Chapter 12
The Feature Article
The morning light filters through the gauzy curtains, warming the wooden floorboards beneath my bare feet.
I sit cross-legged on Noah's couch, his flannel shirt my only covering.
The hem brushes the tops of my thighs, the collar loose enough to slip off one shoulder.
My laptop balances on a throw pillow, fingers flying across the keys as I work on the article.
The soreness in my body is the good kind—the kind that comes from a night spent discovering someone all over again, and then discovering them twice more before dawn. Every muscle has that loose, warm-honey quality, and my skin still hums in the places where his mouth lingered longest.
I've been up since five-thirty. Couldn't sleep.
My brain kicked into gear somewhere around the third cup of imaginary coffee, paragraphs assembling themselves behind my eyes faster than I could ignore them.
So I slipped out of bed as carefully as I could, eased the bedroom door shut, and set up camp on the couch with my laptop and the actual coffee I found in his pantry.
The cabin is quiet in a way that my Chicago apartment never is. No sirens, no L-train rumble, no neighbors' alarm clocks bleeding through the walls. Just birdsong and the creak of old wood warming in the sun and the soft click of my keyboard.
I'm deep in a paragraph about the department's community outreach program—the part where Noah's crew teaches fire safety at the elementary school, and how the kids call him "Chief Bear" because of the way he demonstrated stop-drop-and-roll with a stuffed grizzly— when I hear footsteps behind me.
I turn. Noah stands in the bedroom doorway, sleep-rumpled, wearing nothing but boxer briefs and an expression that's working through several emotions at once.
Relief. That's the first one. It flickers across his face fast, but I catch it—the split-second where he registered the empty bed and felt something old and sharp before he heard the typing.
Then warmth. His eyes track from my face to the laptop to the mug of coffee in my hand, and the tension in his shoulders releases.
"Morning," I say, suddenly aware that I'm sitting cross-legged in his flannel shirt with my hair in a disaster and yesterday's mascara probably smudged under my eyes. "I made coffee. Yours is on the counter."
He doesn't move for a long moment. Just looks at me.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing." He shakes his head, a slow smile building. "I was just looking forward to waking up next to you."
The honesty in it catches me off guard. No accusation. No disappointment masquerading as a rule. Just a man telling a woman what he wanted, plainly, like an adult.
"I'm sorry," I say, and I mean it. "Deadline brain. It kicked in around five, and I couldn't shut it off. I didn't want to wake you."
He crosses the room, picks up his coffee, and drops onto the couch beside me. His thigh presses against mine, and he peers at my screen.
"Chief Bear?" He raises an eyebrow.
"The kids said it. I'm a journalist. I report the truth."
"The truth is that Martinez started the bear thing, and I've been trying to kill it for three years.
" But he's grinning now, and the grin makes his whole face younger, less guarded.
The morning version of Noah—hair sticking up, stubble darkened to near-beard, voice still rough from sleep—is possibly my favorite version.
"Can I read what you've got so far?"
The question surprises me. "It's rough. First-draft rough."
"I don't care about rough." He takes a sip of coffee. "I care that you're writing about my guys. I want to make sure you see them the way I do."
Something shifts in my chest. This isn't about control or approval. He wants me to understand the thing he loves. The way I'd want someone reviewing my work to understand why a particular sentence matters.
"Okay," I say, and angle the laptop toward him.
He reads in silence for a few minutes. I study his face, watching his expression change—pride when he hits the section about their response times, a flicker of grief when he reaches the paragraph about the firefighter they lost two seasons ago, a quiet nod at my description of the community's relationship with the department.
"This is good." He says it simply, without performance. "You actually get it."
"That surprises you?"
"A little." He sets his coffee down. "The last journalist who came through wanted a hero story. Brave firefighters, dramatic rescues, flag-waving in the sunset. You wrote about the boring stuff—the maintenance, the training, the grant applications. That's where the real work is."
"The boring stuff is always where the real work is," I say. "In everything."
He looks at me, and I know we're not talking about fire departments anymore.
"Yeah," he says quietly. "It is."
The air between us shifts—thickens. He reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his thumb brushing along my jawline. The touch is light, almost absent, but my body remembers his hands from last night and responds with a full-voltage shiver.
