Page 44 of The Story Between Us

“Good. You’ve earned it.” She glanced at the notebooks spread across the desk, and something flickered across her face—recognition, maybe, or concern. “Are they helping?”

No. They’re making it worse. They’re reminding me that she ran the engine and I just made her words pretty. They’re proving what I’ve always known—that I can’t do this without her.

“Sometimes,” he said.

Livvie nodded, not pushing. She’d learned not to push. “I made cookies. They’re in the kitchen if you want some. Edie’s recipe—she wrote it out for me.”

“Thanks.”

She backed toward the door, giving him space. “I’ll let you get back to it. Just yell if you need anything.”

The door closed.

He stared at the screen.

The thing behind the wall had been waiting.

What came next?

What came next?

What came next?

The light outside shifted as twenty minutes passed. Maybe thirty. The afternoon sun dropped lower, painting the lake in shades of gold and copper.

He couldn’t do this.

The realization pressed him into the chair like a physical weight. The three new pages amounted to a fluke. The breakthrough had ended. He’d landed back where he’d spent the last three years—staring at a cursor, reaching for words that wouldn’t come, drowning in a silence that used to be full of Emma’s voice.

This would never work.

He closed the laptop. Not gently—with force, like slamming a door on something unbearable.

The office shrank around him. The walls pressed too close. Emma’s notebooks covered every surface, her handwriting staring up at him, and he couldn’t breathe.

He stood up. Pushed back from the desk. Walked out of the office and down the hall, expecting⁠—

What? An empty house? Livvie finally giving up, packing her things, driving back to New York where she belonged?

Everyone left eventually. That’s what people did. They realized he held nothing inside, stayed stuck, a fraud coasting on borrowed genius, and they went.

But she remained.

Curled on the couch, shoes off, legs tucked under her. His first book open in her lap—the hardcover he kept on the shelf. The late-afternoon light caught the auburn in her hair, turned her profile soft and golden.

She smiled at something on the page, and his heart thumped.

She smiled at his words. Words he’d written with Emma, years ago, when writing had still come easily. She read them like they mattered. Like they held worth.

Huck lifted his head from the dog bed, tail thumping. Finn sprawled across Livvie’s feet, completely claimed.

She looked up. “Hey.” Her smile widened, warm and open, freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks. “How’s it going? Did you find the thread again?”

The question hung in the air.

He looked at her face. The hope in it. The belief. She’d stayed here all day, cleaning his house, making him coffee, giving him space to work. She’d taken him on that walk this morning and listened to him ramble until the scene formed.

Then ran with him home, to capture it.