Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
ROBYN
After finding the time capsule, Robyn spent the evening tucked away in the loft above the bookshop, letting the day’s excitement settle. Cooking helped. It gave her hands a job and her mind a track to follow.
But tonight her mind kept slipping back to Tyler.
She’d be chopping garlic and suddenly she was back on the trail, Tyler’s fingers at her jaw, the low murmur of his voice saying “raincheck.” She’d be stirring the sauce and her thoughts would drift to the back room of the bookstore with the click of the latch, the worn sofa, his eyes going dark behind his glasses.
They still hadn’t been alone. Every moment kept getting interrupted by customers, by the book club.
The wanting had nowhere to go, so it just kept building, layering on itself until Robyn could feel it in her fingertips, in the restless way she couldn’t settle, in the way she kept glancing at her phone hoping he’d text.
Mr. Darcy sat on the kitchen counter watching her with an expression that suggested he found the whole thing deeply undignified.
She pointed the wooden spoon at him. “Don’t judge me.”
He blinked slowly. Oh yeah, he was judging her alright.
Robyn scratched his ears and poured herself another glass of wine, trying to enjoy the quiet.
The book club wouldn’t be meeting until tomorrow.
Mrs. C. had wanted them to reconvene that night, preferably immediately, but the rest of the club members already had plans, and it didn’t feel right pressing on without them.
Thankfully, Mrs. C. grudgingly accepted a photocopy of the second installment as temporary consolation.
“Okay,” Mrs. C. had said, taking the pages from Robyn with the solemnity of receiving a classified document. “But we meet tomorrow.”
Robyn took her pasta to the small table by the window, watching Maple Falls move below her in an autumnal version of a snow globe.
The fall colors shimmered under lamplight, and the lamp posts along Oak Way were wrapped in garlands and twinkling strands.
Across the road, Anita’s café sat cozy and bright with potted mums outside and hay bales and pumpkins tucked into the alcove entrance.
If Robyn cracked the window, she could catch the scent of roasted almonds drifting up from the vendor who was toasting his last batch of the night, tourists and locals lingering with warm paper cones in hand.
Down on the corner, the gas firepits glowed, Adirondack chairs clustered around them with throw blankets tossed over armrests, inviting anyone with a cup of cider—hot, spiced, and maybe spiked if they’d stopped at The Kettle—to sit awhile and pretend the night didn’t have an end.
She thought about checking in with Meg, asking if the buyer who’d walked through yesterday had said anything new, but the truth was she didn’t want to know. Not yet. Sometimes ignorance really was bliss.
She thought about calling her parents, but didn’t really know what to talk about, seeing as she wasn’t currently doing any academic research, and her parents wouldn’t be happy she was dating Tyler.
They would see him as a nice guy, and nothing else seeing as he didn’t have a professional title or a string of letters after his name.
Instead, Robyn refilled her wineglass, carried her laptop to the oversized chair where Mr. Darcy was already snoozing contentedly on the back, and let herself slip into the secret identity that reliably made her feel more like herself.
AfterHoursAuthor.
She knew she could have pivoted the story into something gentler for the morning after the last explicit scene she’d written.
Something domestic and warm, where the couple made breakfast together in their socks, flirted over pancakes, and argued about who made the better coffee.
That would have been the sensible choice, the kind of chapter her readers would still devour with happy sighs and heart emojis.
But the moment her fingertips touched the keyboard, her thoughts snagged, stubbornly and unfairly, on Tyler.
And the scene… shifted.
It was still the morning after. The light in the bedroom was soft with the sunrise, but her characters didn’t slide neatly into domesticity the way she’d planned.
The heat lingered between them like it had seeped into the sheets.
And suddenly it wasn’t her characters she was seeing—it was Tyler, half-asleep and warm beside her, sandy hair mussed against the pillow, the duvet low on his hips.
That slow, lazy grin he’d give her before pulling her back in.
The low rumble of his voice against her ear, not quite awake, not quite willing to let her go.
She let the scene unfold the way it wanted.
It wasn’t frantic or rushed. No, this was slow, deliberate intimacy, and it made her pulse kick up as she wrote.
Her hand sliding under Tyler’s waistband, feeling the muscles of his stomach tense under her fingertips.
The scrape of his stubble against her collarbone, then lower, his mouth tracing a path down the center of her chest that made her breath catch between her teeth.
She wrote the way Tyler’s thumb would trace along her hipbone, unhurried, like they had all morning and he intended to use every minute of it.
The way his lips would follow, pressing warm against the dip of her waist, the soft skin below her navel, murmuring something against her that she felt more than heard.
The way she’d thread her fingers into his hair, and he’d look up at her with those brown eyes, half-lidded and dark with want, and she’d forget every word she’d ever known.
She wrote herself pulling him back up, kissing him until they were both breathless, the full length of his body pressed against hers, his weight grounding her and undoing her at the same time.
