Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
NORA
Bette's guest room has lavender curtains, a quilt her grandmother made, and a window that faces the wrong direction.
East instead of south. Town rooftops instead of timber.
No woodstove smell. No creek running in the distance.
No sound of a man moving through a cabin at four thirty in the morning because his body won't let him sleep past dawn.
Twenty-six hours. That's how long it's been since I walked out of Hunter's kitchen with bread dough still on the counter and his flannel still draped over my chair.
His flannel. I left it. On purpose. Because if I'd taken it, the leaving would have felt too permanent, and what I needed him to understand was that leaving and gone are not the same thing.
Bette has been extraordinary. No interrogation. No prying. Just a guest room with clean sheets, a pot of soup on the stove, and a single sentence when I walked through her door with my jaw set and my eyes dry: "He's an idiot, but he's a good idiot. Give him until morning."
Morning came. Then afternoon. Now it's almost sunset, and my phone has been silent for twenty-six hours, and the lavender curtains are turning gold with the last of the October light, and the knot in my chest is tightening with every minute that passes without the sound of his truck on Bette's gravel drive.
The stupid thing is that I understand. Every word he said, every wall that went back up, every comparison to the woman who left.
He's not cruel. He's terrified. Eight years of solitude built around a wound that never closed, and then a woman showed up with a letter and a smile and started rearranging his spice shelf, and the wound cracked open before he had time to brace for it.
Understanding doesn't make it hurt less.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. Not Hunter. Dani.
Dani:
Status report. Use the following scale: 1 = he showed up with flowers, 5 = still waiting, 10 = I'm booking a flight to Montana to commit a crime.
Me:
Solid 6.
Dani:
That's higher than a 5. What happened between 5 and 6?
Me:
Bette made soup. It was okay but not great, and I keep thinking about how Hunter's soup is better because he uses fresh rosemary from the garden patch behind the workshop, and I'm comparing soups now, Dani. I'm comparing soups. That's where I am.
Dani:
Soup comparison is a stage of grief nobody talks about. Hang in there. He'll come.
Me:
What if he doesn't?
Dani:
Then he's dumber than advertised and you deserve better than a man who can't recognize the best thing that ever walked up his driveway. But he will. Bette says he burned the agency letter in the woodstove.
Me:
She told you that?
Dani:
She tells me everything. We have a group chat now. It's called Operation Mountain Idiot. Maggie is also in it.
The phone goes face down on the quilt. Outside, Bette's street is quiet. A few houses, a general store, the diner visible two blocks over. Grizzly Ridge is the kind of town that goes still at sunset, everyone pulling indoors, lights coming on in windows, dinner tables being set.
Downstairs, Bette is moving through her kitchen with the particular energy of a woman trying very hard not to check her own phone every thirty seconds. Cabinets opening and closing. Water running. The clink of dishes being washed that are probably already clean.
A knock on the guest room door. "Nora? You hungry?"
"Not really."
"Okay." A pause. "He called me."
Every nerve in my body fires at once. My feet hit the floor before the thought completes. The door opens and Bette is standing in the hallway, phone in hand, expression carefully neutral.
"When?"
"Twenty minutes ago. He called, asked if you were here. I said yes. He said he was coming. Then he hung up because Marsh siblings communicate exclusively through incomplete sentences and abrupt disconnection."
"He's coming here?"
A small smile. "Get dressed."
Not dressed up. Just dressed. The same jeans from yesterday.
A sweater borrowed from Bette that's too tight in the chest and too long in the arms, because his flannel is still draped over the back of my chair in his kitchen and I walked out without packing a single thing.
Hair down because there isn't time for the clip and because, honestly, he looked at me differently the morning my hair was loose, and if a man is going to show up at his sister's house to fix what he broke, he should have to do it while looking at me properly.
The truck arrives twelve minutes after Bette's warning.
The sound is unmistakable. Deep engine. Heavy tires on gravel. The particular rumble of a diesel that's been running mountain roads for a decade. Through Bette's front window, his headlights sweep across the house, then cut. The driver's door opens.
Hunter steps out.
Not empty-handed.
He's carrying something. Large. Flat. Covered in a canvas tarp, resting across both arms. His shoulders strain against the flannel. His jaw is set in that particular way that means he's committed to whatever comes next and doesn't plan on being talked out of it.
Bette appears at my elbow. "I'm going upstairs. You have the living room. Don't break anything that belonged to our grandmother." She squeezes my arm once, then disappears.
The front door opens before he knocks. He's standing on the porch, canvas-covered object propped against his hip, and the look on his face when he sees me stops my breath.
Not the scowl. Not the controlled assessment. Not the careful distance he maintained for six days before it shattered. This is something else. Raw. Unguarded. A man standing on a porch with everything he is written across his face because he's decided that hiding it is worse than showing it.
"Can I come in?"
My arms fold. Not defensive. Protective. Of myself. Of whatever is happening in my chest right now, which is too big and too fragile for a front porch in October. "That depends on whether you're here to think some more or whether you're done."
"I'm done."
"Done thinking or done with me?"
"Nora." My name in his mouth. Low. Rough. Cracked at the edges. "Let me in."
The door opens wider. He steps through, the canvas object coming with him, and sets it against the wall of Bette's entryway before turning to face me.
The living room is small. Bette's furniture is comfortable, overstuffed, nothing like the clean intentional lines of Hunter's cabin.
He takes up too much space here. Broad and tall and completely out of his element, a man built for mountains standing in a room with lavender curtains and a crocheted throw pillow.
