11. Chapter 11
Chapter eleven
Savannah
Ten minutes after volunteering to help with the Books and Blooms fundraiser, I'm riding through Stonebridge in the passenger seat of Wyatt's sheriff cruiser on our way to rescue an eighty-two-year-old woman from her own house.
Or technically, from outside her own house.
“This isn't exactly what I meant when I said put me to work.”
“You volunteered.”
“I did.”
“You could've stayed at the library.”
“I could have.”
Fair point.
I take in the inside of the cruiser. “I've never ridden in the front of a police car before.”
“Try to contain your excitement.”
“It's disappointingly normal.”
“What were you expecting?”
“More buttons.”
That gets the smallest smile out of him.
Mrs. Patterson is waiting in her driveway when we pull up, wearing a pink robe, house slippers, and the same perfectly set white hair I remember from when she used to substitute teach at Stonebridge Elementary.
She's waiting for Wyatt when we pull up.
Then she sees me.
“Savannah Blake?”
I barely have time to smile before she's hugging me.
“Hi, Mrs. Patterson.”
“Well, look at you.” She steps back, both hands still on my arms.
“When did you get home?”
“A little over a week ago.”
“Nobody tells me anything.”
Wyatt shuts his door behind us. “I'm pretty sure everybody tells you everything.”
She ignores him, but her eyes move from me to Wyatt and then back to me again.
There's a whole conversation happening on her face.
Wyatt sees it too.
“Door,” he says.
Mrs. Patterson explains that she'd gone outside to cut hydrangeas when the wind caught the door behind her. Wyatt checks the front and back doors while she insists repeatedly that she did not lock herself out, the wind locked her out.
“Spare key?” he asks when he comes back around.
“Inside.”
Wyatt just looks at her.
“I moved it,” she explains. “Seemed safer.”
I laugh before I can stop myself.
Mrs. Patterson points toward the side of the house. “Kitchen window's open.”
The three of us walk around to a narrow window above a flower bed. It's cracked open a few inches, but Wyatt works the frame until it slides up almost another foot.
I study the opening.
“I can fit.”
“The answer is no Savannah.”
“You don't even know what I was going to say.”
“You're going to say you can fit through that window.”
“Because I can.”
Mrs. Patterson gives me an approving once-over. “I think she can too.”
“Thank you.”
Wyatt looks between the two of us like we've formed some kind of alliance against him. “I'm calling a locksmith.”
“Why? The window's open.”
“Because locksmiths open doors.”
“And small people fit through windows.”
I set my bag on the grass and kick off my shoes.
“Savannah.”
“I'm helping.”
“This isn't helping.”
“We don't know that yet.”
I step carefully onto the brick border surrounding the flower bed and reach for the sill.
I'm several inches short.
I try again, which accomplishes nothing except giving Wyatt more evidence for his side of the argument.
“You're going to have to give me a boost.”
Wyatt walks over to the window, turns his back to me, and crouches.
“Get on.”
I stare at him. “On your back?”
“Unless you've got a better idea.”
I don't.
I climb onto his back, hooking my arms around his shoulders. He catches me under the knees and stands.
“This is humiliating.”
“For which one of us?”
“Both.”
He laughs and carries me the last few feet to the window.
“Can you reach it?”
I grab the sill. “Barely.”
“Then get off my back and through the window.”
“Very helpful.”
I manage to get one knee onto the sill, which leaves me half hanging through Mrs. Patterson's kitchen window and half draped over Wyatt.
“Push.”
“I'm trying.”
“Try harder.”
One good shove later, I tumble through the window and land on Mrs. Patterson's kitchen floor with considerably less dignity than I'd hoped.
“You okay?” Wyatt calls through the opening.
I push my hair out of my face and get to my feet.
“Perfect.”
I'm still smiling when I open the back door.
Mrs. Patterson claps like I've just performed a complicated circus trick.
“I knew she'd fit.”
“Happy to be of service.”
Wyatt retrieves my shoes from the flower bed and hands them to me.
