Chapter 19
All I can think about is that damn fortune I’m still carrying around. —Milo Warner
“Still no answer from Noah’s dad?” Jack passes me a hammer from where he’s standing on the treehouse ladder.
“Nope. Nothing. And he’s not answering Noah’s calls.
” I smack the hammer against the nail I’m holding with slightly more force than usual.
“I mean, it has only been a few days, and we both know what kind of schedule his dad keeps. But Noah says it’s not like him to not respond.
He’s getting more worried by the minute that his uncle isn’t taking that text well. ”
“And what do you think is going on?” Sam’s leaning against the tree trunk below me and Jack.
He makes window dressing for the view than actual assistance for this treehouse build I need to finish up.
But I’m not complaining. When my two best friends offered to come over and help me finish this project on a Sunday morning, I knew they were really offering to lend some ears, not saw wood for me.
The treehouse is nearly done now, and I need their company a hell of lot more than I need carpentry support today.
“Honestly? I’m not sure.” I lean back on my heels and stare at the treehouse’s nearly finished railing as I frown.
“I’d call Ma and see if she can check on things, but since I haven’t told her that Noah and I have gotten more involved, I can’t do that without raising some questions she’ll want answered, you know?
So for now, we’re both stuck in wait-and-see land. ”
“Waiting’s not your strong suit.” Jack hands me another nail. “You orthos always want to cut into everything and fix a problem right away.”
“And you GPs will sit on your asses and wait a hundred years for something to fix itself,” I tell him, but we’re both smiling.
This is an old joke between us. “And yeah, you’re right.
I’m feeling impatient as fuck right now.
Noah and I are going to take Bear for a walk down the trails around the leaf festival grounds after I finish this thing up.
I’m hoping the quiet will calm us both down. ”
“Ah, but the woods aren’t as comfortable as a bedroom,” Sam says wryly.
I snort. “Yeah, we’ve already tried the distraction-by-orgasm technique a few times.”
“Did it help?” Jack asks.
“Of course. Always.” Being physically intimate with Noah feels so damn right that sometimes I think I could solve all our problems just by moving us permanently into a bedroom together and shutting out the entire world.
“But we can’t just keep getting each other off twenty-four seven.
Stuff’s got to get done around here, you know. ”
“Office desks,” Sam says. “Be thoughtful about the positioning, but they can be very helpful for a mid-workday distraction.”
Jack laughs, and I lean down over the platform to smirk at our friend. “Aren’t you supposed to be the prim-and-proper one in this group? What would those fancy private schools of yours say about you these days?”
Sam shrugs. “I was voted ‘Most Resourceful’ in my graduating class.”
Jack sighs. “And to think, Malachai could barely look at you without stuttering when you first started working together. How far our babies have come. Did you pick out your outfits for the prom yet?”
“Tom’s shopping for us.” Sam rolls his eyes. “Knowing my brother, that means I’ll be wearing some sort of absurd color I’ve never put on in my life. You?”
“Same.” Jack picks through the nail bin before he hands another one to me. “But hey, this way Benson and I don’t have to find time to shop with Vera pulling at every outfit in the store. Milo, how about you? Is Sam planning outfits for you and Noah?”
“Shit.” I frown as I concentrate on knocking the nail into another beam for the railing that’s going to circle the treehouse platform. “I just realized that Noah and I haven’t even planned to go together.”
Jack frowns. “Because of his dad and the unanswered text?”
“No.” I shake my head. “I just haven’t asked him, and he hasn’t asked me. We’ve had some shit going on, okay? And ‘testing the waters’ isn’t exactly an official relationship status.”
“I think some would say it’s the equivalent of the ‘it’s complicated’ status,” Sam informs me.
“Probably. And yeah, things are complicated, okay? Especially if Ezra stays in the picture and Stan decides to run,” I mutter.
Jack makes a humming sound, and Sam runs his hand over some tree bark. “Well,” Sam says. “May I share a lesson I learned while I was trying desperately not to fall in love with my office employee, even though everyone around me could see that was an absurd goal?”
