Chapter 14 #2
“You were so angry that summer. Your parents had missed your birthday—again—for some conference. You showed up at my door with your suitcase and your fury and you said, ‘Why don’t they see me? What’s wrong with me?’”
Livvie’s throat tightened. She remembered. Oh, she remembered.
“And I told you,” Lila continued, “that you weren’t invisible. You were just looking for your reflection in the wrong mirrors.”
“I remember.”
“You’ve spent your whole life trying to be seen by people who are looking in the wrong direction, sweetheart.
Your parents. Your boss. All those colleagues who take credit for your work.
” Lila turned to face her. “But God? He’s never looked away.
Not once. He’s known you—really, truly known you—since before you took your first breath.
And He’s been waiting for you to stop performing and start living. ”
Tears pricked Livvie’s eyes. “What if I don’t know how?”
“You’re already doing it.” Lila gestured toward the library, toward the town square, toward the life Livvie had accidentally built in two short weeks.
“You painted that mural because it needed to be painted, not because anyone would see your name on it. You’ve been helping Nate because he needed help, not because you’d get credit.
You’re considering staying here because it feels right, not because it looks impressive on paper. ”
“But—”
“You’re afraid,” Lila said gently. “I know. Afraid the kiss didn’t mean what you hoped.
Afraid staying here is foolish. Afraid choosing joy over achievement makes you less somehow.
” She took Livvie’s hand. “But here’s what I know about God: He doesn’t waste our desires.
If He’s put this longing in your heart—for this place, for this life, for Nate—then it’s not an accident. It’s an invitation.”
Livvie looked out at the water. The sun was bright overhead now, painting everything gold.
“What if I accept the invitation and it all falls apart?” she whispered.
“Then you’ll have tried. You’ll have been brave. You’ll have listened to God’s voice instead of everyone else’s version of who you should be.” Lila squeezed her hand. “And that, my darling girl, is the only real success there is.”
They sat in silence for a while, watching the light change on the water. Somewhere in the square behind them, children laughed. The folk band played. Life moved forward, oblivious and beautiful.
“I’m terrified,” Livvie said finally.
“Good. That means it matters.”
“What do I do?”
“Talk to him.” Lila stood, offered her hand. “Tell him the truth. All of it. What you want, what you’re afraid of, what that kiss meant to you. And then—” She smiled. “Then you trust that God’s writing a better story than you could have plotted yourself.”
Livvie took her hand. Let her aunt pull her to standing.
“And if Nate doesn’t feel the same way?” she asked.
Lila cupped her face, the same way she had when Livvie was sixteen and broken and convinced she’d never be enough.
“Then he’s a fool,” she said firmly. “But even then, sweetheart—even then—you’re not invisible. You’re not too much or not enough or any of the lies you’ve believed. You’re exactly who you were made to be. And that is more than sufficient.”
Livvie pulled her into a hug. Breathed in lavender and old books and the kind of love that didn’t come with conditions.
“When did you get so wise?” she mumbled into Lila’s shoulder.
“I’ve always been this wise. You’re just finally ready to listen.
” Lila pulled back, smoothed Livvie’s hair.
“Now. I’ve left broccoli cheese soup on the stove, and I’m going to pick up some crusty bread and then we’re going home so you can eat an actual meal—not a bagel, Olivia Rose, a meal—and then you can bring over lunch to the grumpy writer next door. ”
“Not so grumpy anymore.”
“I’ll bet.” She winked.
“Aunt Lila!”
She laughed and looped her arm through Livvie’s. “Trust the story, sweetheart. Even when you can’t see the ending yet.”
He hadn’t slept in three days.
That wasn’t entirely true—he’d caught fragments here and there, his head on his desk, drooling on chapter twelve. But real sleep, the kind that actually rested you, had been replaced by something else. Something that buzzed under his skin like an electrical current.
Forty-five thousand words in less than seventy-two hours. More than he’d written in the last three years combined.
And he was stuck on the ending. The one scene that mattered.
Aldric stood at the gate, staring at Elara…
And what?
Nate stared at the cursor blinking on his laptop screen.
Six different drafts of this scene, all of them wrong.
He knew the plot beats—the confrontation, the confession, the choice to trust again—but every time he tried to write the words, they came out wooden.
False. Like a man describing love who’d never felt it.