“Thank you, Sheriff.”
“Don't get used to it.”
“You have to admit, my way was faster than a locksmith.”
“I'm admitting nothing.”
Mrs. Patterson looks between us.
“Always did make a good team.”
The teasing answer I was about to give disappears.
Because we did.
Long before New York and Blake Co. and fifteen years apart, Wyatt and I had been a team. I hadn't thought of us that way in years.
Mrs. Patterson reaches over and takes my hand.
“It's good to have you home, sweetheart.”
Home.
I haven't called Stonebridge home in fifteen years.
I came to Stonebridge because I didn't know where else to go. I told myself I was hiding out at Texie's until the mess I'd left behind settled down and I could figure out what came next.
But standing barefoot in Mrs. Patterson's kitchen, with Wyatt beside me and an eighty-two-year-old woman holding my hand like I've only been gone a few weeks instead of fifteen years, Stonebridge doesn't feel like somewhere I'm hiding.
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
Mrs. Patterson pats my hand and releases it.
“Now come have some banana bread. I made it this morning.”
“We should get back,” Wyatt says.
“It has chocolate chips.”
“Five minutes,” he says.
I smile.
“See? Good team.”
He shakes his head, but he's smiling when he turns away.
By the time Liv calls that afternoon, I've showered, changed, and mostly recovered from climbing through Mrs. Patterson's kitchen window.
Mostly.
“Okay,” Liv says, no greeting, the way she always starts when there's actual news.
“Wait. Before you start, I have to tell you what I did this morning.”
There's a pause. “That sounds ominous.”
“I broke into an eighty-two-year-old woman's house.”
Another pause.
“You what?”
I laugh and settle back against the pillows on Texie's guest bed.
“She locked herself out. Or technically, according to Mrs. Patterson, the wind locked her out.”
“And naturally this became your problem.”
“The sheriff got the call while we were at the library. Mrs. Patterson had left her kitchen window open, and I figured I could fit through it.”
“Please tell me you didn't.”
“I did.”
“Savannah.”
“It worked.”
Liv laughs. “Please tell me someone witnessed this.”
“Yes. Mrs. Patterson and the sheriff.”
“The sheriff?”
“He gave me a boost. It was a high window.”
“A sheriff boosted you through an eighty-two-year-old woman's kitchen window.”
“When you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous.”
“I'm trying to think of a way to say it that doesn't sound ridiculous.”
I laugh again. “Anyway, I got her inside. No locksmith required.”
“Look at you. A week in Tennessee and you're already committing minor crimes for senior citizens.”
“It wasn't a crime. She gave me chocolate chip banana bread afterward.”
“Now I understand the motive.”
“Does this sheriff have a name?”
My smile disappears.
Not because I don't want to tell her.
I'm just not ready to talk about Wyatt yet.
“Business, Liv.”
There's a beat.
“Oh, that's interesting.”
“There's nothing interesting about it.”
“You won't tell me his name.”
“I didn't say I wouldn't tell you.”
“You changed the subject.”
“I'm trying to change the subject.”
Liv laughs. “Fine. But I'm coming back to this.”
Papers shuffle on her end, and just like that she's my VP again.
For fifteen years, Blake Co. has been the thing I never stopped thinking about. Every decision came through me. Every problem felt like mine to solve.
And yet I've been gone almost two weeks.
Nothing has fallen apart.
Not because the company doesn't need me. Because I built a team that knows how to manage it without me standing in the middle of everything.
And that's a relief.
“One more thing,” Liv says. “The HOME campaign board. I want to run locations by you before I lock anything in.”
“Go ahead.”
“I keep picturing something with real texture. Wood, weather, hands actually doing something—not another studio backdrop. A real farm, maybe. Something that feels lived in instead of styled to look lived in.”
My mind goes immediately to Wyatt's farm.
The barn. The bees. The rows of vegetables. Ellie behind the honey table taking money like she's been running a business since birth.
“Somewhere people truly work,” Liv continues.
