11. Morgan
MORGAN
He doesn’t come to Sugar Moon on Friday.
He didn’t answer my text last night. That’s fine.
People don’t always answer texts. Maybe his phone died or maybe he fell asleep early or maybe he’s just having a bad day and needs space.
I know about space. I’ve been giving Elias Riggs space since the first morning he walked into this bakery and I decided not to push.
But this doesn’t feel like space. This feels like a door closing.
I go through my shift the way I always do.
Coffee, scones, customers, smiles. I ask about people’s kids and their dogs and their weekends, and I remember every detail because that’s what I do.
I give. I show up. I pour myself into the people around me until there’s nothing left, and then I pour a little more because someone might need it.
By noon, I’ve texted him twice more. Once to ask if he’s okay and once to say I’m here if he wants to talk. Both delivered. Neither answered. I stare at my phone behind the counter and feel something cold settle into my chest.
“Go,” Alicia says.
I look up. She’s watching me with her arms crossed and her head tilted and an expression that says she’s been waiting to say this for the last three hours.
“I’m on until two,” I say.
“And you’ve been useless since seven. Go. I’ve got this.”
“I can’t just leave you with the whole…”
“Morgan.” She says my name the way Elias says it. Direct, no room for argument. “Go find your mountain man.”
The drive up to his cabin takes twenty minutes. I know the road now—the fork, the left turn, the way the trees close in overhead until the sky is just a narrow strip of gray between the branches. I pull up next to his truck and sit in my car with the engine running and my hands on the wheel.
I know what I want to do. I want to walk up to that door and knock and ask him what’s wrong and fix it.
I want to listen to whatever broke inside him and say the right thing and make it better because that’s who I am.
That’s what I do. I’m the woman who shows up with a paper bag full of ingredients and makes something warm in someone else’s kitchen and calls it love because I don’t know any other way to show it.
But sitting here in his driveway, staring at the dark windows of a cabin that was full of light and laughter three days ago, I realize that fixing it isn’t what he needs.
Fixing it is what I need. It’s the pattern I fall into every single time because taking care of someone else is easier than dealing with my own feelings, and right now my feelings are loud and messy and terrifying.
I’m in love with him.
The thought isn’t new. It’s been building since the mountain, since the tea, since the morning he stood at my counter and said please like it was a word he’d never used before.
But I’ve been wrapping it in other things, burying it under the giving and the showing up and the making myself indispensable, because as long as I was doing something for him, I didn’t have to sit still long enough to feel the full weight of what this is.
I love him. Not because he rescued me. Not because he’s gruff and broken and needs someone to soften his edges. I love him because he looked at me and saw the thing nobody else sees. The exhaustion behind the smile. The emptiness behind the giving.
He didn’t need me to fix him on that lookout point. He told me about Chaz Monroe and I didn’t say a word, and he held my hand, and for the first time in my life, I was enough without doing anything. Just being there. Just staying.
That’s what I’m going to do now. Not because he needs me. Because I want this. I want him. I want mornings in his kitchen and evenings on his couch and the sound of his voice saying my name the way he says it, like it’s the answer to a question he’s been asking himself for a long time.
I turn off the engine.
I get out of the car and walk to the front door and knock. My heart is hammering so hard, I can feel it in my fingertips, and I’m not rehearsing what to say because I don’t want to say the right thing. I want to say the true thing.
Nothing.
I knock again.
I hear movement. Footsteps, slow, heavy.
The door opens and he’s standing there in a T-shirt and jeans.
He looks like he hasn’t slept. His eyes are red and his jaw is tight and he’s looking at me with an expression I recognize because I’ve seen it on my own face a thousand times.
The look of someone who is not fine but is about to say they are.
“Morgan…”
“Don’t.” My voice is steadier than I expected. “Don’t tell me you’re fine, and don’t tell me this was a mistake, and don’t tell me you need space—because I’ve been giving people what they need my entire life, and for once, I’m not here because of what you need. I’m here because of what I want.”
He doesn’t move. His hand is on the doorframe and his knuckles are white, and I can see the war happening behind his eyes. The part of him that wants to let me in fighting with the part that’s convinced he’ll destroy anything he touches.
“I heard about the fire,” I say. “One of the guys from the station came into the bakery yesterday. Told Alicia everything. The kid, the dog, you going in after them.”
His jaw tightens. “Morgan…”
“Everyone was fine, Elias. You went in and you did your job and everyone came home.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then tell me what the point is.”
He’s quiet for a long time. The trees are swaying behind me, and the air smells like pine, and somewhere on the mountain a bird is calling out to nothing.
“The point is that it worked this time,” he says, and his voice is raw, stripped down to something I’ve never heard from him before.
“And the next time, it might not. And the time after that, it definitely won’t, because that’s how this goes.
You trust me and you count on me, and I make a call and it’s the wrong one, and you’re the one who pays for it. ”
“That’s not how this goes.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you.” I step closer. Close enough to see the pulse in his throat, close enough to see the shine in his eyes—even though he’ll never admit it.
“You’ve been punishing yourself for four years because of one call on one fire on one day, and you’ve decided that makes you dangerous.
It doesn’t. It makes you human. And you don’t get to use it as an excuse to push me away because you’re scared. ”
“I’m not scared.”
“You’re terrified. So am I.” I reach up and put my hand on his chest, right over his heart.
I can feel it hammering under my palm, fast and hard and alive.
“I’ve spent my whole life giving myself to other people because I was afraid that if I stopped being useful, I’d stop mattering.
You’re the first person who ever made me feel like I matter just by standing still.
You saw me, Elias. The real me. Not the one who says yes to everything and smiles and pretends she’s fine.
You saw the one underneath that, and you didn’t look away. ”
His hand comes up and covers mine. His fingers are shaking.
“I’m not here to save you,” I say. “I’m not here because you need me.
I’m here because I choose you. Because three days ago, I chose something for myself for the first time in my life, and it was you, and I’m not going to let you take that away from me because you’re afraid of what might happen someday. ”
He doesn’t say anything. He stands there in the doorway with my hand on his chest and his hand on mine and the mountain quiet around us, and I watch his face and wait.
Not the way I usually wait—patient and accommodating, ready to accept whatever someone decides to give me.
I wait the way a woman waits when she knows what she wants and she’s not leaving without it.
His fingers tighten around mine. He pulls my hand up to his mouth and presses his lips against my knuckles, and the sound he makes is something between a breath and a word I can’t quite hear.
He steps back from the doorway.
He lets me in.