22. Chapter 22
Chapter twenty-two
Wyatt
One day becomes three. Three becomes five.
I keep telling myself to be patient, that this is exactly how it should go — her sorting out her life without me leaning on the scale. I've said some version of that sentence to myself every morning this week, and it's getting harder to believe by the day.
The farm keeps me busy, at least. Mornings start the same as always — coffee, chores, the hives needing checked before the heat sets in, Ellie underfoot asking when Savannah's coming back before she's even fully awake herself.
“Today?” she asks, climbing up onto the porch rail while I load the truck for a supply run.
“Not today, El.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Don't know yet.”
She drags the end of the stick across the porch rail. “I really want her to come back.”
“Me too.”
She nods like that settles something and goes back to whatever she was doing with a stick and three rocks.
I stand there with a box in my hands a few seconds longer than I need to.
It was one thing when it was just me missing Savannah. Now Ellie misses her too.
I should've seen that coming. Savannah didn't just come back into my life. She worked her way into Ellie's too.
And if she doesn't come back, I'm not the only one who's going to feel it.
Sheriff work doesn't slow down just because I'm thinking about Savannah, which is probably a mercy, since it's the only thing keeping the days from feeling entirely empty.
“You've been quiet,” my deputy says, riding along on a patrol I didn't strictly need company for.
“Quieter than usual, and you're not exactly a chatterbox on a good day.”
“Been a lot on my mind.”
“That New York thing?”
“How'd you know about that?”
“Wyatt. It's Stonebridge.” He says it like I've forgotten the basic rules of the town I've policed for a decade.
“Millie's been speculating out loud at the counter every morning this week. Texie hasn't been much quieter about it either.”
“There's nothing to speculate about.”
“Sure.” He doesn't push it, mostly because pushing me about anything personal has never once gotten him anywhere, but he doesn't quite let it go either.
“For what it's worth, whole town's rooting for you. In case that's helpful information.”
“It's not, particularly.”
“Didn't figure it would be. Thought I'd say it anyway.”
Every corner of Iron Ridge reminds me of her now.
The honey house still smells faintly like the day she bottled a whole crate of jars, laughing every time she overfilled one. The orchard swing creaks when the wind catches it. Even the passenger seat of my truck makes me think about her reaching for the radio and insulting my music.
She’s been gone nine days, and somehow she’s everywhere.
I thought I knew how to miss Savannah. I had fifteen years of practice.
This is worse.
Before, I missed the girl I remembered. Now I know the woman she became.
I know what it’s like to have her sitting at our kitchen table again.
To hear her laughing with Ellie. To walk into the honey house and find her already there, sleeves pushed up, telling me everything I’m doing wrong with my labels.
I got used to having her back faster than I should have.
Now I feel every place she isn’t.
The calls with Savannah stay warm, but they get shorter as the days go on—not because either of us wants them to, but because there's only so much room left in her day for anything beyond Blake Co., and I understand that better than I'd like to admit.
I run a farm, a sheriff's department, and a leather business. I know exactly what it looks like when somebody's stretched thin by things that actually matter.
“How's Lane?” she asks one night, voice a little tired but still trying.
“Busy. We've got a couple orders going out this week.”
“You should let me help with the marketing side sometime,” she says.
“Officially, I mean. Not just opinions over honey jars and leather bags.”
“I'll take you up on that,” I say.
“You say that every time.”
“I mean it every time.”
I lean back against the porch rail, watching the last light fade over the fields.
“How are things there?”
“Busy. Good, though.” She pauses. “That's part of the problem.”
I know exactly what she means.
She loves it.
I don't want her to stop loving it just because I want her here.
“I miss Stonebridge, though,” she says.
“I miss the farm. Ellie. Your dad. I keep thinking about all of us sitting around that table.”
“Come back, then.”
It's out before I've fully decided to say it.
The line goes quiet. I close my eyes.
“It's not that simple, Wyatt.”
“I know.” And I do. I just don't like knowing it.
