Chapter 11 #2
“I like you,” he said. Soft. Simple. Devastating. “I just wanted you to know that.”
And then she heard his footsteps on the path, heading back around his car.
She clutched his jacket around her shoulders like a lifeline and fled inside.
Aunt Lila sat on the couch, glasses perched on her nose, book in her lap, wearing an expression of elaborate innocence.
“Good dinner?”
“Fine.” Livvie’s voice came out strangled. “Great.”
Lila’s eyes dropped to the jacket wrapped around Livvie’s shoulders.
“Looks like it.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Mm-hmm.” But she was smiling. That knowing smile that said she knew exactly what was happening and found it thoroughly entertaining. “Sleep well, sweetheart.”
Livvie escaped upstairs.
The bedroom was quiet. Moonlight spilled through the window, painting silver stripes across the quilted bed.
She changed into pajamas. Washed her face. Brushed her teeth.
Looked at the jacket for approximately half a second before putting it back on.
And then she lay down and stared at the ceiling.
I like you.
Three simple words. So why did they feel like a bomb going off in her chest?
She pressed her hands to her face. Groaned into her palms.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
She was supposed to come here, fix the manuscript problem, go back to New York. She was supposed to prove to Richard that she was capable, competent, worth keeping around. She was supposed to save her career, not sabotage it by developing feelings for a client.
And yet.
She could still feel Nate’s hand in her hair. His thumb on her mouth. His breath against her lips in the moment before her phone rang.
What would have happened if Richard hadn’t called?
She knew. Oh, she knew. She would have kissed him. Would have pressed herself against him and thrown to the wind any professional goals, maybe even the firm (okay, not so firm anymore) hold on her heart.
The worst part? She still wanted to.
She wanted to march back to that lake house and finish what they’d started seven years ago. Wanted to climb into his lap and kiss him until neither of them could remember their own names. Wanted—
She burrowed deeper into his jacket and breathed in the scent of him.
Oh, she was in over her head.
No. That wasn’t strong enough.
She was drowning. Sinking under the charisma of Nate Rivers.
A week ago, she’d had a plan. A goal. A clear sense of what she was doing and why.
Now she had a jacket that smelled like cedar, a mouth that still tingled from an almost-kiss, and the absolute certainty that she was falling for someone she had no business falling for.
She stared at the ceiling until the moon moved past her window, wrapped in his jacket, and tried very hard not to think about what tomorrow would bring.
She didn’t sleep for a long time.
The cursor blinked. Waiting. Patient.
Unlike Nate, who stood at the window. Outside, fog pressed against the windows like something trying to get in. The lake had disappeared entirely—no dock, no water, no far shore. Just gray. The world had shrunk to this room, this desk, this blinking cursor that refused to become words.
9:13 a.m.
She should be here by now—coffee from the Brew, maple bacon bar from Edie’s, that smile that made him forget he was supposed to be working.
But the words wouldn’t come.
He’d brought his computer to the recliner in the living room and lit a fire at six a.m. because he couldn’t sleep. The flames had died to embers now, Huck and Finn curled in their beds by the hearth, occasionally lifting their heads toward the door, then settling back down with disappointed sighs.
Even the dogs knew something was wrong.
He sat down and typed.
Aldric stepped through the wall and…
Deleted it.
The wall had been watching for three hundred years. Now, it seemed to dissolve, like—
Deleted that too.
He’d reread the chapter he’d written yesterday twice now, hoping for yesterday’s spark.
Instead, he couldn’t stop thinking about the candlelight in her hazel eyes. And now he couldn’t find his way back into the story. Couldn’t hear the voice that had been so clear twenty-four hours ago.
He checked his phone. No texts. No missed calls. Just the time: 9:52 a.m.
What if she wasn’t coming?
The thought hit him low, and the ripples wouldn’t stop spreading.
What if he’d scared her away?
He pushed back from the desk. Crossed to the window. The fog was so thick he could barely see Lila’s cottage next door—just a vague shape, no lights visible, no movement.
She could be in there right now, throwing clothes in a suitcase.
She could be gone already.
Stop it. He pressed his forehead against the cold glass. She was just late. It didn’t mean anything.
But the page was still blank. And her sudden absence seemed louder than anything he’d felt in three years of silence.
The cursor blinked.
The fog pressed.
Nothing.
The clock on his laptop ticked over to 9:58. He was about to close the document—give up, go make his own coffee, stop waiting like a dog at the door—when Huck’s head shot up. Ears pricked toward the door.
