“You deceived me,” he said at last.
Tears spilled over immediately. “I know.”
He stood, went to the door, and gripped the frame with both hands while cold rain breathed into the room. He was angry, yes. But not with the clean anger of betrayal alone. He was angry because even now, even after days beside her, part of him still remembered the stranger he had expected and grieved the simplicity of that imaginary life. He was angry because the voice in the letters had already become dear to him long before he knew whose body carried it. He was angry because none of this would have happened if the world had not taught a bright-hearted young woman that the only way to be chosen was to arrive in disguise.
Behind him, Sadie whispered, “I can leave in the morning.”
He turned so fast the chair leg scraped.
“Don’t say foolish things.”
She blinked.
Jonah crossed the room, picked up one of the letters, and read a line aloud. “You wrote that sunrise on wet fence rails looks like God trying again. You said that to me last week by the creek.”
Sadie’s mouth parted.
He set the page down and looked straight at her. “I thought I was writing to one woman and sheltering another. Turns out they’ve been the same person all along.”
A sob escaped her before she could stop it.
He knelt in front of her chair. “You should have trusted me with the truth sooner.”
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