Which, until recently, would have been accurate.
He closed the laptop. Looked at the clock on his desk. 4:18 a.m.
The house creaked in the wind. Huck was curled on his bed, one eye cracked open, watching. Finn had migrated to the family room, or maybe to Emma’s room. He missed her too.
The lake would be still at this hour. The mist would be rising. And maybe, maybe, if he was very quiet, he could hear Emma’s voice telling him what to write.
He pushed back from the desk. His body protested—stiff neck, aching shoulders, that throb behind his eyes that came from staring at a screen for too long.
He’d been living on coffee and the maple doughnuts Livvie kept bringing from town and the occasional sandwich she’d place beside his keyboard with a pointed look that said Eat this or I will stand here until you do.
Yesterday, she’d left him soup. Broccoli and cheese. He’d come out to thank her later, but discovered she’d left, darkness having long since descended.
Three days of this. Three days of words pouring out of him like water from a broken dam. The action sequences, the world-building, the grief confrontation where Aldric finally faced what he’d lost. And surprisingly, the arc of the heroine.
All of it flowing, finally flowing, after three years of nothing.
But not the romance. Never the romance.
Emma had always written those parts.
He shrugged on the fleece pullover hanging by the door and walked down to the dock.
The lake was glass.
No wind. No sound except the soft lap of water against the wooden posts. The sky was just beginning to lighten—that blue-gray hour before sunrise when the world felt suspended between night and day, between sleeping and waking.
Maybe even between the person he was and the one he might become.
Mist rose from the surface in slow, ghostly curls. Knee-high fog that would burn off once the sun cleared the tree line, but for now hung suspended over the water like something from one of his books. Like the barrier between worlds. Like the veil between the living and the dead.
He dragged the kayak from its rack—just the one now, the green one.
Emma’s yellow one sat unused in the boathouse.
The scrape of fiberglass on wood was too loud in the silence.
Huck had followed him down and now sat at the end of the dock, watching with that patient, knowing expression dogs got when they understood more than they should.
“I’ll be back,” Nate told him.
Huck’s tail thumped once.
He settled into the cockpit. Pushed off. The kayak wobbled for a moment, then steadied as he found his balance. The paddle dipped into the water—cold, so cold it made his bare hands ache—and he pulled, and the dock fell away behind him.
The mist parted around the bow like curtains opening on an empty stage.
He paddled toward Writer’s Point. Emma’s spot. He hadn’t been out here at this hour since before she died. Hadn’t trusted himself to sit in the silence and not shatter.
But something had shifted in the last three days. The writing, maybe. Or Livvie. Or both.
And for a delicious second, she was back in his arms, kissing him.
Not now. Not yet.
And yes, he still felt fragile. Not ready. Still held together with tape and hope and the stubborn refusal to fall apart. But the edges didn’t feel quite so sharp anymore.
So maybe there could be a happy ending for him too.
The eastern sky banded with color now, pink and gold bleeding up from the horizon.
He stopped paddling. Let the kayak drift.
The emptiness around him was so loud it drowned out the silence.
“I’m stuck,” he said.
His voice sounded strange out here. Too small. Too human.
“The romance,” he continued. “You always understood that part.”
Silence. The mist curling. The water barely rippling.
And then—not a voice, exactly. More like a memory with weight. The shape of what Emma would have said, filling the space where she should have been.
What’s the problem?
“Aldric doesn’t know what to say to Elara. The moment where he admits how he feels—I’ve written it six different ways, and they all sound wrong.”
What does he feel?
“I don’t know. That’s the problem. I can write the action. I can write the grief. But when it comes to the part where he opens up, where he makes himself vulnerable, where he says the thing that risks everything—” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to do that.”
You’ve never tried.
“I’ve tried. Six drafts, remember?”
That’s not what I mean.
He knew what she meant. He’d always known.
You’ve never let yourself feel it, Emma’s voice said. Or his memory of her voice. Or his own voice, wearing her words like borrowed clothes. You’ve never risked it. You spent your whole life taking care of me and then grieving me, and you never once let yourself want something that was just yours.
The sunrise was breaking over the tree line now. Gold light spilling across the water, catching the mist, turning everything to fire.
“I’m wanting things now,” he said quietly. “That’s the problem.”
That’s not a problem. That’s the point.