A moment later, Finn scrambled to his feet, tail already wagging, nails clicking on the hardwood as he trotted toward the entry.
Nate’s heart slammed against his ribs.
The front door opened.
“I’m so sorry I’m late—”
She was breathless, cheeks flushed pink from the cold, hair escaping from a messy ponytail. She was carrying two cups from the Brew and a paper bag that smelled like maple and sugar, and she was here, she was here, and the breath that flooded out of him felt on fire.
Then he noticed the paint.
A smear of blue across her left cheekbone. A fleck of gold near her right temple. More on her fingers—half scrubbed away but still visible, caught in the creases of her knuckles.
And yesterday, the green.
He frowned, and something hot and sharp twisted in his chest. Something that felt dangerously like jealousy, though he had no right to it.
But had she simply been at home, painting, like…?
Sheesh, now he was turning into a narcissist, thinking her world should revolve around him. Hello.
Still, “Where were you?” Aw, the words came out wrong, sharp, and he just wanted to flinch.
She froze in the doorway, dogs circling her feet, her eyes widening.
He should laugh it off. Should say just kidding or no worries or I was getting worried about you in a normal, human way that didn’t make him sound like a possessive lunatic.
Instead, he heard himself say, “I needed you.”
The silence stretched.
She arched an eyebrow, and he stared at her, horrified by what had just come out of his mouth, unable to take it back. I needed you. Like she belonged to him. Like he had any right. Like—
“I’m sorry.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Thank you. For the coffee. I just—” He gestured vaguely at the blank screen, the evidence of his uselessness. “The words weren’t coming this morning. And I thought maybe I’d done something. Last night. To make you—”
He stopped. He was making this worse.
Livvie’s expression shifted. Something he couldn’t quite read—not anger, not fear. Something softer. And it only made his chest burn.
“I should have texted,” she said quietly. “I was—” She glanced down at her paint-stained fingers, then back at him. “I’ll tell you later. It’s not important right now.”
She crossed the room and set the coffee on his desk. The doughnut bag beside it. Close enough that he caught a whiff of her shampoo—something floral, something that made him think of summer gardens.
He took the coffee. Drank too fast. Burned his tongue. Didn’t care.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “That was—I shouldn’t have—”
“Nate.” She was looking at him with those warm hazel eyes, the ones that saw too much, the ones he couldn’t hide from. “It’s okay.”
She touched his arm. Just briefly—her fingers on his wrist, there and gone. But the contact sent warmth spreading up his arm, into his chest, down into his stomach.
“Eat your doughnut,” she said, and her smile felt gentle. “You’ll feel better.”
He didn’t know about that. But he ate the doughnut anyway.
She watched him for a moment, then turned away and started moving through the room—straightening a stack of books on the side table, picking up the empty mug from yesterday, going to the kitchen to load his dishwasher.
Why had he said that? Sheesh, like she might be his maid?
He picked up his computer and brought it back to his office.
Stared at the screen, listening to her finish in the kitchen, his thoughts on the paint, listening to the way she hummed, something soft and tuneless.
She came into his office and organized the chaos of papers and books.
Her hand landed on the Make-A-Wish envelope. “Have you thought about contacting these people?”
His shoulders tightened before he could stop them. “I don’t know.”
“It’s just a kid who wants to meet you. That’s all.”
He turned his chair to face her. She was holding the envelope like it was fragile—cream-colored, official-looking, the logo of a foundation that granted wishes to dying children.
“That kid doesn’t really want to meet me.” The words came out quieter than he intended. “He wants to meet the person who wrote those books. And that person…that was my sister. She was the brains behind all of it. It’s her story.”
He expected her to back off. Everyone backed off when he mentioned Emma. The grief card was his trump, the thing he played when he wanted the conversation to end.
But Livvie didn’t back off. And of course not—she hadn’t backed off any of the other times he’d mentioned Emma.
“With all due respect,” she said, and her voice was gentle but firm, “it’s your story too, and this kid simply wants to meet the author of the stories he loves.”
She set the Make-A-Wish envelope down on his desk, where he couldn’t ignore it anymore.
“Do you ever want your own name on a book?”
He stared at her.
No one had ever asked him that. He’d never even let himself think it—not really. Wanting something for himself had always felt like betrayal. Like admitting he could exist separate from Emma. Like letting her go.