“We could,” Jack agrees easily.
“I assume you’ll tell me whether I want to listen or not,” I tell him as I nail the final piece of wood into place and sit back to admire what I’ve built.
Ladder. Platform. Railing.
I’m sitting in a treehouse that I built. Something I wasn’t even sure I could ever start, let alone finish, not that long ago.
“The lesson is this,” Sam says, as Jack and I take turns climbing down the ladder. The three of us all stand back to admire the tiny house that’s now half hidden between tree branches. “And it’s a quite simple lesson, really: finding change is scary.”
Jack squints at him. “That’s it? Seriously? That’s your sage advice?”
“What’s wrong with keeping advice simple?” Sam asks him. The two of them start arguing about when simplicity is overrated, and who gives better patient pep talks in their office, and who the best doctor in Devon Falls really is.
But all I can think about is that damn fortune I’m still carrying around. You will find the change you seek.
“I made a treehouse,” I whisper as Sam and Jack banter around me. “I made a treehouse.”
“Milo, this is a nice idea and all, but you don’t need to take care of me by bringing me on a walk.”
“You know I like taking care of you.” We’re following Bear through the lines of trails that surround the area outside Devon Falls where the leaf festival takes place.
The leaves here are falling actively now, and patches of color dot the forest ceiling above us and the floor beneath us.
“Plus, I think we all needed a walk. Especially the dog.”
Noah frowns and pulls out his phone to check it again, for at least the sixteenth time since we first got into the car together.
“Uncle Stan always answers me,” he told me just before we both fell asleep last night.
I didn’t know how to answer him.
“If there’s one thing I learned from living in the city,” I say, mostly just to keep the conversation going.
“It’s that sometimes you have to step away from all the noise around you.
” A chill has taken over our Sunday afternoon, with clouds fighting across the wide sky, and the trails are quiet.
The only sounds around us are the echoes of Bear’s paws as she crunches against leaves, the patter of Noah’s and my boots, and the occasional fluttering of wings as birds dive bomb through the colorful trees surrounding us.
“So,” I go on. “After we finish the trail, we can head to the café for dinner. You need to try the empanadas Luis makes.”
“Yeah? I haven’t had those yet.”
“They’re almost as good as his pancakes.”
We’ve let Bear completely off her leash here, and she’s bounding ahead of us, crunching over leaves with flying leaps.
Every now and then she turns on the path and runs back to us, just to make sure we’re still behind her.
She looks closely at us, checking. And then she disappears down the path ahead of us again.
“Every time she does that, I half think she won’t come back,” Noah says.
“Yeah?” I look over at him before I wrap my hand around his.
He sighs. “I mean, she’s a runaway, right? She ran away from someone else. She could run away from us at any time.”
“She ran away from a bad situation,” I remind him.
“And she found us,” Noah says softly.
“She did,” I tell him. He takes a long breath in before he sighs it out.
“I wish we could just stay here forever,” he says. “Here in the woods. You, and me, and the dog.”
His words are so close to what I was thinking earlier, about locking the two of us together in the bedroom away from everything and everyone else in the world.
I’m not surprised to realize we’re thinking with that kind of alignment, because what’s there to be surprised by?
From the moment I stepped onto an elevator with Noah Hardaway, he’s taken up more and more space in the center of my world.
Sam’s words, trite as they are, drift through my brain.
“If you want to do something and it scares you, it’s probably worth doing. ”
“Chucks.” I take hold of his hand, and that’s when I feel a drop of rain hit the top of my right shoulder. Oh well. All the more reason to hurry up and get my next words out. “Will you go to the prom with me?”
Noah makes a small gasping noise just as the raindrops start to fall with more energy, smacking against the tree canopy.
“So much for our walk,” I say. And my… prom proposal? Promposal? I think that’s what people call these things now. “We should head back to the car before we get soaked. I—”
But Noah doesn’t move. He reaches up, takes my face in his hands, and pulls me down to kiss me.
