Chapter 15 #2
“Too late.” He smiled. “I’ve been paying attention, Livvie. I see you. Even when you’re trying not to be seen. And I…I, um, I like what I see. Who I know.”
Her throat filled. The song ended. Another one began, slower this time. Neither of them moved to leave the dance floor.
“Is this okay?” he asked quietly.
“Yes.”
So he pulled her close, and she held on. Breathed in the scent of him.
Now. She should tell him now that she wanted to stay.
But the words stayed locked, all the way to the end of the song. Then he took her hand and led her to the bonfire.
It crackled and roared on the beach at the end of town, sparks rising into the dark sky. Log benches circled it, filled with festivalgoers warming themselves, roasting marshmallows, sharing blankets against the growing chill.
Nate led her to a spot slightly apart from the crowd—a log bench with a view of the fire and the lake beyond, where the water reflected the flames in shimmering orange and gold.
They sat down. His thigh pressed against hers, the delicious smell of him—woodsmoke and fallen leaves—finding her, and she sensed she might be sitting next to Aldric, the warrior who’d made it through the forest of Thornwood.
Triumphed.
“Thank you,” she said. “For tonight. For the hat and the fudge and the—” She gestured vaguely at the fire, the festival, all of it. “This.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I know. But I want to.” She tugged on her hat. “This is the best birthday I’ve had in years. Maybe ever.”
He didn’t say anything. Just reached over and twined his fingers with hers, slowly, deliberately, like he was giving her time to pull away.
She didn’t pull away.
They sat like that for a long time, watching the fire, not talking.
Around them, the festival continued its gentle wind down.
Kids fell asleep on their parents’ shoulders.
Couples drifted home. The band packed up their instruments.
And still they sat, hand in hand, while the fire burned lower and the stars grew brighter.
“We should probably head back,” Nate finally said.
“Probably.”
Neither of them moved.
He laughed—soft, a little self-conscious. “I don’t want this night to end.”
“Neither do I.”
He squeezed her hand. “Then let’s walk slowly.”
Darkness shrouded the path along the lake, lit only by moonlight and the distant glow of cottage windows. Leaves crunched under their feet. The air smelled like fall and the particular scent of a Minnesota autumn, earthy and sweet.
He still held her hand.
“I meant what I said earlier,” Nate said as they walked. “About seeing you. About paying attention.”
“I believe you.”
“Do you?” He glanced at her. “Because I’m not sure you know how to be seen. You’re so used to being the one in the background. The one who helps, who supports, who holds everyone else up while pretending you don’t need anything yourself.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that. It was too accurate. Too close to the thing she’d been hiding from for most of her life.
“Emma was like that,” he continued. “At first. Before she got sick, before everything changed, she was always taking care of people. Me especially. And then she couldn’t anymore, and she had to learn to let people take care of her.
” A pause. “It was hard for her. But she did it. And I think…I think she was happier in the end. Not because she was sick, but because she finally let herself be loved without earning it.”
Livvie’s throat tightened. “I’m not very good at that,” she admitted.
“I know. Neither am I.” He stopped walking. They’d reached Aunt Lila’s cottage—warm light glowing in the windows, the coral-pink siding soft in the moonlight. “But maybe we could practice. Together.”
She turned to face him. He was standing very close, still holding her hand, his expression serious.
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “Tonight. And…every day. For all of it.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I want to.” He smiled slightly. “See? We both have things to practice.”
The night was quiet around them. The leaves rustled in a breeze that smelled like frost and dying fires.
“That night on the dock,” Nate said.
Livvie’s heart stuttered. “What?”
“Seven years ago. You were twenty, I was twenty-two. Emma had just finished treatment and you came to stay with your aunt, and we ended up talking until three in the morning.”
“I remember.”
“I almost kissed you.”
She couldn’t breathe. “I know.”
“I wanted to. Wow, I wanted to.” He was looking at her with an intensity that made her knees weak. “But you were so vulnerable. You were grieving your mother. You were Emma’s friend. I had a hundred reasons not to.”
“They sound like good reasons,” she whispered.
“They weren’t.” He reached up with his free hand and touched her face—her cheek, her jaw, the line of her neck. “None of them were good enough. I should have kissed you then. I’ve thought about it for seven years. What it would have been like. Whether everything would have been different.”
