Page 105 of The Story Between Us

She blinked. “Yeah. The vendors are already set up. Opening bonfire. Edie’s been talking about it all week—she’s made so many sugar cookies that look like little flannel shirts.” A pause. “Why?”

“Let’s go.”

The words hung in the air between them. Her lips parted. Her eyes widened—just slightly, just enough to show surprise before she could smooth it over.

“Really?”

“Really.”

Her whole face transformed. That smile—the one that made his chest tight, the one he wanted to see every morning for the rest of his life. It started at the corners of her mouth and spread outward, reaching her eyes, changing the geometry of her face into something radiant.

“Okay,” she said. “Yes. Okay. That’s—” She stopped. Took a breath. “That’s great. That’s really great.”

The coffee maker beeped. She turned to pour, and he watched her—the graceful efficiency of her movements, the way she added cream to hers and left his black without asking, the small domestic intimacy of two people who knew each other’s habits.

She handed him his mug. Their fingers brushed.

He didn’t pull away.

“But first,” she said, and her voice was steadier now, teasing, “you have a book to finish. So drink your coffee, eat a doughnut, and get to work, Hemingway.”

She picked up her own mug and the bakery box and walked toward the living room, toward the couch where she’d been spending her afternoons reading his chapters and making notes.

He stood in the kitchen, coffee in his hand, watching her go.

Emma, he thought. Did you send her?

No answer. But he didn’t need one.

He knew what he was going to write.

The words came.

Not all at once—nothing magical about it. Just the steady accumulation of sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into pages. The cursor that had mocked him in the early morning finally moved.

Aldric stood in front of the woman who’d saved him and ruined him and saved him again, and Nate knew exactly what he was supposed to say.

“I don’t know how to do this.”

He typed the words. Saw Aldric saying them—standing in the aftermath of the battle, covered in ash and blood, looking at the woman who’d betrayed him to save him, who’d broken his trust to earn it back.

“Do what?” Kaela asked.

“This.” Aldric’s gesture encompassed everything—her, him, the space between them. “I know how to fight. I know how to grieve. I know how to build walls and defend them. But I don’t know how to⁠—”

He stopped typing. Started again.

“You make me want things I stopped wanting a long time ago. That terrifies me. Because wanting things means losing them, and I’ve already lost so much.”

The room changed around him as the hours passed. Morning light became afternoon light. The coffee went cold; he didn’t care. Huck curled up at his feet; Finn stayed with Livvie. He could hear her turning pages in the other room. The soft scratch of her pen when she made notes.

This was what he’d been missing. Not just her help with the story—her presence in his home. The sound of another person living in his space. The knowledge that when he looked up from his desk, she’d be there.

“I could tell you that you’re worth more than the space you don’t take up,” Aldric said. “I could tell you that you changed everything. That I was drowning, and you taught me how to breathe again.”

Nate’s fingers paused on the keys.

“But that’s not the thing that scares me,” Aldric continued. “The thing that scares me is what comes after. When the battle’s over. When the world doesn’t need saving anymore. When it’s just you and me and all the ordinary days ahead of us.”