Chapter 14
Wyatt
The Sunday after the art gallery is a quiet one.
I spend the morning in my workshop, the familiar, grounding scent of sawdust and wood stain filling my loft.
I’m building a bookshelf, a simple, sturdy piece made of solid oak.
The work is methodical, precise. It requires patience and a steady hand.
It’s a physical manifestation of the way I’m trying to approach this thing with Snow.
One careful measurement, one perfect joint at a time.
But my mind isn’t on the bookshelf. It’s on her.
On the look in her eyes when she saw my photographs.
On the way she felt so fragile and so strong, in the moment before the teenagers shattered our quiet world.
By the afternoon, the restlessness is a physical thing, a buzzing under my skin that the familiar work can’t soothe. I clean up the workshop, wipe the sawdust from my hands, and initiate the Sunday ritual. A video call with my family.
Their faces pop onto my laptop screen, a chaotic, loving collage of my life back in Texas.
My mama is in her favorite armchair. Her smile is the first thing I see, a warm, genuine thing that has been the anchor of my life for as long as I can remember.
My dad gives a thumbs-up from his workshop, a smudge of grease on his cheek, and a pair of safety glasses pushed up on his forehead.
And my younger brother, Tyler, calls in from his own apartment in Austin, his hair a mess, a half-empty coffee cup in his hand.
“There he is,” my dad says, his voice a familiar, comforting rumble. “How’s the bookshelf coming, son? Did you use the dovetail joints we talked about?”
“Of course, I did,” I say, a real smile spreading across my face. “Wouldn’t want the woodworking police to come and arrest me.”
“Did they make you say ‘Ahoy, matey’ this time, or just ‘Arrr’?” Tyler chimes in, his voice thick with sarcasm. He’s referring to my latest modeling gig, a pirate-themed cover that has become the new running joke in our family.
“No dialogue this time,” I say, playing along. “But I did have to pose with a live parrot. It kept trying to take a chunk out of the giant clip-on earring they gave me.”
Tyler laughs so hard he drowns out whatever Dad is saying for a bit.
“—and once I get the new carburetor in, she’ll sing,” Dad is saying, mid-thought about the ’69 Camaro he’s restoring, when Tyler finally stops laughing.
“Will she sing loud enough to drown out the leaky faucet, David?” Mama asks from just off-screen, before her face pops into his frame in the workshop, smiling sweetly.
Tyler laughs again. “Don’t hold your breath, Mama. He’s been ‘getting to it’ since the Cowboys were good.”
“Hey!” Dad protests, genuinely wounded. “We had a good fourth quarter!”
Mama just shakes her head and looks into the camera at me. “How are you, honey? Really? You look thin.”
Before I can answer, Tyler cuts in. “He’s not thin, he’s fashion. Meanwhile, I spent my afternoon counselling a high school quarterback, telling him his torn ACL wasn’t the end of the world while he cried.”
It’s the soundtrack of my life, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It’s normal. It’s real. It’s everything my life in New York is not.
Then my mama, with her teacher’s knack for observation, for seeing the things that are left unsaid, cuts through the noise. She squints at the screen, her head tilted, her gaze sharp and assessing.
“You’ve got a different look in your eyes today, Wyatt,” she says, her voice soft but clear. “A good look. You look… settled. Who is she?”
The question hangs in the air, and the easy banter comes to an abrupt halt. My dad and Tyler both turn to look at me on their screens, their expressions a mixture of surprise and curiosity. I feel a hot flush creep up my neck. I’m not used to this, to being the one with news.
I run a hand through my hair, a nervous gesture I thought I’d outgrown. I could deflect, make a joke, or change the subject. But I don’t want to. For the first time in a long time, I have something real to share.
“Her name is Snow,” I say, and just saying her name out loud to my family, in the safe space of our Sunday call, feels significant. It makes her more real.
“Snow,” my mama repeats, a slow smile spreading across her face. “That’s a beautiful name.”
I spend the next few minutes carefully, cautiously, telling them about her.
I tell them about the bookstore, the spilled coffee, the way she looked at the exhibits in the gallery.
I frame her as “someone who is going through a lot, but is one of the strongest, smartest people I’ve ever met.
” I don’t tell them about her cheating husband or the details of her divorce.
That’s her story to tell, not mine. But I tell them about her courage, her vulnerability, her quiet, fierce intelligence.
