Page 97 of The Story Between Us

Her mouth. The taste of her. The small sound she’d made when he deepened the kiss.

He deleted the sentence.

Stared at the blank page.

From the kitchen came the sound of water running, the coffee maker starting. She was humming something—soft, tuneless, the same way she always hummed when she was thinking. The same way she’d hummed last night while reading his chapters.

He put his head in his hands.

How was he supposed to write now?

The cursor blinked. Mocking him. Again.

He’d spent three years unable to write because of grief, because every word felt like betraying Emma’s memory, because the blank page reminded him of everything he’d lost.

Now he couldn’t write because his mind was full of Livvie—the feel of her in his arms, the taste of her mouth, the way she’d pulled him closer before she’d pulled away.

The coffee maker beeped.

Her footsteps crossed the kitchen floor.

The cursor blinked.

He closed his eyes. Took a breath. Tried to clear his head.

And realized—slowly, like dawn breaking over the lake—that for the first time in three years, the blankness wasn’t terrifying.

It was full of possibility.

His fingers found the keys.

Aldric stood at the edge of the forest. Behind him, the ruins of everything he’d known. Ahead, a path he couldn’t see. And in his hand, a key that promised something he’d stopped believing in: that the ending wasn’t written yet.

He stopped. Read it back.

It wasn’t perfect. But it was something.

It was a beginning.

The coffee smell drifted in from the kitchen, and Nate Rivers sat at his desk, surrounded by yellow Post-its and impossible deadlines and the lingering taste of a kiss he shouldn’t have taken, and felt something he hadn’t felt in years.

Inspired.

Fourteen

The Storybook Corner was finally finished.

Livvie stood back, paintbrush in hand, and surveyed the last panel of the mural. A silver fox—sleek and clever-eyed—peered out from behind a grove of maple trees, its tail curled in a question mark. Emma’s sketch had been rough, almost hurried, like she’d been racing against time even then. But Livvie had filled in the details, brought the creature to life with careful strokes of burnt sienna and cream.

The whole wall was alive now. An enchanted forest straight out of the Thornwood Chronicles—towering trees with gnarled roots, a stone archway covered in vines, a winding path that disappeared into mist. The beautiful, glittering dragon, the egg with the baby dragon breaking through, and tucked into the corners, hidden like secrets: a dragon’s eye watching from the shadows, a crown half buried in leaves, runes carved into tree bark that spelled out Emma’s initials.

E.R.

This is for you, Emma.

Livvie’s chest tightened. She needed to sneak the notebook back into Nate’s house—he’d mentioned missing it. But with him having been holed up in his office for two days, well, probably he wouldn’t even notice her.

In fact, he’d said almost nothing to her since the kiss. And she refused to read into it—after all, she’d been the one to push him away. But he’d dived into the story and barely surfaced.