"The letter is gone." His voice is steady. Deliberate. "Burned it. Case number 4471 doesn't exist in my house anymore."
"Burning a letter doesn't change what you said."
"No. It doesn't." He takes one step closer.
"What I said was wrong. Comparing you to Beth was wrong.
You stood in my kitchen for ten days making my life better in ways I didn't know it could get better, and when I got scared, I reached for the easiest weapon I had.
That's not who I want to be. Not with you. "
"You said you didn't know what was real."
"I lied." Another step. Close now. Close enough that the smell of him reaches me.
Pine. Coffee. Wood shavings. The scent that's been on his pillow, on his flannel, in every corner of a cabin that became home in ten days.
"I know exactly what's real. You're real.
Every morning, every question, every loaf of bread.
You said that, and you were right, and I spent twenty-six hours in a cabin that smelled like your bread and your shampoo and your goddamn flour, and I have never been more certain of anything in my life. "
"Then why did it take twenty-six hours?"
"Because I was building something." He reaches for the canvas-covered object. Pulls it forward. Sets it between us, resting on the hardwood floor of his sister's living room. "Something I should have finished before I let you walk out the door."
The canvas pulls away.
A sign. Hand-carved. Dark timber, sanded smooth, the grain running in patterns that catch the light. Burned lettering, deep and permanent, done with a woodburning tool wielded by hands that don't make mistakes because three generations of precision run through them.
MARSH TIMBER Est. 1952 Hunter & Nora Marsh
My vision blurs. The letters swim, then sharpen. His name. My name. Together. Burned into timber that will last longer than both of us.
"The workshop project," I whisper. "You've been working on this since?—"
"Since day four. Since you walked my ridge and showed me where the garden goes.
Since you picked up my chainsaw and used it with better form than half my crew.
" His hand finds my chin. Tilts my face up.
Those hazel eyes, gold and green and burning.
"I knew, Nora. Before the agency letter.
Before last night. Before the ridge. I knew the morning you stood in my kitchen at five forty-five making bread, and my whole house smelled like something I thought I'd lost forever. "
A tear tracks down my cheek. His thumb catches it. The same thumb that wiped flour from my face on a mountain. Rough. Gentle. Certain.
"I love you." His voice breaks on the word.
Cracks open in a way that Hunter Marsh's voice is not supposed to crack, because this man is granite and timber and controlled precision, and love is the one force that doesn't follow his rules.
"I love you, and I don't care how you got here.
Agency. Bette. Case number. Letter. None of it matters.
You're mine. You've been mine since you stood in my driveway and didn't flinch. "
"You told me to be afraid of you."
"You should be. I'm difficult, I'm stubborn, I talk to trees more than people, and I will never, for as long as I live, deserve you. But I am asking you to come home anyway. Come home, Nora. The bread dough is still on the counter, and the cabin doesn't work without you in it."
Both hands on my face now. Framing it. Holding it the way he holds everything. With care. With intention. With the full force of a man who has decided and does not do anything that matters halfway.
"I love you too." The words come out steady.
Clear. No hesitation. "I loved you when you made me coffee.
One mug, no conversation, just a man who does the right thing without being asked.
I love your mountain and your timber and your terrible communication skills.
I love that you read forestry books by candlelight.
I love that you burned the letter because it didn't deserve to exist in a house where something real lives. "
His mouth crashes into mine. Not gentle. Not careful. The kiss of a man who drove twenty miles to his sister's house with a hand-carved sign in the passenger seat because words alone weren't enough and he needed me to see my name burned into something permanent.
My arms wrap around his neck. His hands drop to my waist, lifting me off the floor, pulling me against his chest. The kiss deepens. Tongues. Teeth. The scrape of his beard against my chin and the sound he makes, low in his throat, that vibrates through my entire body.
"Come home," he says against my mouth.
"Take me."
We leave the sign in Bette's entryway. Leave the guest room with the lavender curtains and the wrong-facing window. Leave the town behind as the truck climbs back up the mountain, headlights cutting through the dark, his hand on my thigh the entire drive.
Neither of us speaks. There's nothing left to say that the sign hasn't already carved into timber. Hunter and Nora Marsh. Permanent. Burned deep.
The cabin door opens. Bread dough still on the counter, dried and unsalvageable. Two mugs still in the sink. The woodstove burning low, barely alive, because he banked it before leaving but didn't let it die.
His flannel is still on the back of my chair.
My chair. His chair. Our table.
The door closes behind us. His arms wrap around me from behind, pulling me back against his chest, mouth finding the curve of my neck where his breath goes warm.
"Welcome home."
"Feed the woodstove. Then feed me. Then take me to our bed."
A rough laugh against my throat. "Bossy."
"You love it."
"Yeah." Another kiss, pressed into my shoulder, into the skin beneath the collar of a sweater I'm going to lose in about fifteen minutes. "I do."
The woodstove gets fed. Leftover soup gets heated. We eat standing at the counter because the table still has the ghost of an argument on it, and by tomorrow it'll be gone, replaced by fresh bread and coffee for two and the steady rhythm of a life being built with intention.
He carries me to bed at eight thirty on a Thursday evening, and the mountain is dark and quiet and ours.
"Stay forever," he says into the hollow of my throat.
"That was always the plan."
His mouth finds mine. The night wraps around us. Outside, the October stars are sharp and bright and infinite, and the cabin on the ridge smells like bread and wood smoke and the beginning of everything.