Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
The next morning they were both up early, but neither felt the need to go out for their usual walk. He didn’t want to push her to go out if she wasn’t ready, but at some point, he knew she was going to need to leave the cabin.
Plus, he had something he needed to say to her, and he wanted it to happen at a place that meant something to them. But he was patient. He could wait until she was ready.
Connor had brought them dinner last night and left a basket on the porch with freshly baked muffins this morning. Milo had brought the basket in and put it on the table before making them each a cup of coffee.
“I don’t like this,” she announced when she joined him in the kitchen.
“What? The muffins? The coffee?”
“The fact that everyone is babying me. I appreciated it yesterday, but the walls are closing in on me.”
“I get that. I felt that way after my mountain experience. Everyone hovered and refused to leave me alone. It was exhausting.”
“Well, I don’t mind you hovering,” she teased, playfully nudging his shoulder. “But I don’t want Connor hand-delivering meals and everyone tiptoeing around me. Yesterday was awful, but in the end, it turned out okay. I need to go to the police station today and deal with…you know…that whole thing.”
“I can go with you if you’d like.”
“You better,” she said with a small laugh. “I’m sure they’re going to want to talk to you too. Plus…you’re my rock, Milo. I know I can get through anything if you’re there with me.”
Well, damn. That was a pretty humbling statement if he’d ever heard one.
“When do you think you want to go?”
“After lunch, maybe? First, I want us to have our breakfast. Then I’d like to get together with everyone and thank them for all of their help yesterday. Then I need to meet with Slater. Alone.”
“Alone?”
She nodded. “It’s personal.”
He tried not to take it personally. “Oh.”
Nora picked up a blueberry muffin and handed it to him before taking a chocolate chip one for herself. “Come on. Maybe we should eat outside? That could be nice.”
Nodding, he simply followed her lead. He figured they’d eat out on her porch, but she surprised him by grabbing a blanket and then taking one of the paths that only the owners used that led down to the lake.
They set up on the low stone wall overlooking the lake, the morning sun sparkling like tiny diamonds on the water.
Nora kicked her shoes off, her feet tucked beneath her, shoulders loose in that way that always told him she felt safe.
It made his chest ache, knowing she had to mentally prepare to be out here in a way she’d never had to before.
He watched her for a minute and knew this was his moment. He had rehearsed this a dozen different ways, and none of them felt right.
Until now.
“Hey,” he said quietly.
She turned toward him, brows lifting just a touch. “Hey.”
He took a breath. He didn’t want this to sound like a pitch. Or a solution. Or—God forbid—a favor.
“I don’t want this to be a thing where you’re here, and I’m there, and we just… hope it works,” he said. “You deserve better than vague.”
Her expression softened, but she didn’t interrupt him. She never did when he sounded like this.
“So I talked to my board. Not about you. About me. About how I want to work going forward.” He glanced at her then, holding his gaze steady.
“I’m setting up a small satellite office here.
Not a full team. Just enough infrastructure that I can work remotely for real.
Weeks at a time. On the calendar. Locked in. ”
She stilled.
“I’ll still have to go to Seattle,” he continued. “I’m not disappearing from my company, and I’m not asking you to change anything about what you’re building here. This…” He gestured between them, then outward. “This is me making room. Not asking you to.”
Then he felt like he was holding his breath. He had just essentially dropped a bombshell—all brand-new information that he had never let her know he was working on.
“I’ve already cleared the time,” he added gently. “I’ll be here every month. Not when things slow down. Not if nothing blows up. It’s… done.”
For a moment, she didn’t say anything. She just looked at him like she was seeing a version of him she hadn’t fully let herself imagine yet.
“I needed you to know,” he said finally, quieter now, “that I’m not treating us like a temporary problem to solve later.”
He swallowed.
“I’m treating us like something I plan for.
Something I want more than anything in the world.
I’m miserable without you, but I would never ask you to sacrifice all the things you’ve worked so hard for.
Maybe at some point we'll figure out a different plan—a better one—but for now, this keeps us together more.”
“I…I don’t even know what to say. I had no idea. I thought…” She let out a long breath. “I was so angry with you yesterday. And now I feel stupid for being angry.”