“I'm not asking you to walk away from anything. I just...”
I let the rest go.
“You just want me there.”
“Yeah.”
Her voice softens. “I want to be there too. I just don't know how to make both things work yet,” she says.
“You don't have to figure it out tonight.”
“I know.”
“And I'm not going anywhere.”
Another pause.
“That's part of what makes this so hard,” she says. “If you weren't there waiting for me, maybe this would be easier.”
“But I am here, Savannah.”
“I know.”
“And I am waiting for you. I’m not going to pretend I'm not just to make this easier.”
The line goes quiet.
“I want you here,” I say. “I want you back. You should know that while you’re figuring out what you want.”
“I know,” she says softly. “And I want to come back.”
There’s a pause after that, and I can tell she doesn’t know what else to say.
I’ve probably given her enough to think about for one night.
“I should get some sleep,” she says finally.
“Yeah.”
“Goodnight, Wyatt.”
“Goodnight, Savannah.”
The call ends.
I stay on the porch a while longer, looking out over the farm and thinking about the two words I wasn't supposed to say.
I want you back.
I meant them.
And for the first time, I wonder if maybe I've taken this giving-her-space thing too far.
Dad finds me in the workshop a few nights later, ripping out a seam for what has to be the fourth time, hands doing the same thing they always do when my head's somewhere else entirely.
“You're going to run out of thread at this rate,” he says, settling onto the stool across from me, unhurried as always.
“It's not sitting right.”
“Mm.” He watches me work for a minute, the same patient quiet he's used my whole life to get me to say things I'm not ready to say. “You've spent your whole life believing love means stepping aside.”
I don't answer right away. There's not much room to argue with something that true.
“You let her go the first time,” Dad continues. “Told yourself that was love. Maybe it was. Maybe there was some fear mixed in with it too. Now you're doing it again. Sitting back, giving her all the room in the world, telling yourself that's love.”
“It is love, Dad. I'm not going to pressure her into a decision.”
“Nobody's asking you to pressure her.” His voice stays gentle, but there's weight behind it now. “There's a difference between giving somebody room to choose and disappearing so far into the background that she can't even see what she's choosing between.”
He leans back.
“She deserves to know how you feel, Wyatt.”
I set the needle down, because my hands have officially stopped being useful for anything tonight.
“What if I show up and it doesn't change anything?”
“Then it doesn’t change anything. But at least you’ll have told her the truth.”
Dad leans forward. “You keep acting like staying quiet is the safer choice. It isn’t. Not for you, and not for her.”
I don’t answer.
“You let her go once because you thought loving her meant getting out of her way. I’m not going to sit here and watch you make the same mistake twice.”
He stands and claps a hand on my shoulder.
“You’ve spent fifteen years wondering what if. Don’t hand her the same thing.”
He leaves me alone in the workshop, the space heater humming in the corner and his boots creaking across the porch outside.
I stare at the half-finished seam in front of me.
Dad's right.
Savannah knows I'm waiting.
She doesn't know why.
I book the flight the next morning, standing in the kitchen with my coffee going cold, Dad watching from the table without saying a word, just nodding once when I look up from my phone like he already knew this was coming before I did.
“You hate flying,” Ellie says, appearing in the doorway in her pajamas having overheard more than I realized.
“I do.”
“And you hate cities.”
“Also true.”
“So why are you going?”
I should've known Ellie wouldn't let me off that easily.
“Because she's worth getting on a plane for.”
Ellie considers that with the full seriousness of a nine-year-old weighing genuinely important information.
“Good,” she says finally. “Bring her back.”
I smile. “That's up to Savannah.”
“But you're going to tell her?”
“Everything.”
“Good,” she says finally. “Bring her back.”
“That's up to Savannah.”
The plane lifts off the runway a little after noon, and I grip the armrest tighter than I'd like to admit, watching Tennessee shrink beneath the window until it's nothing but green and gold and distance.
I'm not flying to change her mind.
I'm flying to finally tell her the truth.