Page 113 of Until the Storm Breaks

She smiles softly. “I wrote something. After seeing your poem.”

“You’re writing again?” The thought fills me with genuine happiness for her.

A small smile touches her lips. “I guess we both are.”

She slides the paper across the counter. “Don’t read it while I’m here.”

My heart sinks. “You’re leaving?”

“I’m going to the festival. I’ve always wanted to attend, and there are panels today I don’t want to miss.” She moves toward the door, then turns back. “Listen, I’ve thought about this a lot. Read my poem. Think about what you really want. Because I love you, Calvin. And I want this to work. But no more secrets, no more hiding things. No more running when things get hard. I need you to be all in.”

She pauses at the door. “I’ll be at the festival until five. Call me after you read it.”

“Thank you,” I say. “For coming here. For the poem. For not just writing me off.”

“I needed to come,” she says softly, still looking at me. “I needed to know if what we have is real or if I’ve been fooling myself.”

“What do you think?”

She considers this for a moment. “I think you meant every word of that poem. But I don’t know yet if you can live them instead of just writing them. Just think about it. That’s why I’m giving you until five.”

Then she’s gone, leaving me with her poem and the echo of her words.I love you. I want this to work.The ball is completely in my court now.

I unfold her poem.

When the Rain Let Up

by Maren Strand

You said the storm startedthe night I said I could love you.But that’s not true.The rain was already falling—I just chose not to run from it.

You waited for the sky to clear.I learned to live in the weather.It wasn’t lightning,just a slow, relentless grace.Not soft.Not easy.But alive.

Now I carry hopelike a candle cupped in wind,flickering, stubborn,never quite out.

So I’ll sit here,in the tender acheof what still could be,and write.Not to fix us.Not to beg.But because I still believein storms that pass,and people who stay.

Let’s not waitfor the silence to end.Let’s speakwhile the rain is falling.

I read it three times, then once more. She’s not offering forgiveness. She’s offering possibility.

I sit back down at my kitchen island, holding her poem. For maybe an hour, maybe more, I sit there thinking about what she said. Stop performing and start living.

The problem is, I’ve been performing for so long I’m not sure where Calvin Midnight the author ends and Calvin the person begins. But Maren knows. She’s always known. She saw the broken man behind the beautiful sentences and loved me anyway.

And suddenly it’s so clear it takes my breath away. I want her. Not as my muse, not as inspiration, not as material for essays. I want Maren who makes great coffee and reads romance novels. Who tends bar and takes care of everyone. Who saw through my bullshit from day one and called me on it.

I want the life we were building.

I fold her poem carefully, put it in my pocket next to my heart.

I know exactly what I have to do.

CHAPTER 31

MAREN

The festival is everything I imagined and more. The Washington State Convention Center buzzes with the kind of energy you only get when hundreds of people who love words gather in one place. Conversations about craft and process spill out of session rooms. The air smells like coffee and new books and possibility.