out.”

Before he’s even finished speaking, I’m already running through the house, searching for the people I know I’ll need to help me pull off what I have in mind. It’s outside my comfort zone, what I’m planning, and it’s well outside my wheelhouse, but I know deep down it’s something I have to do. And if I don’t…I’ll regret it forever.

I find Thomas, Chase, and Kyle on the back deck, Chase smoking a cigarette as Thomas laughs at something Kyle has just said. Turning my way when I approach, they look at me with wild eyes when they notice how frazzled I must look.

“Hey, man,” Thomas says. “You okay?”

“No,” I say with a laugh. “Not at all.” I can feel myself grinning maniacally despite my words, and I lean in to give them a pleading look. “I really need your help.”

And I do. Need help. If I’m going to pull this off…I’m going to need a fucking lot of it.

“So we’re wanting to get you into our midseason slot,” Heidi is saying. “We had a show that was just canceled for 2026, and we think Rustic Renovations will be the perfect replacement.”

I blink back at her, processing. It’s everything I want to hear, but my mind is miles away right now—specifically in Pleasant Hill, Colorado. I can’t help wondering about Hunter’s interview—how he’s doing, if he’s nervous, if he remembered to smile. It’s making this meeting a hell of a lot harder to get excited about than it should be.

“That’s…that’s great,” I manage with a smile. “I’m thrilled to hear it.”

Heidi nods, her mauve-painted lips revealing perfect teeth as she snaps her fingers at her assistant, who scrambles over with a folder. “This is the proposal we’ve put together. It’s mostly standard; it outlines your signing bonus and per-episode pay, as well as the locations and projects we already have lined up for you.”

That makes me sit up. “I don’t get a say in the projects?”

“Unfortunately,” Heidi says with a slight frown, “there’s a lot of legal stuff involved in this sort of thing—insurance waivers and such. Things we have to take care of well in advance. It’s just easier if we pick your projects.” She gives me another reassuring grin. “Don’t worry, we’ve all thoroughly scoured your channel, and we’re more than sure that you’ll approve.”

I flip open the folder, skimming the contents briefly. I know I’ll need my lawyer to look over everything, but currently I’m looking for the one thing that matters most. I release a shuddering breath when I see the signing bonus—thirty grand. More than enough to schedule dad’s operation. Does it even matter that I don’t get to pick my projects with that much on the line?

“This looks great,” I tell her. “I’ll need my lawyer to look over everything before I can sign a contract, of course—”

Heidi nods. “Of course.”

“—but I’m pretty confident that we’ll be agreeing to the terms.”

It’s not like I have any other choice, really.

“That’s so good to hear,” Heidi says, beaming. “We have your first project all lined up—we’ll have you starting in two weeks.”

Cold runs through my blood. “So soon?”

“Yes,” Heidi says with a nod. “Like I said, we’re fitting you into a canceled slot, so we need to move as fast as possible. Truthfully, we’re already behind on filming.” She gives me a pointed look. “So I hope that you won’t need too long to look things over.”

My mouth opens and closes as I think of the project I left behind, all the unfinished things still in Colorado, seeing it practically slip through my fingers. Seeing the man I left there slip with it. How could I possibly ask him to wait around for me while I undertake all this, knowing I’ll have to abandon him in his hour of need?

“You can take the packet with you,” Heidi tells me. “We’ll need Legal to put together a formal deal agreement for you to sign if you say yes, but we can expedite that—don’t worry. In fact, if you can get me an answer by Monday, I can guarantee we’ll have you signed by the end of next week.”

It’s everything I’ve wanted, everything I’ve been dying to hear since this became even a remote possibility—so why the hell am I hesitating? I know deep down that I can’t afford to, that no matter what my heart might be saying, I will be saying yes to this before Monday’s end…I just didn’t expect it to feel like this. I expected to feel accomplishment, to feel some sense of gratification at having reached the ending I’ve been working so hard for, and yet…all I feel is…empty, mostly.

But still I paste on a smile, tucking the packet under my arm as I rise from my chair and hold out my hand in offering for Heidi to shake. She takes it with a matching grin, no doubt knowing as well as I do that I won’t be saying no to this. No matter how much it will hurt me to do it. Which is something I never could have anticipated.

And when I leave her office, when I step out into the bright waiting room, with its sleek tiles and cream-colored walls that feel like they’re closing in…there’s only one voice I want to hear.

“…So you just left?”

I sigh as I grip the steering wheel. “What choice did I have?”

“It sounds like you’d rather have made a different one,” Ada says.

I’ve spilled my guts to Ada about everything that’s happened the last few days—about the heat, about Hunter, HGTV…all of it. She listened patiently as I recounted everything we did and everything I felt, and she was thoughtfully quiet throughout all of it.

“He didn’t really give me any other option,” I tell her. “He barely acted like he wanted me to stay.” Ada is silent as she seems to consider, and it makes me uneasy. “Well?”

“I’m thinking that I might understand where he’s coming from,” she says finally.

“What do you mean?”

“I just…I know what it’s like to push everyone away because you think they couldn’t want you.”

My chest squeezes at her admission, and I know she’s thinking of her own issues, of how she uses her humor and her jokes to hide the fact that she’s most likely lonely.

“Anyone would want you, Ada,” I tell her. “One idiot doesn’t change that.”

She sniffs. “I’m just saying, it sounds to me like Hunter was trying to protect himself from heartbreak.”

“I would never hurt him,” I argue.

“But it sounds like he might have a hard time believing that with everything he’s been through, yeah?”

“Maybe,” I admit. My breath comes a little shorter as I recall all that he’d said, and my voice is quiet when I ask, “Do you think he could be right? Do I feel this way because of hormones or biology or whatever?”

“I can’t tell you that,” she says. “There’s no way I could be sure. But I know what it’s like to be afraid of your own feelings, and I know what it’s like to find out everything you thought was real never was.”