Chapter 12 Noah
The call came on a Tuesday morning while I was loading the last of the festival banners into the truck.
“Noah? It’s Margaret from the committee. Listen, we just heard Tessa Harlow is finishing up early and heading back to Seattle at the end of the week. Is that right? Because if we need any last-minute adjustments—”
I stood in the gravel lot with the phone pressed to my ear and the mountain air sharp in my lungs.
The words heading back to Seattle landed harder than they should have.
We had not talked about timelines since the night at her cabin.
We had simply moved forward—shared dinners at my house, Lily’s bright chatter filling the spaces between us, quiet hours in the shop where Tessa worked with her feet tucked under her on the stool and I tried not to stare.
I had let myself believe the leaving part had been quietly retired.
“I’ll check,” I told Margaret, and hung up.
Tessa arrived an hour later with coffee and a folder of final print proofs. She was wearing the soft green sweater that made her eyes look warmer, hair loose around her shoulders. When she smiled at me, the same low pull started under my ribs. Then I remembered the phone call.
“Margaret said you’re leaving at the end of the week.”
The smile faded. She set the coffees on the workbench carefully. “I got an email from a client in Seattle yesterday. A big rebrand I had on hold. They moved the kickoff up. I was going to talk to you tonight.”
“Were you.”
The quiet between us stretched. Lily was at school. The shop felt too large and too still. Sawdust drifted in the shaft of light from the high windows. The scent of cedar and coffee—usually a comfort—did nothing to loosen the tightness in my chest.
Tessa crossed her arms. “It’s a two-week on-site kickoff. I wasn’t packing a moving truck, Noah. I was going to come back.”
“You have a life in the city. A career. An apartment. This was always temporary for you.”
“That was before.” Her voice stayed even, but I heard the strain underneath. “Before the festival and the late nights and Lily asking me to sing the moon song again. Before you told me you were done running. Or did that only apply as long as I stayed conveniently in town?”
The question cut. I set the banner down harder than I meant to.
“I’ve got a seven-year-old who already lights up every time your car hits the gravel.
I’ve got a town that watches everything.
And I’ve got four years of practice at not needing anyone so that when they leave it doesn’t gut us.
You’re standing here talking about two weeks like it’s nothing, and all I can hear is the start of you being gone. ”
Tessa’s eyes shone, but she didn’t look away. “I’m not Erin. I’m not dying. I’m taking a work trip. There’s a difference.”
“I know the difference.” My voice came out rougher than I wanted. “I also know what it feels like to plan a future around someone and have it disappear. I told you I was done running. I didn’t say I had stopped being afraid.”
The honesty sat between us, raw and unfinished. Outside, a truck rumbled past on the road. Inside, the radio murmured a song neither of us registered.
Tessa exhaled slowly. “So what do you want, Noah? You want me to turn down the job and prove I’m staying?
You want a guarantee I can’t give yet? Because I can tell you I want this—you, Lily, the life we’re starting to build—but I can’t erase the fact that I still have work in the city while I figure out how to move it here. ”
I stared at her and felt the old instinct rise: shut it down, protect the quiet life, keep Lily from another loss. It would be easy. I had done it for years.
Then I thought of Lily’s face when Tessa walked into her sickroom in the middle of the night. I thought of the way the shop felt when she was in it. I thought of the man I had been in her bed—unarmored, still scared, but present.
Easy was no longer the point.
“I want you to come back,” I said. The words felt like stepping off a ledge. “I want you to take the job if you need to, and then I want you to come back and let me fight for this instead of waiting to see if it disappears. I’m not good at it yet. But I’m trying.”
Tessa looked at me for a long moment. The anger in her posture softened into something more complicated.
“You’re asking me to trust that you’ll still be here when I get back.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to trust that two weeks isn’t the beginning of me leaving for good.”
“I’m going to try like hell.”
She gave a short, watery laugh and wiped at the corner of one eye with the heel of her hand. “We’re a mess.”
“Yeah.” I took a step closer. “But it’s our mess.”
I reached for her. She came without hesitation, forehead against my chest, arms sliding around my waist. I held her and breathed in the familiar vanilla-and-coffee scent of her hair and let the fear sit beside the decision instead of in front of it.
“I’ll be back in fourteen days,” she said into my shirt.
“I’ll be here.”
We stood like that while the light shifted across the shop floor and the future rearranged itself into something that still included distance—but also a return.
I had spent four years perfecting the art of not needing anyone.
Now, I was learning how to need someone and stay anyway.