“Wait, a girl who’s not a model and doesn’t have an Instagram page dedicated to her looks?” Tyler says, his voice filled with a mock seriousness. “Dad, are you sitting down? This is historic.”
My dad just laughs, a warm, booming sound that fills my quiet loft. “Is she a good person, son?” he asks, his question simple and direct. “Does she have a kind heart?”
“She does,” I say, the words coming from a place deep in my chest. “She really does.”
It’s my mama who asks the questions that get to the heart of it.
She doesn’t ask what Snow looks like or what she does for a living.
She asks if she makes me happy. For the record, she does.
And when I admit that Snow is hesitant, that she’s been hurt and has a wall up around her heart, my mama leans forward, her expression turning serious.
“Listen to me, Wyatt,” she says, her voice soft but firm, the voice she used when she was teaching me how to read, how to be a good man.
“A woman with a wounded heart doesn’t need a hero to rush in and save her.
She needs a patient man to sit with her in the dark until she’s ready to find the light switch herself.
Don’t you dare try to fix her. Don’t you dare try to rush her.
Your job is not to be her hero. Your job is to be her friend.
To be there. To be steady. To let her heal on her own time. ”
Her words land with a profound, resonant truth.
She’s right. My instinct, the one that has been programmed into me by a hundred romance novel plots, is to be the hero, to slay the dragons, to rescue the damsel.
But Snow is not a damsel. She’s a warrior, fighting her own battles.
And I know the best thing I can do is to be her ally, not her savior.
The call ends a few minutes later, with the usual chorus of “I love yous” and “talk to you next week.” But as I close my laptop, my mama’s words are echoing in my mind. Be there. Be steady. Let her heal.
I feel restless, my mind buzzing with a new, clearer sense of purpose. I grab my camera and head out into the crisp, autumn air of Huntington.
I walk without a destination, my feet carrying me through the familiar streets. But today, I’m seeing everything through a new lens. I’m not just looking for a good shot; I’m processing my feelings, using my camera to focus my thoughts.
I find myself drawn to a delicate wildflower pushing its way through a crack in the sidewalk, a tiny splash of color in a world of gray concrete.
I spend ten minutes photographing it from different angles, capturing its resilience, the way something so fragile can be so determined to bloom. It reminds me of Snow.
With each click of the shutter, I feel a little more centered.
My gut, my heart, everything in me wants to rush this, to see her again, to text her, to close the distance between us.
But my mother’s advice holds me back. I think about the characters I play for a living, the men of grand gestures and passionate declarations, and I realize that they are the biggest obstacle between me and the woman I’m falling for.
I have to prove, through my actions, that I am not a fantasy.
I have to be the man who is willing to be patient, not the hero who kicks down the door.
I end up on a park bench overlooking the harbor, where I look at the photos I’ve taken, at the stories of quiet strength and hidden beauty I’ve tried to capture.
I know I can’t let the fragile connection with Snow fade.
I have to reach out to let her know I’m thinking of her.
But it has to be a signal, not a summons.
I pull out my phone and stare at the blank message screen. I write and delete three different versions before settling on something simple, honest, and completely pressure-free.
Thinking of you. Hope you had a good weekend.
My thumb hovers over the send button, my heart pounding with a nervous anticipation that is both terrifying and exhilarating. I hit send.
And then I wait.
The minutes stretch out, each one feeling like an hour. The sun sinks below the horizon, leaving the sky a bruised purple. The first stars begin to appear. I tell myself it’s okay. She’s busy. She’s not looking at her phone. I tell myself not to hope.
Just as I’m about to give up, to convince myself that I misread everything, that the connection I felt was all in my head, my phone buzzes.
My hand is shaking as I pick it up. It’s her.
I did. Hope yours was good too.
It’s simple. It’s polite. But it’s not a rejection. It’s not a closed door. It’s an acknowledgment. A tiny, fragile thread of connection stretching between us.
A slow, real smile spreads across my face, a smile that has nothing to do with a camera or a client or a character. It’s all me. And in that moment, sitting on a park bench in the twilight, I know exactly what I have to do.
I’m not going to rush. I’m not going to push. I’m going to court her, properly. I’m going to earn her trust, one patient, honest gesture at a time. I’m going to show her what real looks like, no matter how long it takes.