Chapter 15: The Snowy Mountain

I opened the file at four in the morning, alone, at the kitchen table.

I had told myself for four years that it was too rough to read.

The title page said "Snowy Mountain, draft one."

Under it, in smaller type, I had written: "For D., if I ever have the nerve."

I scrolled down.

It began with a man standing on a mountain at sunrise, holding a lantern that had gone out.

The man was me, and I hadn't been able to write him any better than that.

He turned to the woman beside him and said what I had been too scared to say out loud.

"I can't give you a mountain. I can't even give you a good ring yet. I can give you the one thing I'm sure of."

Below it was the next line, and my stomach went cold.

"I don't need the whole sky. I just need the one star that stays."

I knew that line.

Seventy million people knew that line.

Cormac had said it on a rooftop three years ago, and it had gone around the world.

I sat very still while the kitchen clock ticked.

I had written it for Cecelia first, to say to her face, and I had never found the nerve.

Then the channel needed a line for a rooftop, and Cecelia had brought one in and called it a new idea.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Three's a Crowd: Quitting My Couple Channel from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.