Chapter 15 #4
Help. Right. Like she’d helped with the deadline, making impossible promises to Richard without consulting him. Like she’d helped with the book, becoming so essential that he couldn’t imagine writing without her.
She kept helping without asking. Kept making herself necessary. Kept taking up more and more room in his life until he couldn’t remember what it felt like to be alone.
And now this.
Emma’s notebook. Emma’s project. Emma’s legacy.
Finished without his permission.
He crossed the lawn to Lila’s cottage. Pink clapboard siding, white trim, a porch with two rocking chairs. The morning sun made everything look warm and welcoming, which was wrong. Everything about this was wrong.
He banged on the door with his fist.
No answer.
He tried the knob. It turned.
The house was small and warm. A living room with a fireplace, bookshelves everywhere. A kitchen through an archway. A hallway leading to bedrooms.
The dogs didn’t hesitate.
Huck and Finn bolted past him, nails clicking on the hardwood, heading straight for the hallway like they knew exactly where they were going. Like they’d been here a hundred times. Like this was their home now too.
“Huck! Finn!”
He chased them, hissing their names. This was insane—he’d broken into her house, his dogs were running wild, he didn’t even know what he was going to say—
Huck pushed open a door with his nose. Disappeared inside.
Nate followed.
And stopped.
She was asleep.
Fully clothed—still in the rust-colored sweater from the festival, the one that made her eyes look like autumn. She’d kicked off her ankle boots, but the jeans were still on. She was curled on her side on top of the covers, her hair spread across the pillow, her face soft and unguarded.
She looked exhausted. Like she’d been up all night too. Like she’d lain awake replaying the kiss, wondering what would happen next, hoping and fearing in equal measure.
Finn was already on the bed, turning circles, settling against her legs like he belonged there. Huck claimed the foot of the bed, his tail thumping once against the quilt.
Nate stood in the doorway.
And in the space between one heartbeat and the next, he knew.
He loved her.
Not in the tentative, questioning way of the night before.
In the bone-deep, certain way that changed everything.
She was lying there in the morning light, paint still visible on her fingertips—blue and gold from the mural, from Emma’s dream—and he loved her more than he’d loved anything in three years.
He loved her, and she was leaving in two days.
He loved her, and she’d taken up so much room in his heart, his house, his life.
He loved her, and when she left, it was going to eviscerate him.
And that only added to the fuel inside.
She stirred. Her eyes fluttered open—confused at first, then focusing on the dogs, then on him standing in the doorway like a ghost, like an intruder, like the man who was about to ruin everything.
“Nate?” Her voice was sleep rough, disoriented. “What—what time is it?”
His words emerged without his say, just rushing out. “You had the notebook.”
The confusion on her face shifted. Became something else. Understanding. Then fear? “I was going to tell you—”
“When?” He heard his own voice, cold and flat, and some distant part of him was screaming Stop, don’t do this, but he couldn’t stop. The wall was going up, and he couldn’t stop it. “After the dedication? After everyone in town saw what you did with my sister’s dreams?”
She was sitting up now, pushing hair out of her face, her eyes bright with something that might have been tears. “I found it in her room. And I just…I don’t know. Hazel showed me what Emma had planned, and it was so beautiful, Nate. So perfect. I just wanted to finish it for her. For you.”
“You should have asked me.”
“I know. I know I should have. But you were so focused on the book and the deadline, and I didn’t want to add more pressure—”
“So you made decisions about my sister’s legacy without me.
” The words came out sharp. Cutting. “You kept secrets. You watched me search for that notebook. I scoured that room, Livvie. I searched and searched and touched her things and breathed in the last of her scent, looking for something you already had.”
Her face crumpled. “I was trying to help.”
“You helped too much.”
His words landed on her, and she flinched, her shoulders curving inward, and something in her eyes went dark.
He’d hurt her.
The realization should have stopped him. Should have made him cross the room, take her in his arms, apologize.
Instead, “Huck. Finn. Come.”
The dogs looked at him. Looked at Livvie. For a terrible moment, he thought they might refuse.
Then Huck stood. Finn jumped down from the bed a moment later. They padded to his side, tails low, confused by the tension they couldn’t understand.
“Nate—” Her voice broke. “Please. Can we just talk about this?”
He made himself look at her. Made himself see the tears on her cheeks, the devastation in her eyes, the way she was clutching the blanket like it was the only thing holding her together.
He loved her. He loved her so much it was destroying him.
That was the problem.
He couldn’t let himself be destroyed again. “I have a book to finish,” he said. “I think you should stay here today.”
He turned. Walked down the hallway. Through the living room. Out the door.
The morning light was still golden. The birds were still singing.
He took off running, his dogs at his heels, something broken in his chest that he didn’t know how to fix.
The mural was beautiful. The Storybook Corner was perfect. Emma’s dream had come true.
And Nate had just pushed away the only person who could have helped him enjoy it.
The lake house appeared through the trees. Empty. Silent.
The dogs pushed through the door ahead of him. Her mug was still on the counter from yesterday. Her sweater was draped over the couch arm. The faint smell of her shampoo lingered in rooms she’d made warmer just by being in them.
Nate sat at his desk. Opened the laptop. The cursor blinked on the confession scene—Aldric’s words about wanting things, about being terrified of happiness because happiness meant having something to lose.
He’d written those words because he’d been feeling them.
He only had the happy ending left, the final scene, where Aldric and Kaela claim the kingdom and walk into the sunset.
He swallowed. He could go back. Apologize. Try to fix what he’d broken.
He wouldn’t.
Ian Rivers wrote happy endings for a living. That was the job—give readers hope, give them the story they wanted. Two broken people finding each other. Healing. Choosing each other despite everything.
He’d had that. For two weeks, he’d had exactly that.
And he’d just killed it.
The cursor blinked.
The house was silent.
He’d finally managed to write himself out of his own story.