Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Heritage and Heartache
Emma
By the time I hoisted my suitcase up the narrow dormitory stairs at the Montana Heritage Foundation, any optimism I’d brought melted into a thin sheen of sweat and second-guessing.
Monday night shouldn’t have felt this heavy.
The room wasn’t terrible—bright enough, clean enough, with a hand-stitched quilt folded neatly at the foot of the bed like a well-meaning volunteer wanted to make it feel homey. But the moment I stepped inside, the anxiety I’d been battling won me over.
I’d lived in rooms like this before—transient spaces filled with unfamiliar shadows and echoes. Back when everything in my life was loud, restless, and temporary. Before Lovelace became my quiet little orbit. Before I built a life so safe and predictable that it practically hummed around me.
Now I was standing in a space that felt like the past had been waiting for me to circle back. The too-firm mattress, the faint buzz of fluorescent lights, the echo of a shower running down the hall. My suitcase slumped sideways, as if it wasn’t convinced this was a good idea.
I sat on the edge of the bed, letting myself fall backward, staring up at the ceiling tiles.
"What am I doing?" I muttered to myself.
Seminars. Growth. Opportunity. I knew the script—I’d recited it to myself for weeks.
But sitting there on that stiff mattress, every part of me felt drawn taut, like I’d been stretched farther than I meant to go.
Trying too hard to pretend this wasn’t peeling me away from the one place—and the one person—I wasn’t ready to be far from.
My phone buzzed once in my pocket. Not a message. Not him. Just a reminder:
MONTANA HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Welcome, Emma! First session begins tomorrow at 9 a.m. Meet in Classroom B, West Hall. Continental breakfast provided.
I locked my phone without replying, refusing to text Easton either. I told myself he was giving me space. I told myself I needed it. But when the lights finally clicked off and the hallway went quiet, the room felt too big, and the silence too loud to pretend I believed any of that.
When I woke up on Wednesday morning, sunlight seeped through the blinds like it had been waiting for an excuse to judge me. I blinked awake, feeling like I’d slept maybe twelve minutes, my body stiff from a mattress with the personality—and softness—of a church pew.
I groaned and rolled onto the bed, sitting up slowly. Every muscle protested.
So far, Helena was winning.
I pushed myself through a lukewarm shower, dressed in what I hoped passed as “competent professional woman who absolutely slept eight hours,” and followed the trickle of other attendees toward West Hall.
The morning air smelled like fresh-cut grass and bakery bread, almost peaceful—if my stomach hadn’t been grumpy the last few days.
The seminar building was beautiful in that hybrid historic-renovation way—part courthouse, part modern glass. People gathered around a folding table stacked with pastries and coffee urns, all of them bright-eyed in that early-morning, networking-is-my-superpower kind of way.
I mustered a polite smile, grabbed a coffee, and pretended to study the schedule taped to the wall so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone yet.
Inside Classroom B, the seats filled quickly. I chose one near the middle—close enough to look committed, far enough that nobody would call on me for an impromptu dramatic reading of 1880s census data.
A woman in her sixties stepped to the front, gray hair swept into a bun, and glasses perched in a way that made her look capable of solving any historical mystery with a single knowing glance.
“I’m Dr. Keller,” she said. “This morning, we’ll cover frontier community development—everything from settlement routes to cultural adaptation.
These pieces will be essential as you revise your proposals. ”
She spoke with quiet authority that made me sit a little straighter. I took notes, nodded, even asked one carefully crafted question that I hoped sounded smarter than I felt.
But beneath the academic focus and polite engagement, something soft and unsettled tugged at me—a low, persistent ache.
By mid-morning break, when everyone else drifted into small groups to compare project ideas and flex their professional charm, I slipped outside with my coffee.
The courtyard was calm—brick pathways winding around a fountain, benches still damp with traces of morning dew. It should have been grounding.
Instead, it made me feel even more adrift.
I pulled out my phone, convincing myself I was just checking the time.
No message from Easton.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected—maybe a good-morning or a joke, something small but warm enough to make the distance feel less sharp. Just…something.
Apparently, wanting that made me ridiculous.
Or human.
Or both.
I swallowed against the complicated pressure forming in my chest and slipped my phone back into my bag, refusing to stare at the screen like some lovesick teenager waiting for a ping. There were days of this seminar ahead. Important work to do. A future I kept telling myself I wanted to build.
And yet… even standing in that beautiful courtyard surrounded by history and opportunity, it felt like a piece of me had stayed behind in Lovelace—with a man whose absence was suddenly far louder than I’d expected.
By the time I dragged myself back to the dorm Wednesday night, my brain felt like a chalkboard someone had erased with a wet sponge—smudged, blurry, exhausted. I tossed my notebook onto the desk, stared at the day’s notes, and immediately rejected the idea of reviewing a single word.
My phone vibrated.
A flutter lit low in my stomach before I even opened it.
EASTON: You surviving up there, Helena Scholar?
I smiled, sinking onto the bed.
ME: Barely. My brain quit around hour three.
A pause—then another buzz.
My whole body warmed—deep, a slow throb that spread through me like I’d swallowed something molten. Somewhere in there, I stopped pretending distance was helping.
He didn’t get explicit—not fully—but every message carried that low, confident heat he used when he pressed me against his kitchen counter. The kind of tone that slid under my skin, curled around my spine, and made me squeeze my thighs together just to stay grounded.
