Page 101 of The Story Between Us

“Talk to him.” Lila stood, offered her hand. “Tell him the truth. All of it. What you want, what you’re afraid of, what that kiss meant to you. And then—” She smiled. “Then you trust that God’s writing a better story than you could have plotted yourself.”

Livvie took her hand. Let her aunt pull her to standing.

“And if Nate doesn’t feel the same way?” she asked.

Lila cupped her face, the same way she had when Livvie was sixteen and broken and convinced she’d never be enough.

“Then he’s a fool,” she said firmly. “But even then, sweetheart—even then—you’re not invisible. You’re not too much or not enough or any of the lies you’ve believed. You’re exactly who you were made to be. And that is more than sufficient.”

Livvie pulled her into a hug. Breathed in lavender and old books and the kind of love that didn’t come with conditions.

“When did you get so wise?” she mumbled into Lila’s shoulder.

“I’ve always been this wise. You’re just finally ready to listen.” Lila pulled back, smoothed Livvie’s hair. “Now. I’ve left broccoli cheese soup on the stove, and I’m going to pick up some crusty bread and then we’re going home so you can eat an actual meal—not a bagel, Olivia Rose, a meal—and then you can bring over lunch to the grumpy writer next door.”

“Not so grumpy anymore.”

“I’ll bet.” She winked.

“Aunt Lila!”

She laughed and looped her arm through Livvie’s. “Trust the story, sweetheart. Even when you can’t see the ending yet.”

He hadn’t slept in three days.

That wasn’t entirely true—he’d caught fragments here and there, his head on his desk, drooling on chapter twelve. But real sleep, the kind that actually rested you, had been replaced by something else. Something that buzzed under his skin like an electrical current.

Forty-five thousand words in less than seventy-two hours. More than he’d written in the last three years combined.

And he was stuck on the ending. The one scene that mattered.

Aldric stood at the gate, staring at Elara…

And what?

Nate stared at the cursor blinking on his laptop screen. Six different drafts of this scene, all of them wrong. He knew the plot beats—the confrontation, the confession, the choice to trust again—but every time he tried to write the words, they came out wooden. False. Like a man describing love who’d never felt it.

Which, until recently, would have been accurate.

He closed the laptop. Looked at the clock on his desk. 4:18 a.m.

The house creaked in the wind. Huck was curled on his bed, one eye cracked open, watching. Finn had migrated to the family room, or maybe to Emma’s room. He missed her too.

The lake would be still at this hour. The mist would be rising. And maybe, maybe, if he was very quiet, he could hear Emma’s voice telling him what to write.

He pushed back from the desk. His body protested—stiff neck, aching shoulders, that throb behind his eyes that came from staring at a screen for too long. He’d been living on coffee and the maple doughnuts Livvie kept bringing from town and the occasional sandwich she’d place beside his keyboard with a pointed look that said Eat this or I will stand here until you do.

Yesterday, she’d left him soup. Broccoli and cheese. He’d come out to thank her later, but discovered she’d left, darkness having long since descended.

Three days of this. Three days of words pouring out of him like water from a broken dam. The action sequences, the world-building, the grief confrontation where Aldric finally faced what he’d lost. And surprisingly, the arc of the heroine.

All of it flowing, finally flowing, after three years of nothing.

But not the romance. Never the romance.

Emma had always written those parts.

He shrugged on the fleece pullover hanging by the door and walked down to the dock.