Page 139 of Finding Noah

“Yeah, my parents do too. But the stairs over there don’t feel like you’re walking up the side of a fuckin’ cliff.”

She laughed, reaching the landing. “So dramatic.”

I huffed and puffed my way to meet her at the top of the stairs. “Shit. If I had known I’d spend the afternoon rock climbing, I would’ve skipped the gym.”

Her curls bounced against her shoulders as she shook her head, wandering to the first of the bedrooms.

“This isn’t a bad size,” she commented as I peered in over her shoulder.

“Yeah, if you don’t mind sleeping in a closet,” I muttered, sweeping my gaze over the small, albeit well-lit, bedroom.

“It’s fine for a kid’s room,” she replied, looking up to meet my eye.

“I guess.”

I turned away to check out the bedroom beside it to find it to be just slightly bigger than the last. The floorboards looked better up here than they did downstairs though, and the ceilings were a surprisingly good height, even for a house this old.

That’s something at least, I thought, opening a closet door.

“Oh, that’s actually nice,” Meg commented, glancing inside.

I nodded. “It’s not bad, no.”

Then I led the way toward the third bedroom.

It was the seventh house we had looked at in the last month. Connie had shown us a few places just outside of town, a handful in towns several miles away, and then one of the trailers in the community I used to live in.

I had shot that last one down right away before Connie could even unlock the door.

There was no way I could live there again. Not after everything that had happened.

We had started to accept that we were unlikely to find a place in River Canyon, and admittedly, I’d taken it better than Meg did. I didn’t mind a bit of distance or separation, and besides, a ten-minute drive wasn’t a long one. But Meg didn’t want to leave this place. She didn’t want to live far from her father or her job or the community who had raised her, and just when she thought we’d have to settle for something farther away, Connie called with this listing that had yet to be put on the market.

Meg hadn’t even looked at it before deciding it needed to be ours.

She was already in love with it, based on its location alone—a perfect distance from both her parents and mine.

I didn’t want to snuff out her dreams, but as I wandered into the biggest of the three bedrooms and saw how big it wasn’t, I sighed, shaking my head, just as she walked in with a wistful sigh.

“Look at this view!” she squealed, hurrying toward the large window, looking out to a yard full of ancient, unkempt trees and wildflowers. “God, that yard is beautiful. We could put a swing set over there, maybe lay some pavers—”

I smoothed a hand over my chin, standing beside her to peer through the old glass pane and into the yard, wondering why the hell I was seeing the things she wasn’t.

“Babe …”

“Do you think we could fit a pool back there? It’s kinda small, and I know, with town code and all, it probably won’t work. But that would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

I sighed, pressing my hand to her lower back. “Babe, maybe we should keep look—”

“You don’t love this house?” she asked, seemingly startled by the revelation.

It guilted me to laugh, but I couldn’t help myself. “Meghan, are you kidding? This place is—”

“It’s beautiful,” she insisted, and I agreed with a nod.

“Yes, it is. Or it could be at least. But, baby, the amount of work it needs is …” I swung my gaze toward the broken fence surrounding the yard’s perimeter and huffed sardonically. “Honestly, it’s insane. We don’t have this type of money.”

She was immediately defensive, crossing her arms over her chest as she proceeded to pout. “But I love it,” she said. “I can see us living here.”