Page 5 of Until the Last Leaf Falls

“Libraries, woods, random glades… leaves, you know?” He raised the mug to his lips and his eyes closed at the first taste as if he were a cat sitting in a sunbeam. “Oh, yes. This is quite delicious.” He took another sip, then resumed his study of the room. “You’ve created a beautiful, peaceful space here.”

Niles kept his eye on the coffee dripping into his mug. “A little too peaceful, perhaps. What’s the point of collecting all these books when nobody comes to read them?”

That… had come out with more vehemence than he’d intended. He loved his library, would keep it open and stocked even if nobody ever came and he made endless rounds of the town delivering and collecting books.

Wouldn’t he?

“Don’t belittle your efforts. The tallest oak drinks from a web of roots that no one praises.”

Orren’s voice, the cadence of a storyteller, stilled Niles’s hands, then brought his attention back to the room, to Orren.

“You feel invisible, but your library is more than a building filled with books. It is a root system. You are planting seeds of knowledge and connection in a soil that does not yet know it is hungry.”

Orren took a sip of hot chocolate, and when he raised his head and smiled, Niles thought of sunshine on his skin and a soft breeze in his hair.

“A tree does not beg for the sun’s attention, you know? It simply grows until it can shelter others in its shade.”

“You’re saying I’m impatient.”

“Not in all things. You don’t rush your trees, do you now? Don’t forget your coffee.”

Face flaming, Niles retrieved his mug, then pointed to the sofa. “Please sit. You don’t have to enjoy your drink standing up.”

“I don’t mind. This house has stood here for a long time.”

“It was built as a posting house. In the 1700s. I don’t know what came before.”

“Trees,” Orren said with confidence. “Some live on in the walls around us. You kept much of the old place.”

“As much as I could.” Niles touched the beam slanting up one wall. “What’s the point of buying an old building if I then rip its heart out?”

Orren’s smile was blinding now, like the sun’s long, low rays at the day’s end. “And you brought back the trees.”

Heat shivered through Niles, gathered in his ears and cheeks until he turned his face away to hide his embarrassment. Was he so starved for… whatever Orren offered?

“I love trees.” Keeping up with the conversation required effort, but Niles made himself focus. “When I first saw the courtyard, all I could picture in the space were trees. No sense arguing with one’s gut feeling, right?”

“No sense at all,” Orren agreed. He set his empty mug on the counter besides the one Niles had used. “May I look around?”

“Of course.” Delight fizzed through Niles like champagne. His library had a visitor, and that visitor planned to stay a while.

Orren spent most of the day in the library, perusing the shelves and eventually settling at a desk in a corner with a stack of books.

Niles unpacked, catalogued, and shelved new books, his focus marred by the novelty of having another person in his space. Not that Orren was noisy. He sat bent over his books, and his eyes never left the page, but he couldn’t have been more distracting had he shouted. He’d shed his jacket and had pushed up his sleeves, baring muscular forearms and a dark brown leather braid that wound around his left wrist. His curls tumbled over his forehead as he read, and every so often he’d sweep them back with an impatient hand. Niles itched to ask about Orren’s research, offer his help—but when he remembered his awkward, stumbling attempts at conversation at his last networking meeting, everything in him cringed. Much safer to leave Orren to his reading and bring him a mug of hot chocolate every now and then.

His work had never interested him so little, but familiarity eventually won out, and Niles lost himself in coding, becoming so immersed he started when Orren set a coffee beside him and thanked him for the use of the library.

“We’re open every day,” Niles managed, unsure how to invite Orren to return without sounding pushy.

“Except Sundays. It says so on the sign outside.”

Orren’s voice held amusement, and Niles felt his ears grow hot. Again. “Except Sundays.”

A smile. A nod. Then the door closed behind Orren, and reality reasserted itself. His desk in his library: a quiet refuge that had sheltered few beside himself since he’d opened the door for the first time. A too-large, too-empty space.

Niles’s breath hitched. “Don’t think like that,” he admonished himself. “Think of today.”

Because now, Niles could invoke the image of Orren—studying the shelves, sitting at a desk and reading, a broad hand sweeping back the wayward curls. He could even picture him taking his first sip of hot chocolate, eyes half-closed in delight.