“You shouldn’t feel stupid. I gave you every reason to be angry. I thought it would be a great way to surprise you.” Then he let out a mirthless laugh. “Maybe I should stop doing that. I seem to be terrible at the whole surprising you thing.”
Luckily, she laughed even as she shook her head. “I don’t know about that. You’re really good with the end results. And if you think about it, that’s what matters the most, right?”
“I don’t know. I guess.”
“Trust me. It does.” She smiled and everything inside him warmed.
There was more he wanted to say.
Had to say.
“Every time one of us had to leave, it was devastating. This has all been new to me,” he explained.
“I never had to balance a relationship and my career because…well…it just never happened. But with you, I had to figure it out. I wanted to figure it out.” Swallowing hard, he studied her beautiful face.
“I can’t guarantee that this is going to be perfect, but I know it’s a step in the right direction.
And if you’re done being angry with me, I’d very much like for us to figure out the rest together. ”
Her hand found his and they stayed like that for a long moment—hands tangled, the lake shining in front of them, the sounds of the resort faint and distant as the day was starting. Milo could feel Nora’s thumb moving slowly over the back of his hand.
This was the part he hadn’t planned for. The way something in his chest had gone completely still, like it had finally recognized home.
“Nora,” he said.
She looked up at him, her eyes warm and searching, like she already knew this was something different, something heavier.
He exhaled a quiet laugh, more nerves than humor. “I had this whole other thing I was going to say. Something smart.”
Her mouth curved softly. “That tracks.”
“But I’m realizing,” he went on, voice low, steadying as he spoke, “that if I don’t say this now, I’m going to regret it more than anything else in my life.”
Her fingers stilled.
Milo didn’t look away. He didn’t rush it. “I love you.”
The words landed between them without fireworks or fanfare—just solid and true, like he’d finally named something that had already been shaping his life.
Nora sucked in a breath, sharp and surprised, like the air had suddenly gone thin. “Oh,” she said.
He smiled, soft and a little vulnerable. “You don’t have to say anything back. I just…needed you to know.”
She shook her head, a quiet laugh breaking through as tears brightened her eyes. “No. Don’t do that,” she said, squeezing his hand. “Don’t say it like it’s a risk you’re taking alone.”
He watched her carefully, his heart thudding now, loud and uncontained.
“I’ve been trying not to fall in love with you,” she admitted. “Like that was ever going to work.”
And just like that, he had hope.
“I love you too, Milo.”
There it was.
Simple and certain, with no hesitation at all.
He leaned forward before he could think better of it, pressing his forehead to hers, eyes closing as the relief washed through him. “Okay,” he murmured, a quiet smile in his voice.
She laughed softly. “Okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay feels… right.”
Her arms slid around him, holding him like she had nowhere else she needed to be. And for the first time since distance entered the equation, Milo realized something startlingly clear: Love didn’t make this harder.
It made it possible.
She looked at Milo— really looked at him—and felt something inside her chest loosen, something she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding tight since the day he first left for Seattle.
“I still can’t believe you did all that,” she said softly, as if saying it louder might break it. “Without telling me.”
He shrugged, almost sheepishly. “I didn’t want to promise it until it was real.”
Her throat burned.
It wasn’t the office, or the flights, or even the time—though God, the time mattered. It was the way he’d said “making room,” like she wasn’t an obligation or a compromise, but a constant he’d already factored into his life.
“I didn’t want to be the reason you felt pulled in two directions,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to ask you for more when you already give so much.”
He shifted closer, his knee brushing hers. “You didn’t ask,” he said. “I chose.”
That was the moment it hit her—the weight of it, the care, the intention.
Her hand found his, her fingers curling into his palm like they already knew where they belonged. “I don’t know what to say,” she whispered.
He smiled then, soft and unguarded. “You don’t have to say anything.”
But Nora knew, in that moment, that whatever this was between them—it wasn’t fragile. It was being built. Their foundation was strong. And for the first time since he’d left, the distance didn’t feel like a threat.
It felt like something they could cross together.