Page 18 of The Story Between Us

“You look terrible.”

He almost laughed. Almost. “Thanks. I’m going for a look. A sort of postapocalyptic-hermit vibe.”

“You’re nailing it.” She tilted her head, studying him like he was a manuscript with a structural problem. “When’s the last time you ate something you didn’t nuke in a microwave?”

“Define ‘ate.’”

“Nate.”

“I eat. I eat plenty. I had…” He tried to remember breakfast. Had he eaten breakfast? There was coffee. Coffee counted. “Toast. This morning. Probably.”

Lila’s eyebrows rose in that way that said she didn’t believe a word he was saying but was too polite to call him a liar outright.

“I’m making soup later,” she said. “Butternut squash. Your favorite.”

“Lila—”

“I’m not asking you to eat it. I’m telling you I’m making it. If some of it happens to end up on your porch, and you happen to eat it, that’s just coincidence.”

The ache in his chest burned sudden and sharp. This was what she’d been doing for three years—leaving food on his porch, notes he didn’t read, small acts of kindness he didn’t deserve. And he’d repaid her with silence. With closed curtains. With the kind of distance that would insult anyone less stubborn.

“You don’t have to keep doing that,” he managed.

“I know I don’t have to.” She reached out and touched his arm, just briefly. “I want to. There’s a difference.”

He didn’t know what to say. He never knew what to say. The words that used to come so easily—the one skill he still had, the one thing he’d claimed as his own—had dried up like a creek in drought.

Lila saved him from having to respond. “I’m working on a new one,” she said casually, like they were just neighbors chatting about the weather. “A bear who forgets how to hibernate. Gets so caught up in doing things, settling everyone else in for winter, that he can’t remember how to rest himself.” She paused. “The illustrations are giving me trouble. I keep making him look too sad.”

She wasn’t talking about the bear. They both knew she wasn’t talking about the bear.

Nate stared at the coffee shelf like it held the secrets of the universe.

“Livvie called me yesterday,” Lila added, and the name hit him like a sucker punch to the solar plexus. “Said she might be coming to Minnesota.”

Coming here?

“That’s nice,” he heard himself say, from somewhere very far away.

“She worries about you, you know.” Lila’s voice turned gentle, almost knowing. His throat tightened. “She always has.”

Don’t. Don’t do this. Don’t make me think about⁠—

“I should go.” The words came out too fast, too sharp. “The dogs need—I have to⁠—”

“Nate.”

He stopped.

“She still talks about that summer.” Lila’s eyes were soft, seeing too much. “The one where you two stayed up until three in the morning arguing about hobbits. She says you gave her notes on my Brave Little Lantern draft that she still thinks about.”

He remembered all of it. The firepit, the blue chairs, the way Livvie tucked her feet under herself when she was making a point. The way her laugh carried across the water. Their late-night swim and the way he almost—should have⁠—

“I really have to go.”

He didn’t wait for her response. He was already moving, basket banging against his leg, practically sprinting toward the register where Walt Hagen watched him approach with a lifted brow. He’d probably heard everything.

“Just these,” Nate mumbled, dumping the dog food and a random bag of coffee he’d grabbed without looking.