"I have a proposal," he says.
"That's fast. We haven't even discussed china patterns."
He laughs—a real one, surprised and warm. "Tomorrow. You set an alarm. We have breakfast together before you start working. That way I get morning-Riley, and you still get your deadline."
"Morning-Riley is a disaster," I warn him. "She's nonverbal until caffeine, and she has opinions about people who talk before seven a.m."
"I'll make pancakes. That usually helps with opinions."
"You make pancakes now?” I narrow my eyes. "Is there anything you can't do?"
"Plenty." He leans in, and his mouth brushes mine—soft, coffee-warm, unhurried. "But I'm working on it."
The kiss deepens slowly, his hand sliding to the back of my neck, my laptop listing dangerously on the cushion between us. I save the document blindly with one hand and set it on the coffee table without breaking contact.
"We have time?" I murmur against his lips.
"I don't have to be at the station for an hour."
"That's not what I asked."
He pulls back enough to look at me, and what I see in his eyes is want, yes—but also tenderness. The specific tenderness of someone who spent a decade imagining this exact morning and can't quite believe it arrived.
"We have time," he says.
What follows is slow and unhurried and nothing like last night.
Last night was urgent, desperate, two people trying to close a ten-year gap in a single evening.
This is something else. This is lazy morning sunlight on bare skin.
This is his mouth tracing the line of my collarbone while I run my fingers through his hair, and neither of us is in any rush to get anywhere.
He pulls me into his lap, and I wrap around him, the flannel shirt riding up, his hands warm on my thighs. We kiss until we're both breathless, until the coffee goes cold on the table, until the birdsong outside becomes the only soundtrack we need.
"Noah." I press my forehead to his. "I need to tell you something."
"Okay." His hands still on my hips, giving me his full attention.
"This scares me. How easy this is. How much I want it." I swallow. "Last time, I wanted it this much I ran."
"I know." No flinch. No accusation. Just steady blue eyes.
"I'm not going to run this time. But I might panic.
I might get weird about my deadline, or pull away when things feel too close, or hide behind the article when I should be present.
" I take a breath. "I need you to call me on it.
Not punish me for it. Just—say it. Out loud.
'Riley, you're doing the thing.' And I'll try to stop. "
He's quiet for a long moment. Then his arms tighten around me, and he presses his mouth to my temple.
"Riley, you're doing the thing."
I pull back. "What thing? I literally just—"
"You're making a speech about your flaws instead of kissing me." His eyes are bright with humor. "You're allowed to just be here. You don't have to earn it with a disclaimer."
The words hit something deep. The part of me that's always bracing for conditions, for catches, for the other shoe.
"Okay," I whisper. "Okay."
I kiss him again—less careful this time, more real—and he makes a sound against my mouth that vibrates through my entire body.
Eventually, he pulls back, checks the clock, and sighs.
"Station?"
"Station." He stands, takes me with him, and sets me on my feet with a kiss pressed to my forehead. "Shower first. You're welcome to join me, but fair warning—if you do, I will definitely be late."
"Go." I push him toward the bathroom. "Be responsible. Save lives."
"Yes, ma'am." He grins over his shoulder, and the domesticity of it— the easy joke, the shared bathroom, the morning routine building itself around us—makes my throat tight with something I'm not ready to name.
He showers. I rescue my cold coffee and try to recapture the paragraph I was working on, but the words won't come. My brain is full of him. His hands. His laugh. The way he said you're allowed to just be here.
When he emerges—uniform on, hair damp, badge clipped to his belt—he looks like a different person. Chief Morgan. The man the town trusts with their safety. Broad-shouldered, competent, serious.
But he catches my eye across the room, and the corner of his mouth twitches, and there it is: Noah. My Noah. Underneath the uniform, still there.
"You have work to do," he says. "Use my office. Take what you need." His hands slide to mine, squeezing gently. "I'll be back this afternoon. We can figure out dinner then."
"I'll be here," I say. "Working. Being responsible. Very professional."
He grins—slow, warm, devastating. "I like you professional. I also like you in my shirt with coffee on your nose."
"I don't have coffee on my—" I touch my face, and he laughs, catching my hand and kissing the fingertips.
"See you soon."