The way his hand would slide beneath her thigh, hitching her leg higher, drawing her closer until there was nothing left between them.
The slow, devastating moment where he’d pause with his forehead against hers, breath ragged, asking without words, and she’d answer by arching into him, pulling him in, letting him know that she wanted this, wanted him, with every part of herself she’d been too careful to offer anyone else.
Robyn’s fingers moved across the keys, steady and certain, even as a familiar warmth curled through her chest and down her spine. It was unbelievable, really, the way fiction could make her body react as if it were memory. As if she could type a feeling into existence and make it real.
She wrote, letting the scene carry itself forward until the chapter landed where it needed to land, and her characters were left satisfied and smiling in the aftermath.
When she finally leaned back, her skin glowing, a smile on her face, she felt content and triumphant at once. She reached for her wineglass, took a slow sip, and let herself ride the last edge of that writer’s high, her apartment warm around her, the street below dimming into evening.
And then her phone buzzed.
Robyn glanced down, still in the world she’d just built, and saw the message from Elsie pop up with an enthusiastic caption.
you two are so cute!!!
Before she could reply, more photos followed: shots from the time capsule dig, the canister in the sunlight, the ribbon-tied pages in Robyn’s hands—
And then the last image loaded.
Her and Tyler. Close enough that it didn’t look accidental. His hand at her back, her face turned up toward him. The moment was innocent, and emotional, and showed off how real this was.
Part of her still wanted to keep it private, like they’d agreed.
To tuck it away in her mind like a pressed leaf between the pages of a book, something she could pull out later when she needed proof that this had been real.
But the other part of her, the braver part that had been growing ever since she arrived in Maple Falls, wanted to claim it.
Show the world how happy she was. Perhaps that’s why she’d wrapped her arm around his waist this afternoon in front of their friends.
But then she thought about Emma, and why she and Tyler had decided to take things slow and figure it out as they went. She thought about how quickly Maple Falls noticed everything, turning small moments into stories. It was just a photo, but they looked like a couple who belonged in the same frame.
Robyn saved it to her camera roll and then started scrolling through her own photos, letting the days replay themselves: Emma holding up the giant maple leaf that covered her entire face; the close-up of her butternut squash ravioli with the parsley scattered on top like confetti; the bookstore looking immaculate and golden, the pumpkin pie book nook glowing with twinkle lights and a stack of books beside a perfect slice of pie; the lake at sunset with geese cutting overhead; street décor and window displays, mums and pumpkins and cornstalks tucked into every doorway like Maple Falls was determined to out-autumn itself.
It was… a lot of beauty for one town to hold.
Almost without thinking, she began arranging them into a post on her social—one picture after another, a little highlight reel of fall with pasta, books, the perfect round pumpkins, and that warm, cozy life she’d been slipping into as if it had always been waiting for her.
When she reached the last photo—the one of her and Tyler—her thumb hovered.
She should leave it out. But Elsie had already shared it, or chances were she would soon. And Emma wasn’t on social media, was she? Couldn’t they just trust that the town would know better than to tell a little girl about something so grown-up?
She decided to go ahead and ask Tyler, sending him the photo. Maybe it was time for them to take the next step.
Too much?
She waited rather impatiently for his reply, the text bubbles appearing and disappearing.
Finally his reply popped up.
Not too much. Tag me.
Robyn took a deep breath and added the photo.
She posted the story to her personal Instagram account—the one that was mostly pasta and bookstore vibes, with the occasional Maple Falls photo sprinkled in—then typed a caption before she could second-guess herself.
Maple Falls kind of day
Within seconds, hearts and replies started popping up.
This looks magical.
I want to live there.
That ravioli!!!
The bookstore is a dream.
Robyn shouldn’t have been surprised. People fell in love with Maple Falls at first glance, even through a phone screen. She watched the views tick upward, her stomach fluttering in that thrilled-but-nervous way that always came with sharing something she cared about.
Then another notification popped up. It was a DM.
She clicked on the mail icon. It was a message from her ex.
Two words: Cute town.
Robyn stared at the screen. Her thumb hovered over the message, pulse ticking up for all the wrong reasons. She could practically hear the smooth, amused tone of his voice, the one that always made her feel like she was being judged. He’d spotted the photo of Tyler. He must have. What a dick.
She closed the app, set her phone face-down on the counter, willing her pulse to calm down.
Mr. Darcy jumped onto her lap and pressed his head firmly against her hand.
She scratched behind his ears and stared at the dark window, where her own reflection stared back.
A woman in a Yale sweatshirt, sitting in a lamp-lit flat above a bookstore that might not exist in a month.
Falling for a man her parents would never approve of, building a life she wasn’t sure she was brave enough to keep.
Her phone buzzed again. Tyler this time.
The pasta pic is getting more likes than me. Should I be worried?
She smiled, and the knot in her chest loosened, just a little.
But she didn’t tell him about the other message. Not yet.