Page 48 of Her Age Gap Match

She wasn't okay.

She loved her job. She loved helping people fall in love, loved seeing their families grow. She was a force of nature of her own particular kind, spring flowers and melting snow. I didn't want to ruin that.

But she was coming with me to Due North. Because she’d asked.

I wasn't going to tell her no.

We pulled off the highway and onto the two-lane road that ran along the lakeshore, the water visible through the bare trees to our left—grey and enormous, nothing like the manicured lakefront in Chicago. This was the real character of the Great Lakes, unruly and cold, beautiful in its enormity.

I felt Poppy lift her head slightly.

Slowed down to give her a second with it, with this vast thing that had been here long before us and would outlive us by millennia.

Eventually we turned off the lake road and onto the gravel drive, trees closing in on either side, bare branches against the grey November sky. It was almost dark out; I normally would have reserved morning for a ride, but she wanted out of the city right away. The driveway was a quarter mile, and it just got prettier as we approached the distillery.

In Chicago, I lived sparingly…but that was because it wasn’t really home. It was where I did business, where I had family, yeah. This, though? This was home.

The distillery had been here for a decade, a repurposed barn I’d bought cheap while I lived in a trailer on the property and saved up. The house was new; three years ago, I’d hired an architect to design and build the place from the ground up. It wasn’t finished yet…the east wing still framed out, wrapped in Tyvek for the winter, waiting for spring and the crew I’d booked through march.

I’d been in no hurry. Didn’t know what I was finishing it for, exactly, until about five days ago.

I cut the engine in front of bar.

The quiet surrounded us, wrapped us in its embrace. All you could hear was the wind off the lake and the tick of the cooling bike and the distant sound of water. Poppy had mentioned once that she loved going to the lake in Chicago, especially in the winter when it was bitter cold and beautiful.

I’d filed that away, not knowing why until now.

She climbed off and pulled the helmet free, her red hair flying around her in the lake wind. She didn’t touch it; just stood there looking at the property in the last of the grey November light.

The barn. The house. The framed east wing. The treeline…and beyond that, the water.

I got off the bike and took her hand.

“You wanna go down and see the lake before it gets too dark or do you want to get inside where it’s warm?” I asked.

She looked at me, eyes wide. “The lake—it’s that close?”

I pointed through the trees. “About ten minutes through those woods.”

“The lake,” she said, a smile on her lips.

We went.

It was dark, but I’d had a little boardwalk put in last summer, lit by solar lanterns. Our feet drummed on the wood as we walked, the sound of Lake Michigan getting closer, louder. The weather had been windy; the waves were bigger than usual, crashing on the rocky shore.

Poppy let out a long exhale when it came into view.

“Wow,” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

She rubbed her arms, shivering even in her jacket. “You don’t realize how big they are, you know?” she said. “Like…yeah, I knew they were great, but coming from Kansas—they’re like an ocean. It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with Chicago. I’ll never get over it.”

“Different further north,” I said. “And they all have a different character. Michigan, Huron, Superior…different beasts, every one, and that’s not even considering the different coasts.”

She nodded slowly, watching the water come in. “Is it always this rough?”

“November on the lake? Pretty much.” I hummed. “Summer it goes glassy some mornings. You can see straight down to the bottom near the shore.”