Chapter 12
Hudson
Ileave the porch light on. It glows through the front window, warm and yellow against the darkening woods, spilling over the porch boards and the first few feet of gravel drive. Not bright enough to guide anyone from the main road unless they’re already looking for it, but if Layla turns down my lane, she’ll see it.
She’ll know I meant what I said. That’s where I’ll be tonight. And every night for now. You decide if you come.
I stand in the middle of my family’s cabin and feel like a damn fool for how much that one small light matters. Usually, I like the quiet here. The old place sits tucked back from the lake road, half-hidden by pines and rock, with a narrow gravel drive and a blue mailbox my mother painted years ago because she said brown was too depressing for a place people came to rest.
My parents bought the cabin before I was born. Back then, it was smaller. One bedroom. A sagging porch. A woodstove that smoked when the wind came from the east. My father fixed the porch. My mother planted wildflowers that still come back every summer like they don’t know she’s gone. I added the back room, replaced the roof, reinforced the dock trail, and keep promising myself I’ll redo the kitchen cabinets next season.
Always next season.
That’s how my life works. There is always another season, another place, another job, another road before the stillness closes in.
Tonight, the cabin looks different. Not because anything changed, but because I’m seeing it through the possibility of Layla. The worn leather sofa near the stone fireplace. The old pine table scarred with knife marks, coffee rings, and one burn mark from when I was seventeen and stupid enough to set a hot pan directly on it. The boots lined by the door. The hooks where I hang wet jackets. The shelf of trail maps, guidebooks, spare batteries, and three novels I’ve been meaning to read for two years.
My life, spread out in plain view. Rough. Useful. Unpolished. Mine. Maybe not enough for a woman like her.
I glance toward the driveway again.
Nothing.
She probably won’t come. That’s the first truth I force myself to face. Layla is brave, but she is not careless. She thinks things through until the thinking hurts her. She folds feelings intocareful corners. She apologizes before she takes up space. She has spent years making herself useful because wanting too much cost her something.
A woman like that does not get a handwritten address from a younger man, climb into her car after dark, and drive to his cabin just because he leaves a porch light on. Except maybe she does.
Maybe that’s the part of her I’m beginning to know. The part that jumps even while shaking. The part that says I want in a waterfall pool while thunder gathers over the ridge. The part that told me tonight my life scares her because some piece of her wants to know how it feels.
I go to the kitchen because standing still is making me useless. There are dishes in the sink from breakfast. One plate. One fork. One coffee mug. I wash them because I need something to do with my hands, then wipe down the counter and realize I am cleaning for a woman who might not come.
“Idiot,” I mutter.
I dry the mug and put it away, then take it back out because if she does come, she might want coffee tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
I grip the edge of the counter and lower my head. I should not be thinking about tomorrow. Tonight is enough. Tonight is supposed to be choice. Hers. Mine too, if I’m honest, though I’ve acted like I’m the steady one because it suits me better.
I gave her the address. I walked away. I told myself I was doing the right thing. I was. But now I’m here, waiting, and the right thing feels like a rope burn across my palms.
I want her to come.
God help me, I want it so badly I can feel it in my teeth. I want to hear tires on the gravel. I want to open the door and find her standing under the porch light, nervous and determined and beautiful in a way that makes everything inside me go quiet.
But I don’t only want her body. That would be easier. I already know what she feels like in my arms. I know how she sounds when she stops fighting herself and lets go. I know what it does to me when she says my name like it is both a question and an answer.
Tonight is different.
Tonight, there is no storm. No cabin too small to escape. No rush of rain or adrenaline pressing us together until want becomes the easiest thing in the room.
Tonight, if she comes, she comes because she chose the road. The address. The porch light.
Me.
That thought should feel like victory. Instead, it scares the hell out of me because if she chooses me, I don’t know how I’m supposed to let her leave when this week ends.
I turn off the kitchen faucet too hard, and the pipe knocks once behind the wall.
