21. Chapter 21
Chapter twenty-one
Savannah
Blake Co. swallows me whole within an hour of walking through the door.
I mean that as a compliment, mostly. Liv's got a stack of decisions waiting on my desk before I've even set my bag down — fabric swatches for spring, three retailer emails that need my actual voice instead of a delegated response, a magazine proof that's due back by end of day.
My assistant hands me a coffee I didn't order but definitely need, and for a second, moving through the studio floor with everyone calling out updates as I pass, it feels less like returning and more like I never left.
Liv falls into step beside me.
“Before you ask, the problem that got you on a plane is handled.”
“Already?”
“Mostly. The meeting's still this afternoon, and I need you in it. But nobody's on fire, we're not going bankrupt, and I haven't fired anyone.”
“That's a disappointingly calm update after the phone call that got me out of Tennessee before breakfast.”
“I needed you here.”
“I know.”
“And I stand by that.”
“I know that too.”
She hands me a folder from the stack she's carrying.
“These need your sign-off. Legal wants twenty minutes before the meeting. Priya has something she's been waiting three days to show you because clearly my opinion is no longer sufficient.”
“Smart girl.”
“I'll tell her you said that.”
We make it another ten feet before somebody calls my name from across the studio.
I lift a hand. “Give me five minutes.”
“That's what you said fifteen minutes ago,” Liv calls back.
“Then I've been consistent.”
Liv laughs and follows me into my office.
I drop my bag beside the desk and look at the stack waiting for me.
“Anything else?”
“Do you want the list alphabetically or by level of irritation?”
“Surprise me.”
She flips open her notebook.
“Retailer issue. Shipping issue. Two staffing things that can wait. Magazine proof that cannot. The meeting at two. And I moved tomorrow morning's design review because I knew you'd want to sit in.”
“Good.”
“I also cleared tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because you flew in this morning, Savannah.”
“I'm aware.”
“And because I know you. If I don't physically remove things from your calendar, you'll still be here at ten.”
“I haven't even been here an hour and you're already trying to get rid of me.”
“I've worked for you too long.”
“Obviously.”
She closes the notebook, but instead of leaving, stays.
“You're smiling.”
“I smile.”
“Not like this.”
I reach for the first folder. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”
“You've had the same face since you walked in. I don't think I've seen it since before all the wedding stuff started.”
That stops my hand.
Liv's expression softens.
“Good trip?”
“Complicated trip.”
“Complicated good, or complicated bad?”
I think about Nashville.
Wyatt's hand wrapped around mine all the way home. Savannah Blake, are you asking me out?
I think about sitting at his family's table while Ellie laughed so hard she could barely eat. The orchard. The honey house. Wyatt kissing me beside my car like he'd already decided there was going to be another one.
“Complicated good. Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Very good.”
Her eyebrows go up.
“Don't.”
“I didn't say anything.”
“You didn't have to.”
“I've known you a long time.”
“Which is becoming increasingly inconvenient.”
She smiles and starts toward the door.
“Liv.”
She turns.
“Thank you.”
“For dragging you back to New York?”
“For handling everything until I got here.”
Her expression changes.
“That's my job.”
“No. Your job is approximately half of what you actually do around here.”
“Then you should probably give me a raise.”
“I did. Three months ago.”
“Then we're good.”
I laugh.
She reaches the door before looking back.
“For whatever it's worth, I'm glad the trip was good.”
“Me too.”
“And Savannah?”
“Yeah?”
“Blake Co. survived while you were gone.”
The pile of paper on my desk is huge. “Debatable.”
“I'm serious. We needed you back for this. That doesn't mean you have to feel guilty every time you're not standing in this building.”
“I don't.”
She doesn’t buy it.
“Okay,” I admit. “Maybe a little.”
“Work on that.”
Then she's gone, already answering somebody's question before she makes it three steps from my door.
I sit there for a second, looking through the glass wall at the studio beyond it.
People moving. Phones ringing. Garment racks rolling from one end of the floor to the other. A place I built that kept moving while I was gone and still had plenty waiting for me the minute I came back.
Then I pick up the first folder.
And get to work.
The days fall into a rhythm fast. Design reviews in the morning, retailer calls in the afternoon, fittings whenever the schedule allows for them.
I approve the fall catalog layout, sign off on a shipping delay nobody else wanted to be the one to call the client about, sit through two hours of a magazine negotiation that only I have the relationships to close.
None of it feels like drudgery. That's the part that surprises me most. I built this — every piece of it, from the first sketch to the retailer relationships to the team that runs it better than I could alone — and being back inside it feels less like obligation and more like slipping into a well-worn coat.
Tuesday afternoon, one of our junior designers, a quiet, talented kid named Priya who's been with us barely a year, corners me near the sample racks looking like she's aged five years overnight.
