Chapter 11
Eleven
SKYE
Laundry first. Always. When running a guesthouse, laundry was a constant. But it gave me ten minutes where I didn’t have to think. Just fold. I stacked linens on the old pine table in the laundry room and made a neat wall out of cloth.
Noah was up before me this morning, having slipped out of bed early while whispering for me to stay. I knew he’d been avoiding answering his messages for a while, and you could only avoid life for so long.
Despite knowing that we’d gone viral the night before, I was surprisingly content. Last night had been … big. The video. The pub. The feeling that the room was on our side. It sat in me like a warm brick.
Humming, I dumped a new load of towels into the wash and then made my way toward the kitchen for my morning cup of tea.
Voices in the lounge stopped me.
Voices, plural. A male voice I didn’t recognize—too bright. Salesman bright—then Noah’s. Low. Careful.
I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but in the end, that’s what I did.
I walked toward the sound and stopped just outside the doorway.
Noah sat by the fire in a black jumper, hair a mess, one hand on the back of the sofa like he needed to grip the furniture to keep himself still.
The other man wore a navy suit coat and a gold watch at his wrist. A sheaf of papers sat on the loveseat next to Noah.
“… is clean,” the man said. “The press is sympathetic. We lock this down now and book you a showcase. London tonight, New York by the weekend. They want the story. New album. New chapter. Your duet is already clipping. This is the moment, Noah. This record deal is fantastic. It’s a fresh start.”
“I’m not going to London,” Noah said. He sounded tired, not angry. “If we do it, we do it on terms that don’t break me.”
“Sure, sure,” the man said fast, reassuring. “Creative control. Smaller rooms. But we need dates. We need a plan. And her.” He flicked his eyes toward the stairs like he knew I was there. “They want her. You’ve seen the comments.”
Noah turned and caught me hovering at the door. The air in the room shifted. The man half-turned, clocking me properly.
“Skye,” Noah said. “This is Matt. My agent.”
“Hi,” I said, because manners are muscle memory. I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. My palms were damp. “Sorry to interrupt. Tea?”
“No time for tea,” Matt said with a friendly smile. “We’ve got a flight in a few hours. I wanted to bring the paperwork so Noah could see there’s a genuine offer. And to say congratulations, because last night was lightning in a bottle. We’d love to have you along with us.”
“Thank you,” I said. It came out flat, but that’s how I felt.
Like a balloon with the air let out of it.
Matt looked between Noah and me and then cleared his throat. Standing, he smoothed his hands down his coat and looked down at Noah. “Ten minutes,” he said. “I’ll be outside.”
And then Noah and I were alone with the contract and the fire and my stupid heart. Standing, Noah walked over to me.
“It’s a good offer,” he said, his voice soft.
My heart shifted inside me, pulling its walls up. I could see it in his face already. He was leaving. He won’t be staying for me.
“It sounds like a significant offer,” I said.
“It is.” He nodded. “I told him I don’t want a fast press run. I want time to write. I want to do it differently. But yes. It’s big.” Noah dug his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels.
“You should take it,” I said. No hesitation, and that surprised even me. “You’ve worked for it. Your name is cleared. And, this is your career, Noah. You sang something good last night and people heard it. This is … what you do.”
“It doesn’t have to be what I do without you.” He stepped closer and my breath hitched. “Come with me. Sing with me. Not as a plus-one. As you. Your voice is—Skye, your voice is the bit I’ve been looking for.”
My chest gave a painful little twist. I looked down at the contract again so I didn’t have to look at him.
“I don’t want to go on the road,” I said, forcing the words out.
“I like my mornings here. I like knowing which tap sticks and which guest will ask for extra towels. I like running out of coffee and having to sprint to the shop in my slippers. I like knowing where the spare fuses are.”
“You can like all of that and still sing,” he said, too fast, like he could outrun my no. “We could make this work. We could do long weekends. We could—”
“Noah,” I said gently. “I’m not leaving my life to chase yours.”
“It isn’t chasing,” he said, and now there was a thread of frustration lacing his voice. “It’s building. Together. I have to think about my band, too. This isn’t just about me.”
“Which is why I think you should take it.” I smiled though it didn’t reach my heart.
“You’re scared,” Noah said. “You’re scared to give your voice a chance. Your writing. It’s easier to keep your dreams tucked away in a shoebox under your bed.”
I felt it land. It wasn’t cruel because he wasn’t wrong, but it still pissed me off. “Don’t call it fear because it doesn’t match what you want.”
“Skye.”
“Yes, I’m scared,” I said, before he could keep going.
“I’m scared of getting swallowed whole. I’m scared of finding myself six months from now in some hotel corridor with my insides scraped out.
I did the band thing. I watched who you had to become to survive it.
I wasn’t good at that then, and I won’t be good at it now. But that isn’t the same as hiding.”
“You think I’m asking you to disappear into me,” he said, running a frustrated hand through hair that I’d idly played with after we’d made love the night before. “I’m not.”
“I think the machine is big,” I said. “It’s scary, Noah. Even if you do it smarter this time around. It’s still a machine. I don’t want to be a cog in it.”
He rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I want you,” he said, simply. “Not as a prop. As the person who made me remember why any of this matters. I want to write with you. I want to sing with you. I want to come back here and have this place be home. We can make it work.”
“Last time we said we could make it work, too. We fought about a manager and blew up the band. I went home. You went bigger. We didn’t talk for almost fifteen years. I’m choosing not to do that again.” I shook my head.
“So that’s it?” He wasn’t angry. It was almost as if he couldn’t really hear what I was saying.
“That’s it,” I said. My throat burned. I had to swallow before I could keep going. “Take the contract. Take the tour. Be good to yourself in the doing. Call me when you want to know whether the blue room radiator is leaking. Send me postcards. I’ll cheer for you from here.”
“And us?” he asked.
The word landed in the quiet that stretched between us. I clutched my hands so hard my nails dug into my palms.
“Timing isn’t our friend,” I said. “Maybe it never was. I’m not asking you to choose me over this. I’m asking you not to ask me to leave my life. I can’t do it, Noah.”
He stepped back like he was just giving me space instead of falling away.
“Okay,” he said, after an interminable beat. “I hear you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it.
“Don’t be,” he said, and there was the kindness I fell for when we were kids in a borrowed garage. “You told me the truth.”
We stood there in silence that made you aware of your own heartbeat. He looked at me like he wanted to memorize something, and I looked at him like I was trying not to.
“I should pack,” he said.
“Okay.”
Noah crossed the room and paused in front of me. I lifted my chin and locked eyes with him, falling, as I always did, into the depths of his soul. Regret and something more flashed there.
“Skye … I …”
I waited and once again, for someone who had so many words to put into song, Noah couldn’t seem to find any to say. Instead, he brushed his lips over my forehead in a kiss that made my eyes sting and left the lounge.
I stayed where I was until I heard his boots on the stairs and then I went into autopilot.
I put a fresh set of towels in the green room. I restocked the tea station. I went to the front desk, opened the ledger, and stared at a page I wasn’t really reading.
Moments later, Noah came down the stairs with a bag and his guitar. He looked tired. Again.
I looked up when he set something on the table in front of me.
It was a guitar pick. Worn smooth at the edge. One of mine from years ago with a tiny star inked in the corner. I didn’t remember drawing it, but I knew that I had.
“For when you want to finish something,” he said. “Or start it.”
“Thank you,” I said, because I couldn’t say anything else without crying.
Matt reappeared in the doorway. “Car’s here,” he said. He took in our faces. “We should go.”
Noah looked at me, I looked back, but nobody moved.
“Come here,” he said, and I rounded the desk. Pulling me into his arms, he kissed my forehead and I closed my eyes, breathing in the scent of him.
“I’ll call,” he promised.
“Don’t if it makes it harder,” I said. “Do if it doesn’t.”
Noah stepped back and picked up the guitar, then he stopped just at the door.
“Skye.”
“Yes?” Silly, stupid, hope trembled in my heart.
“You were right about the boiler. It needs a new pump,” he said, as if we could hide our goodbye inside a practical note.
“I know,” I said, hope shattering. “I’ll get it sorted.” Somehow. Once my guests came back.
“Of course you will,” he said, and then he was gone.
I returned to behind the desk and watched through the front window like a woman in a picture book.
A fancy Land Rover with shiny rims was parked in front, and Matt rounded the bonnet while Noah put his guitar in the boot with care.
He looked up once at the window. I stepped back so he couldn’t see me and then stepped forward because I didn’t want to hide. He lifted a hand. I lifted mine.
And then the car pulled away.
There’s something so sad about watching a car pull away with someone you love in it. Not that I’d told Noah that I loved him, but my heart didn’t know the difference.
The silence stretched out around me. The inn seemed to grow bigger, emptier, without his presence in it.
And then I shook my head and turned away because what else could I do?
The washer beeped its finished round and, numbly, I went to the laundry room and switched the loads. Then, sitting down in my empty inn, I made a list because that’s what I did when I couldn’t fix anything else.
“I’m okay,” I said out loud, wondering if Gran could hear. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but not also the whole truth either.
The bell over the front door dinged and I looked up, putting on my customer service smile.
Harper and Rosie stood there, the makings for mimosas in their hands, with the Book Bitches arguing at their backs.
“We saw him leave. This isn’t the time to be alone,” Harper said.
“We brought mimosas.”
“And cakes!” Esther crowed, elbowing her way through. She took one look at my face. “Oh, dear.”
The tears broke, and chaos ensued as only chaos can when your nearest and dearest swoop in to hold you close when your world is breaking apart … again.
“I know a guy,” Esther promised me. “We’ll take care of it.”
At that, I laughed. “No murdering.”
“Maiming?” Meredith asked hopefully.
“No bodily harm.”
Still, the thought brought a smile to my face, and despite it all, I realized that, just like before, life would go on. The last time we’d parted there had been animosity and anger involved. We’d been young, headstrong. Today’s decision had been … kind.
I’d survived Noah Byrne walking away from me once before, and I would do so again.