as a good sign.
Stella grabs my arm and drags me up the stairs. Easy for her—she’s in jeans and a T-shirt. I’m in a dress and heels. She doesn’t stop until we’re in her room, where she shuts the door, locks it.
“Stella?” I ask in a tone that I hope conveys my concern for her sanity.
“Kingston is here.”
I nod. “Yeah, it’s Colton’s wedding.”
She paces, her hands on her hips. “I told Mom no weddings this year. It’s too much for her. So I show up today on my day off, thinking I’ll help around the house, see if she has any guests I can help out with, and I find her in the garden with the tent people. I had no idea, and now I’m trapped up here unless I want Kingston to see me.”
“Would it really be that bad if he did?”
She peeks out the curtain. Her room looks over the entire property and her shoulders slump when she must spot him. “Whose kids are those?”
“Rome’s,” I say without looking.
“Man, he works fast. My mom told me how his wife just showed up with a baby.”
I nod. Their story is kind of remarkable.
“King looks so… old. A good old. A mature old. His hair is darker than I remember from the wedding.” She keeps staring.
“I think you should go down and let him see you. Work through the fear.”
She shuts the curtain quickly. “What about you? I see my words from the other night haven’t spurred you into confessing your feelings for Colton yet.” She joins me on her childhood bed with the pink comforter. Her walls are still lined with trophies and medals.
“I can’t stop the wedding.” I fixate on my hands in my lap.
“Spill,” she says.
I tell her everything since she’s been gone.
After I’m done splitting my chest open and letting my heart flop in front of her, she’s quiet for a moment. “Juno, you have to tell him.”
“What?” My head rears back.
“You cannot let him marry someone else. What are you thinking? You’ll just sit back and watch him have babies and live the life you imagined for the two of you? Lake Starlight is way too small for that. You’ll never survive.” Her hand covers mine. “My mom always says love is scary because there are only two ways love ends, but Juno, you not admitting to loving him doesn’t make the feelings disappear.”
“I just keep thinking the more I see him with her, the more I’ll make peace with the fact that he’ll never be mine. I care enough about him to want him to be happy, even if it’s not with me. Other times I doubt myself and question if this is just jealousy and not love.”
She tilts her head with an incredulous expression. “You loved that boy well before he became a man. You want to know one of the things about Kingston that made me run?”
“I don’t know. Do I?”
Her eyes well with unshed tears. “Besides just being in the middle of him and Owen, when he told me he was foregoing college to be a smoke jumper… it was like he wanted to live on the edge every day of his life. He’s always doing risky things—you know that as well as I do. It felt like one day I’d lose him to some horrific accident because he didn’t care if he lived or died. So to love Kingston was scary because I only saw one way it ends—and that’s with him on that hill right next to your parents. Don’t be like me and walk away and ruin what could have been. Live your life like your parents would’ve wanted you to. It’s okay to be scared. Just push forward anyway.”
Just when I think she’s done, she continues. “You’re not that thirteen-year-old girl anymore. If it goes badly, you’re strong. You’ll be able to pull yourself up off the ground and go on living. Watching him marry someone else without ever telling him your true feelings? That’s just being a coward.”
I close my eyes. “It would hurt his fiancée if I break up the marriage. She’s a great woman. I don’t want to see her heartbroken.”
She sighs and her shoulders sag. “If Colton loves you like everyone believes he does, you’re saving both of them from a loveless marriage. Everyone deserves to have a guy who looks at them like Colton looks at you.”
“How does he look at me?”
“The same way you look at him—like all your happiness is