Then he sent one that nearly knocked the air out of me—something about picturing me in that narrow dorm bed, hair messy, cheeks flushed, bare legs tangled in those sheets while I thought about him instead of frontier timelines.
I had to press my hand over my mouth just to breathe without whimpering.
I didn’t match his level. Not quite. But I didn’t shut it down either. I sent enough to let him know I felt it too—that pull, that heat, that memory of his hands on my hips and his breath at my ear.
Eventually, I typed a shaky, useless reply:
ME: I should get some sleep.
His answer landed like a touch between my ribs:
EASTON: Goodnight, Em. Try not to ruin that mattress thinking about me.
Oh God.
I set my phone aside, but my pulse wouldn’t settle. It kept stumbling and tripping like it was trying to outrun the images he’d put in my head—my body under his, his hands holding my hips, his mouth tracing the line of my jaw, the sound of my name against his tongue.
My seminar notes stayed untouched on the desk.
The timeline I was supposed to review never stood a chance.
Because when I finally shut my eyes, the only thing that filled the dark was him—his weight, his heat, the way his voice wrapped around me like a promise. And the dangerous thing? I didn’t want that feeling to fade.
As the clock ticked toward Thursday evening, my brain resembled a chalkboard someone had wiped clean one too many times.
Three days of lectures had filled my mind to the brim with topics like turn-of-the-century rail systems and tribal treaties, alongside the intricate nuances of restoration ethics and archival law.
And in a twist of irony, I’d even learned how to laminate an aging town ordinance without turning it to mush.
My eyes throbbed, protesting the relentless influx of information.
My hand cramped from note-taking. And every quiet moment my mind slipped right back to Easton.
So when I finally escaped to the dorm after the last seminar of the day, I collapsed onto the bed and let the ceiling swim for a minute.
Then my phone rang.
Mom.
I sat up and answered. “Hi, Mom.”
“Well, hello, sweetheart!” she chirped, like I’d been waiting with the phone in my hand. “Are you learning lots? Are the instructors nice? Did they give you a syllabus? You know I love to read a syllabus.”
A soft laugh broke out of me. “It’s going fine. And yes, there’s a syllabus. And handouts. And a whole binder.”
“I knew it,” she said proudly. “Heritage people are always organized.”
I smiled, but something in her voice told me she was holding onto something else. “Okay… what are you not saying?”
A pause. “Well… I heard something today.”
My stomach dipped. “About what?”
“Not what,” she corrected gently. “Who?”
“…Mom.”
“I was volunteering in the hospital gift shop this afternoon,” she continued, lowering her voice like hospital walls had ears. “And word got around that a baby was surrendered at the new safe-haven box this morning.”
My breath hitched. “Oh,” I whispered. My pulse rushed in my ears. “Is the baby…?”
“Alive,” she said quickly. “Very, very small. Early, from what I gathered. But alive.”
I closed my eyes. A wave of emotion hit so fast I had to brace my free hand against the mattress.
A tiny baby. Left in that box that Easton helped make happen.
“Emma?” Mom’s voice went soft. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I managed. “Just… wow.”
“I thought you’d want to know,” she said. “And before you ask, no one knows who the mother is. And everything is confidential, of course.”
“Right.”
“But that’s not the only reason I called.”
My heart skipped. “Mom…”
“I saw Easton,” she said gently. “In the hallway, outside the NICU.”
I pressed my fingers to my forehead. “Of course you did.”
“He wasn’t in the way or anything,” she rushed to add. “Just… talking to a nurse. Watching. Like he was trying to understand something.”
Curiosity. Not fear. Not panic. Just Easton, absorbing the world the way he always did—directly, intensely, privately.
“You like that boy,” she added, far too knowingly.
“Mom…”
“I’m just saying,” she said. “Some men write checks. Others show up to see what the check actually does.”
I coughed. “I know.”
“And I think,” she said, gentle as a nudge, “that you’re afraid of what that means.”
I couldn’t answer. Not honestly.
We talked a few more minutes—her telling me about Hank’s latest attempt at sourdough and how he was acting as if he cared about yeast ratios—and then she let me go with a soft, “Sleep well, honey. Don’t push yourself too hard.”
“I won’t,” I promised, though we both knew I would.
After the call, the room felt too quiet again.
I sat at the desk with my notes, pretending to study.
Pretending I wasn’t unraveling inside. Pretending I wouldn’t spend the entire night thinking about a premature baby in a hospital bassinet, or Easton standing outside that window, or the way he’d made me feel with a single late-night text a few nights ago.
Eventually, I gave up and crawled into bed.
I’d barely settled when my phone buzzed again.
Not Mom. Not Easton.
DR. SUSAN KELLER: Emma, please meet with the Grants Council tomorrow at 8 a.m. for a review of your proposal. Your submission is now a finalist for the potential $50,000 award.
I stared at the screen long after the notification faded, the quiet of the dorm pressing in around me.
All week I’d been pretending I could balance everything—this seminar, the grant, my feelings for Easton, the pieces of myself I wasn’t ready to name out loud.
But this text, this one line blinking up at me, cut through all of it.
The week hadn’t given me certainty or comfort. But that text? It promised one thing—tomorrow was going to change something.
Maybe everything.