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“Barrett?”

No answer.

I scanned the yard. The shed door stood open, but it was empty. I checked the propagation beds. Nothing.

Then I saw him beyond the garden fence. He was near the edge of the woods, splitting logs beside the old stump. His back was to me, shoulders rising and falling as the axe came down.

Of course he was chopping wood. Apparently, emotional devastation required excellent winter preparation.

“Barrett!”

The axe stopped, but he didn’t turn immediately.

That hurt too.

He set the axe carefully against the stump before facing me as I crossed the yard, his expression composed. “Morning.”

I stopped several feet away. There were a hundred ways to say this badly but only one way to say this right.

“I’m staying.”

Barrett stared at me, but his expression didn’t change.

I moved closer. “Did you hear me?”

“Yeah.” His hand had gone to the back of his neck. It stayed there. His gaze moved briefly toward the cabin before returning to me. “I heard when your department called. Permanent position.”

“Yes.”

Barrett looked away, his jaw tightening. “It’s what you wanted.”

He wasn’t accusing me. If anything, he sounded as though he was reminding himself why he had no right to stand in my way.

“It was,” I said. “I turned it down this morning.”

His attention snapped back to me, and his entire body went still. “You can take it back. They’ll hold the offer if you ask.”

“I don’t want them to hold it.”

“Hazel—”

“Because I don’t want it anymore, Barrett.”

“Why?” he asked stubbornly. He wasn’t going to accept the answer simply because it gave him what he wanted, which only made me love him more.

“Because it belongs to a version of my life I don’t want anymore.”

His eyebrows drew together. “You worked years for that version. You wanted the position.”

“I wanted what I thought it meant.” I moved closer. “A permanent post. Funding. Publications. People taking my work seriously. I thought if I got enough of those things, eventually I’d stop feeling like I had something to prove.”

Barrett’s gaze searched mine. “And now?”

“Now I know I can do work that matters without spending the rest of my life trying to convince people like Professor Halpern that I deserve to do it.” I glanced toward the cabin, the propagation beds visible beyond it. “I want to study things because I’m curious about them. I want to protect things that need protecting. I want to build something here.”

His expression tightened. “Because of me.”

There was the escape route he was determined to leave open for me.