23. Chapter 23
Chapter twenty-three
Savannah
The office is loud in the good way by mid-morning — phones ringing, someone laughing near the sample room, Priya arguing cheerfully with a pattern maker about sleeve length.
I'm at my desk reviewing contracts, trying to make myself care about a clause I've read so many times it's stopped meaning anything.
My assistant leans into the doorway.
“There's someone downstairs asking for you.”
“Tell them I'm in meetings until two.”
“The lobby concierge told me he said he'd wait.”
Something in her tone gets my attention. “Who is it?”
“He didn't give a name. Just said you'd know.”
I set the contract down and take the elevator four floors to the lobby, expecting a vendor, a courier, maybe somebody I met once at an event and am now going to have to pretend I remember.
The doors open onto the lobby, all glass and marble and the usual midmorning traffic.
I step out and scan the lobby.
Nobody I recognize.
A couple of men in suits are talking near the elevators. A woman is waiting at the security desk. Someone wheels a garment rack toward the freight hallway.
Then something near the windows catches my attention.
There's a man standing with his back to me, looking out toward the street.
Dark jacket. Jeans. Boots.
Broad shoulders I know better than I should from this distance.
Wyatt.
My brain is still catching up to what my eyes are telling me when he turns.
And there he is.
No sheriff's uniform. No badge. No hat.
Just Wyatt.
His dark hair is a little mussed, like he's run his hand through it a dozen times since getting off the plane. There's a little more stubble along his jaw than he usually wears, and that unfamiliar jacket fits across his shoulders ridiculously well.
He's handsome and completely out of place in the polished Blake Co. lobby.
Then he sees me.
His whole face changes.
I'm moving before I've decided to, weaving around a courier and someone's rolling suitcase, crossing the lobby straight toward him.
Then, three feet away, I stop.
My hands fly to my mouth.
“Are you really here?”
Wyatt smiles and opens his arms.
That's all the invitation I need.
I go straight into them, wrapping my arms around his neck. He catches me around the waist, and the force of it sends him back half a step, laughing into my hair.
“Hi.” He says it simply, arms still around me, like he hasn't just flown four hundred miles and walked into a building he's never set foot in before.
I pull back enough to actually look at him, hands still gripping his jacket like he might disappear if I let go completely.
“Is everything okay? Is Ellie—”
“Everyone's fine.”
He keeps one arm around me.
“I needed to see you.”
“You should’ve called.”
“You’re right. I should have. I was afraid you might tell me not to come.”
He looks around the lobby, at the people moving past us, at the glass walls of my whole life stretching up above us.
“Can we walk? Somewhere that isn't quite so much marble.”
I nod, because I don't trust my voice for anything longer than that, and we walk out into the city together, past the espresso stand on the corner, down toward the small park two blocks from the office.
We’re walking hand in hand but don't say much for the first block. My heart's going too fast to make conversation, and I don't think his is any calmer, judging by the way his jaw keeps tightening.
“You hate flying,” I say finally, because it's easier than asking the real question.
“I do.”
“And yet you got on a plane.”
“It wasn't that bad. The snacks were good.”
I laugh. “The snacks.”
“Little bag of pretzels. Very respectable.”
“Well, I'm glad the trip was worth it.”
His eyes meet mine.
“Haven't decided yet.”
“You hate cities more.”
“Also true.” A small, unsteady laugh. “Ellie asked me the same thing this morning. Why I was going, given all that.”
“What'd you tell her?”
“That you're worth getting on a plane for.”
He stops walking, right there on the sidewalk, people moving around us like a current we're standing against.
“I don't have a speech, Savannah. I tried to write one on the plane. Kept crossing it out.”
“So what do you have?”
“The truth. The way I should've said it fifteen years ago.”
My throat goes tight.
“I thought loving you meant stepping aside and letting you choose your life without me getting in the way.”
“Wyatt—”
“Let me finish. Please.”
His voice shakes slightly, just enough that I understand what this is costing him.
“I was wrong. I think I spent fifteen years hiding real feelings behind something that looked like kindness. And I'm done doing that.”
“What are you saying?”
“I love you.”
He says it plain, no hesitation left.
“I've loved you since before I had the sense to know what that word actually meant. And I love you now. The woman you are now.”
I can't breathe for a second. The city keeps moving around us, cars and strangers and the ordinary noise of a Tuesday, and none of it touches the small, still space we're standing in.
“I want you to come home,” he says.
“I'm not asking you to quit. I'm not asking you to leave this behind, or choose me over everything you built. “I know what Blake Co. means to you. I'm not asking you to give it up.”
He takes my hand.
“I'm just asking you to come home.”
The tears come before I can stop them.
I laugh, wiping at my face with one hand.
“I've been standing at my office window every night trying to figure out where home actually is. Like it's a math problem I could solve if I just thought about it long enough.”
“Did you solve it?”
“I think I finally did.”
I wipe at my face.
“I kept trying to choose between New York and Stonebridge. But that's not what I was trying to figure out.”
“Savannah—”
“Home is you.”
My voice breaks on it, but I don't care, don't try to smooth it over the way I've smoothed over everything for the last ten months.
“It's not New York or Stonebridge. It's you. It was always you.”
He pulls me in before I've finished the sentence, arms around me tight, and I press my face into his shoulder and let myself cry the way I haven't let myself cry through any of this—not the wedding, not the necklace, not any of it.
Just relief, plain and enormous, finally finding a place to land solid.
“I love you,” I say into his shoulder, muffled, not caring that half the sentence gets lost in his jacket.
“I love you, Wyatt. I've been so scared to say that out loud.”
“I know.” His voice is rough too, and when I pull back, his eyes are wet, unguarded in a way I've never once seen from him, not even at his mother's grave. “I know exactly how that feels.”
Someone brushes past my shoulder.
“Sorry,” I say automatically.
Wyatt and I both look around.
That's when I realize we're standing dead center in the middle of the sidewalk, arms still around each other, while New Yorkers split around us in both directions.
A man with a briefcase gives us a wide berth. Two women squeeze past on Wyatt's other side, and somebody behind us mutters something about tourists.
It takes about two seconds for both of us to realize how ridiculous we must look.
And we both start laughing.
“We're blocking the sidewalk,” I say, wiping under my eyes.
“I noticed.”
“You did not.”
“I was distracted.”
Another person steps around us.
He takes my hand and pulls me toward the edge of the sidewalk, both of us still laughing, still wiping at our faces.
“Better?” he asks.
“Much. Now we're only emotionally unstable. We're no longer a traffic hazard.”
He laughs.
“I can live with that.”
“Me too.”
“So what happens now?” I ask.
“Now we figure it out. Together this time.”
“I don't know what that's going to look like yet.”
“Neither do I.”
“Good. We'll figure it out badly together, then.”
That startles a real laugh out of me, and something in my chest that's been clenched tight for weeks finally lets go.
We walk back toward Blake Co. slower than we walked away from it, our fingers intertwined, while the city carries on around us like nothing happened.
I don't know exactly what comes next.
Neither does Wyatt.
But for the first time, we're going to figure it out together.