My grandmother calls me often and she knows the truth now. Being a romance author, she’s much more accepting of Tor and I being together and actually seems fascinated with our story. I wouldn’t be surprised if she ends up writing a book on us. She tells me to give my father time to calm down and get used to the idea of Tor and I as a couple. She seems to think he’ll come around.

I’m not so sure, but I hold on to the glimmer of hope.

Months of not seeing Tor has been hard. Actually, hard is not even close to describing what it feels like. It’s torturous and I cry myself to sleep almost every night as I sleep in one of his t-shirts because it smells like him. He’s always the first person I want to talk to when something happens in my life, whether it’s good or bad, or just silly. The little compass inside me always points to him, and that’s something I needed to find out on my own.

We don’t ever text or call, but we do write to each other. I use my fancy fountain pens and parchment paper, while he sticks to mostly notebook paper and ballpoint pens, and we send them through the mail. It’s romantic. It’s helped build patience. It’s helped us choose our words with care and truth, because writing in ink does that. There is no backspace. There are no abbreviations. We pour our hearts out to each other more than we ever have. We share our fears and dreams with each other on paper in even more depth than we did in person. There is a safety in writing, in putting the words out there and giving the recipient time to absorb, ponder, and reply.

He writes me poetry.

We fall deeper in love.

The space didn’t create distance, it brought us closer.

At the beginning of my third month at the Inn, a limo pulled up in front of the Inn, and a chauffeur came out carrying a small rabbit cage. Inside was an adorable little black and white Lionhead bunny with a mop of fur on its head and markings that make him look like he has a mustache. He came with a note taped to the side of his cage:

“This little guy came into the shelter. Apparently, he was a gift for a five-year-old boy but they didn’t realize how much work was involved. I knew he had to be yours. I’ve been calling him Wyatt.”

I fell in love with him all over again for gifting me with another adorable bunny.

I knew from our letters that Tor wasn’t dating. He made it clear he had no interest in doing so, and never would.

As for me, I had a few friendly conversations with the landscaper, who was good-looking, nice, and very tan. He lacked the tattoos and shaggy hair that I now lusted for, though. I agreed to have lunch with him at Aunt Katherine’s insisting, mostly to see what it would feel like to spend time with another guy. Would there be butterflies? Would I want to see him again? She urged me to find out.

Those answers were no. No butterflies came to visit.

I tried again with a twenty-something-year-old guest named Adam who stayed for two weeks while he worked on a journalism article. Adam was tall, well built, very polite, and had a nice sense of humor. I liked him a lot more than landscaper dude, and Adam loved my calligraphy enough to ask me to write his name out for him on a piece of canvas. And my cookies. I think he ate about fifty of my cookies. He invited me to join him for dinner a few times during his stay, and the conversation flowed freely and comfortably, but it stayed platonic.

“Do you want to go for a walk on the beach?” He asked me one night after dinner.

“Sure,” I replied, a bit nervously. It was dusk, and somehow being in the sun felt safer and less intimate than being anywhere near any degree of the darkness of nighttime.

As we walked, he held my hand, and it felt nice, but his hands were very soft. Almost too soft. But nice.

Just nice. Nothing special at all. No sparks. No butterflies.

And then he stopped walking and turned to me. “I really like you, Kenzi,” he said quietly, and then leaned in to kiss me. And at the last minute, I turned and his lips landed on my cheek.

I didn’t mean to do it. It just happened. But it was enough to disappoint him and make him check out the next day. I found the small canvas with his name written on it in the trashcan of his room.

It was enough to prove to me that I didn’t want anyone else. No matter how nice or cute or smart they were. None of it mattered.