“I may know a place.”
“Really?”
“Maybe. Let me think about it.”
“That's all I need.”
I hear her make a note on the other end.
“And you?” I ask. “I've dumped a lot on you the last two weeks.”
“Nothing I can't handle.”
“You'd tell me if you needed me, right?”
“Immediately. And probably with bullet points.”
I smile. “That's true.”
“I think Blake Co. succeeds because of the people we built it with,” I say. “You. The whole team. You're my New York family, Liv. I don't say that enough.”
Liv pauses before she says, “I'm going into friend mode now.”
“You're always my friend.”
“I know. I like to announce it anyway. You've sounded different the last few days. Lighter.”
I know what she means.
“Honestly? Relieved.” I run my thumb along the edge of the quilt. “I wasn't excited about the wedding. I kept waiting to be, right up until I was standing there in that dress. I think some part of me knew a lot earlier than I let myself admit.”
“I wondered,” Liv says quietly.
“You did?”
“I didn't think you were ready to hear it.”
“I probably wasn't,” I say.
“And now?”
“Now I'm glad I finally listened.”
“So am I.”
I run my thumb along the edge of the quilt.
“There's something I want to tell you.”
“I had a feeling.”
“There's a man here. Wyatt.”
Saying his name out loud to her, in this context, feels bigger than it should.
“He's the sheriff. We grew up together—his family took me in after my parents died. He was my first love, Liv. Before New York, before Blake Co., before any of it.”
The line goes quiet in a completely different way this time.
“Savannah Blake.” Liv draws my name out slow, equal parts delighted and deeply offended.
“You've been down there almost two weeks. You've told me about Texie and her boys, breakfast at the diner, some farmers market with a dog who won't fetch. You did not think to mention there was a man?”
“I didn't know how to say it.”
“You say it exactly like you just said it. Sheriff. First love. Took you in. That's not a hard sentence, Savannah. That's a great sentence.”
Then she stops.
“Wait.”
I know exactly what's coming.
“The sheriff?”
I close my eyes.
“The one who helped you through the window this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Savannah.”
“It was a high window.”
Liv starts laughing.
When she finally settles down, her voice changes.
“Why didn't you tell me about him?”
I think about it honestly before I answer.
“Because if I said it out loud, it would be real. And I wasn't ready for it to be real yet.”
“Is it real now?” she asks.
“Yeah. I think it is.”
There's a small pause.
“Tell me.”
So I do.
I tell her about the honey booth and the stubborn ten-dollar bill. Ellie and his dad and the farm. The way an entire town seems to know Wyatt will show up when they need him.
I tell her about Mrs. Patterson saying we always made a good team.
And in the middle of all of it, I realize I'm smiling again.
“I'm having feelings, Liv. Real ones. The kind I haven't had in so long I almost didn't recognize them.”
“That doesn't sound like a problem.”
“It is when his whole life is here and mine is in New York.” I pull my knees up and wrap my free arm around them.
“I already left him once. I chose New York, and it was the right choice. I don't regret Blake Co. But I don't want to walk back into his life just to leave him again.”
Liv doesn't answer right away.
“Then don't decide anything yet,” she says finally. “You're not nineteen anymore, Savannah. Neither is he. You don't have to know how this ends before you let yourself see where it goes.”
I let out a breath.
Then Liv says, quieter, “You sound happy.”
I hadn't realized how much until she said it.
Liv continues, “I don't mean relieved-happy. I mean genuinely happy. I haven't heard that in a while.”
“I am happy.”
“Then what's the plan?”
“I don't have one.”
The words come easier than I expect.
“I think I'm going to stay a little longer. See where this goes instead of rushing back to figure everything out.”
“Good,” Liv says immediately. “Everything here is handled. I've got you covered.”
“You always do.”
“I know.” I can hear the smile in her voice. “Go be happy, Savannah.”
We hang up, and I sit there a while longer, phone warm in my hand.
For the first time in years, there isn't a plan.
Just tomorrow.