The rain falls harder as he moves his lips across mine, smoothly and softly, like he’s conducting an orchestra playing a sweet ballad. He pauses for a moment to draw in a breath. “Yes,” he says simply. “Yes, Milo Warner. I’d love to go to the prom with you.”
The energy of the rain shifts then, and suddenly we’re caught in something much closer to a downpour. There’s a new chill in the air that wasn’t there before, and the ever-present urge I have to protect Noah from all discomfort kicks in.
“C’mon. Let’s get back to the car. Bear!”
She appears out from under a tree, shakes off some water, and runs ahead of us as we half walk, half jog down the trail, holding hands as our wet feet squish inside our sneakers.
By the time we get back to the leaf festival grounds, the rain’s rushing down in sheets of water, and we’re still a good five-minute walk from the car.
A growling sound of thunder moves through the air around us, and a few seconds later there’s a flash of light in the sky.
“Over there!” Noah points to a large storage shed a few feet from us, which probably houses untold amounts of leaf festival crap in the months between the celebrations.
“Looks like someone didn’t latch the padlock.
Let’s wait inside until the storm calms down.
” He takes a step and nearly twists an ankle when he gets stuck in a forming mudhole.
I don’t stop to think before I lift him up in my arms, bridal-style, to carry him. “Bear!” I call.
She follows as I jog, with Noah in my arms, to the shed. I pop the door open and get us inside just as a loud crack echoes through the sky and light slashes across it.
“Whew.” I set Noah down gently as I find a light switch next to the door. A bulb clicks on overhead, illuminating piles of boxes and equipment in every corner of the room.
“Yeah.” Noah shakes water out of his hair just as the dog does the same, soaking us with water from her coat. “I’m starting to think you just like carrying me places, Dr. Warner,” he says, his voice teasing as he pokes at my soaking wet sweater.
“Oh, I do. I definitely do. Alpha, remember?” I wink at him before I look around, taking stock of what we have to work with in case this storm goes the distance.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned to appreciate about Vermont in the months I’ve been living here, it’s unpredictable weather patterns.
I’ve seen storms move in and out in twenty minutes.
I’ve seen others last for hours. Whole days.
And as long as thunder keeps crackling, there’s no way I’m taking Noah anywhere outside this shed.
“You know,” Noah says as he wraps his arms around me from behind. “I can practically see you going into protective alpha mode here.”
“Yeah?” I spin around. “You see that, huh?”
“I do.” He stands on his tiptoes to kiss the bottom of my chin. “You get this intense stare like you’re ready to do battle with anything in your way. Just like those alpha wolves in those books we were talking about the other day.”
“Maybe I really am some kind of shapeshifter.” I slide my hand across his wrist, running my fingers over his soft skin. “Or maybe I’m just trying to find us something to sit on and some blankets to keep us warm, so your ass doesn’t get pneumonia.”
He laughs. “Luckily, I think Bear’s a little ahead of you there.” He points over to the corner of the room, where our smart little rescue is nosing around a pile of yoga equipment: mats, blankets, and plenty of other things that will come in useful right now.
“Nice. Looks like she found the goat yoga collection.”
“Goat yoga’s actually a thing here? I thought that only existed on Instagram.
” Noah grins as I let go of him long enough to gather up supplies, setting the mats up to create a little sitting area for us that’s surrounded by blankets.
I set up an area in the corner for Bear, and she sighs contentedly as she settles down onto the mat and lays her head against the padding.
“We’ll have laundry to do for the Devon Falls Leaf Festival Committee, but at least we’ll stay warm.” I start pulling my shirt over my head. “Get that shirt off, Noah. You’re already starting to shiver. I’m not letting you get hypothermia.”
He laughs as he starts pulling off his shirt. “You don’t have to ask me twice.”
Well, at least I know I can keep him from checking his phone for the next thirty minutes or so. Too bad I can’t really keep the two of us locked up in this shed together for the rest of our lives.
The world, and the bullshit it throws at you, is a lot like the rain. When it comes down hard, there’s nothing you can do to stop it.