“I need you to look at something before I lose my mind over it,” she says, holding up two nearly identical jacket sketches. “Marketing wants the zip pull in gold. Manufacturing says gold costs us four dollars a unit more than we budgeted. I don't know whose call this is supposed to be.”
“It's mine,” I say, and take both sketches, studying them properly instead of rushing past. “Gold reads better in photos. But four dollars a unit at our volume adds up fast.” I flip the sketch over, sketch a quick alternative in the margin.
“What about a brushed brass instead? Reads warm in photography, costs almost nothing over the standard hardware.”
Priya's face does something like relief. “That's — yeah. That actually works.”
“Run it by manufacturing, tell them I signed off.” I hand the sketches back. “This is a good instinct, by the way. Knowing when something's not actually your call to make alone. Most people your level either guess or sit on it too long.”
She lights up, and I'm reminded how much of this job comes down to decisions exactly like this one. Small, unglamorous, but mine to make after fifteen years of learning how.
“You okay?” Priya asks, catching something in my face I didn't mean to show.
“I'm fine. Just thinking.”
She heads off with the sketches, and I stand there a minute longer than I need to, watching the studio floor move around me — two designers arguing productively over a seam allowance, a pattern maker calling out for pins, the low, constant hum of a place that only works because enough people care enough to keep it working.
“Can you stay through next week?” Liv asks, later that same afternoon, sliding a revised production schedule across my desk.
I hesitate, and it's not the hesitation of somebody who has somewhere else to be. It's the hesitation of somebody doing real math.
“Sure,” I say, and the word surprises even me on the way out.
“That easy?”
“There's a lot here that needs me right now. It's not that I don't want to be back in Stonebridge. It's that I built something here too, Liv. People depend on decisions only I can make. I can't just hand that off because my personal life got complicated.”
“Nobody's asking you to.”
“I know. I'm asking myself.”
For a moment, I just take in the studio floor around us.
“I love this. I actually love it, not just the idea of it. That's the part that makes this hard.”
Liv doesn't say anything right away, just watches me with the kind of patience she's always had for the moments I need to talk myself through something out loud.
“You built two good things,” she says. “Of course it’s complicated.”
“I keep waiting for it to feel like a simple choice. Every day I think, today's the day it'll be obvious. It never is.”
“Maybe it's not supposed to be obvious.”
She leans against my desk, arms crossed.
“It's not a design problem, Savannah. You can't sketch your way out of it.”
The calls with Wyatt stay warm, but they get shorter as the week goes on — not because either of us wants them to, but because there's only so much room left in a day that starts at seven and doesn't really end until I've fallen asleep with my laptop still open.
“Ellie's convinced you forgot about her,” he says one night, voice a little rough with exhaustion on his end too, sheriff duties clearly running him just as thin as Blake Co.'s running me.
“I haven't forgotten about her. Tell her I'll call this weekend.”
“I'll tell her. She'll ask when you're coming back, though. Fair warning.”
“I don't have an answer for that yet.”
“I know.” He doesn't push it, same as he never pushes anything.
That should make me feel better.
It does.
Just not enough.
“How's the honey house?”
“Same as always. Missing an extra pair of hands, but we're managing.” A pause, quieter. “Dad asked about you tonight. Wanted to know if you were eating enough. Told him I couldn't confirm.”
“I'm eating.”
“I'll pass that along. He worries.”
“Tell him I miss his cobbler.”
“I'll tell him that too. He'll make a batch out of pure spite that you're not here to eat it.”
“I should let you go,” I say finally. “Early morning tomorrow.”
“Goodnight, Savannah.”
“Goodnight.”
I hang up almost wishing he'd been frustrated with me. That would've been easier. Instead, he gives me patience, space, no pressure at all—and leaves the decision entirely mine.
That evening, working late, I walk past the display case near the design studio's entrance—samples from past campaigns, kept there mostly for inspiration, mostly ignored by everyone who passes it every day.
A Lane Leather bag sits on the second shelf, part of a two-year-old fall campaign, tag still attached from whatever shoot it came from.
I stop.
Two years ago, I chose that bag for a campaign without knowing Wyatt had designed it. Without knowing Lane meant anything more than a name stamped into leather.
I think about the honey house and the smell of warm wax. Ellie's laugh at the dinner table. Wyatt beside me in the truck all the way to Nashville.
Then I turn toward the studio behind me.
People are still working. Sketches cover the tables. Garment racks fill the aisles. Blake Co. is everywhere I look.
I love this building, this life, everything I built out of nothing after both my parents were already gone and I had to figure out on my own what kind of person I wanted to become.
That's what makes it so hard.
I don't want to give up New York.
But for the first time since I came back, I'm not wondering if I can leave Stonebridge.
I'm wondering if I can live without it.