“Nate—”
“The kiss after dinner last week was…amazing. But, yeah. I can do better.”
She arched an eyebrow.
He kissed her.
The kiss last week had been impulse, but this kiss was certainty. His mouth on hers, soft at first, then deeper. His hand sliding into her hair, dislodging the hat he’d bought her. Her fingers finding his collar, his jaw, the place where his pulse beat fast against her palm.
Nate.
Oh, Nate. This was the man she’d waited for, seen on the pages, and it hit her then that indeed, he was Aldric, heroic and strong and giving himself over to the woman he wanted.
And she might be Kaela, the warrior who protected, who loved from afar, only in this version, she got her man.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, molded herself to him, and he emitted a small sound, deep in his chest, and deepened his kiss.
This. This was what she wanted. To be seen. Known. Needed.
And loved.
The word exploded inside her, even as he took her face in his hands and slowed them down, then leaned away, finding her gaze with his in the dim light.
Then he kissed her again, his touch heat and possession and forever and oh, she loved Nate Rivers.
Beyond the crush and the moment on the dock.
She loved the way he wove his hands into his unruly hair, the way he grunted when she brought him coffee.
Loved the way his eyes lit up with a new idea, and the slow smile he gave her when she came into the room.
Loved his commitment to getting the story right, and how he’d loved Emma, cared for her to the end.
She wanted this man, this flannely life.
When they finally pulled apart, she was trembling. He pressed his forehead to hers, both of them breathing hard.
“Livvie,” he said. Just her name. But the way he said it—like a prayer, like a promise—made her eyes sting.
“What does this mean?” she asked, her breath almost held.
His eyes in the moonlight turned vulnerable in a way she’d never seen before.
“I think,” he said slowly, “we get to write our own story. Right?”
She thought about the manuscript waiting in his office.
The one he’d finally found his way into, the one that was almost finished.
She thought about the dragon on the library wall, the Storybook Corner that would open at the end of the festival, Emma’s dream finally realized.
She thought about Richard’s text, sitting silenced on her phone, and Monday, looming somewhere in the distance.
She thought about all the stories she’d read, all the romances she’d loved, all the times she’d wondered if that kind of love was real or just fiction dressed up in pretty words.
And she thought about Nate’s hand in hers. His mouth on hers. The way he’d looked at her tonight, like she was someone worth looking at.
“I’d like that,” she said. “Writing our own story.”
He smiled—the real smile, the one that reached his eyes, the one she’d do almost anything to keep seeing.
“Then that’s what we’ll do.”
He kissed her again, softer this time, a seal on a promise neither of them quite knew how to keep yet.
But they’d figure it out. Together.
That’s what stories were for.
He hadn’t slept.
Every time he closed his eyes, he was back at the festival. The lights in the trees. The taste of caramel. The soft shock on her face when he’d kissed her.
She’d kissed him back.
And now it was six thirty a.m., and he was staring at his ceiling, and the question that had kept him awake all night was still pulsing in his chest like a second heartbeat:
Could they write their own story?
Not Emma’s story. Not the book he owed the publisher. Something new. Something that belonged only to them.
He didn’t know. But maybe he didn’t have to know what was on the other side to jump in.
What he did know was that he couldn’t stay in this bed for another second.
He swung his legs over the side. The floor was cold under his bare feet. Through the window, the lake was steel gray in the predawn light, the trees along the shore committed to their autumn colors now, amber and crimson outbidding the green.
Huck lifted his head from his bed by the door, one eye cracked open. You’re up early.
“Can’t sleep.”
Huck put his head back down. Finn was nowhere to be seen—probably already stationed outside Livvie’s cottage door, the lovesick traitor.
Nate pulled on jeans—the same ones from the festival, he realized, still smelling faintly of woodsmoke.
A gray thermal shirt. His flannel jacket.
He didn’t bother looking in the mirror. He knew what he’d see: dark circles, stubble, the slightly manic look of someone who’d spent six hours replaying a life-changing, perfect, he-wanted-more kiss.
And now he was hopeful in a way that felt dangerous.
He needed coffee. He needed air. He needed to figure out what happened next.