Chapter 5 Riley
RILEY
Iwas up before my alarm.
I’d been an early riser my whole life. Sunday mornings starting before dawn, everything pressed and ready before the congregation needed us to be.
But this was different. I’d gotten back to the inn last night in a daze, Harlan walking me to the door with his hand warm at the small of my back, and I’d stood in the shower for twenty minutes trying to figure out what I was feeling.
By the time I’d worked through it, I’d talked myself into a corner.
He’d been so certain. So steady. And that was exactly what scared me.
The voices that came in with the grey morning light didn’t need to be loud. They’d had twenty-three years to learn exactly how much pressure to apply.
You just met him.
You don’t know him.
You got carried away.
That last one sat the heaviest. Not because it felt true, but because I’d heard its cousin so many times.
You always go too far, Riley. You never think.
For that reason, I couldn’t always tell the difference between my own instincts and my father’s voice wearing their clothes.
So I’d said goodnight. And I’d gone inside. And I hadn’t invited him in.
I got to the Pancake House early and threw myself into the opening side work, grateful for something to do with my hands.
He came in at half past seven.
I saw him before he sat down. He walked through the door with that same unhurried ease and took the stool at the counter, and something in his expression when he found me across the room was different from yesterday—more direct, like he’d come in with a purpose and wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.
I went over with the carafe. “Coffee?”
“Please.” He waited until I’d poured it. “You went quiet on me last night.”
I set the carafe down. Lauralie was at the far end of the counter, and the nearest table was out of earshot, and Harlan was looking at me in that steady way he had that made evasion feel like more effort than it was worth.
“I got in my head,” I said.
“About?”
I kept my voice low. “About the fact that I’ve been here two days. About the fact that I don’t have savings or roots or anything resembling a plan. About the fact that you’re—”
I stopped.
“You’re a lot, Harlan. In a good way. You’re a lot in a very good way, and I don’t entirely trust myself not to need that too much.”
He was quiet for a moment, thoughtfully gripping his mug.
“When I sold the company,” he said, “everyone told me I was making a mistake. Ten years of work, a number with a lot of zeroes, a whole life I’d built that looked exactly like success from the outside.
They said I’d regret it. They said I was throwing away everything I’d worked for.
” He took a drink of his coffee. “I’ve been on this mountain four years. I haven’t regretted a single morning.”
“That’s different.”
“It’s the same instinct,” he said. “Knowing what’s right and being scared of it anyway because you’ve had people tell you your whole life that your choices are suspect.”
He looked at me steadily.
“I’m not your father, Riley. I’m not a congregation with an opinion. I’m a man who watched you walk into this diner two days ago and knew, and I’m not in the habit of talking myself out of things I know.”
My throat felt tight. “You knew in two days.”
“I knew in about two minutes.”
Something in his expression shifted—that almost-smile, quiet and certain.
“I built a company for a decade on the ability to recognize real things quickly. You’re a real thing.”
I looked at him for a long moment. The diner was warm around us, and Lauralie was pointedly rearranging things at the far end of the counter. Outside the window, the mountain looked as it always did—enormous and indifferent and completely beautiful.
I thought about the tattoo on my hip that I’d gotten because I wanted one thing in my life that was just mine.
I thought about how I’d driven up a mountain alone because a photo on a listing had felt like a direction when I had nothing else.
And how every instinct I had that wasn’t borrowed from someone else’s fear was telling me the same thing it had been telling me since I’d launched into an interview pitch at a man holding a screwdriver.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. It came out quieter than I meant it to. “I just needed you to know that I’m aware of how fast this is.”
“I know how fast it is,” he said. “I’m the one who knew in two minutes.”
“And that doesn’t scare you?”
“Not even a little.” He reached across the counter and tucked a strand of hair back from my face, just briefly, the lightest touch. “Does it still scare you?”
I thought about the waterfall, and the gravel bank, and the way he’d said my name like he’d been turning it over and had decided he liked it—and how none of it had felt fast in the moment, only in the retelling.
“Less than it did an hour ago,” I said honestly.
He nodded, like that was enough. Like he wasn’t in any hurry for it to be more than that yet.
“Go take care of your tables. I’ll be here when your shift ends.”
I picked up my carafe and went back to the floor, and the morning settled around me—warm and unhurried and smelling like maple syrup—and for the first time since I’d packed my car and pointed it toward a mountain on a map, the voices had gone quiet enough that I could hear my own.
Those voices were telling me to stay.