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As I move from room to room, I spot him out the window, sitting out at the end of the dock.

The buzz of anxiety inside me settles.

It’s gotten cooler as the week has gone on, and he’s out there in a T-shirt, so I grab a blanket and make my way outside, crunching through the leaves, eyes trained on him, moving quickly so I don’t lose my nerve.

As I walk, I try to figure out what I’m going to say when I reach him. I’m thinking of starting with something like . . . “I was a selfish brat,” and ending with “Please don’t run away again,” with a little “I love you so much it scares me” thrown in for good measure.

When I reach the dock, he turns and looks at me, and when I see the relief on his face, my nerves start to settle.

“Hey.” He stands and stuffs his hands in his pockets.

Seconds later, I’m in his arms, like we both need to know going into whatever happens next that we’re going to be okay.

He pulls back and motions toward the dock. “Can we sit?” We do, both of us quiet, staring out over the water. The trees have started changing, and soon there’ll be snow. A new season is just around the corner.

I spread the blanket over our legs, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to do anything to keep me from shivering. Not when my nerves have me so out of sorts.

“Where’s Nell?” I ask.

“She left,” he says.

There’s a pause. I want to climb back in his arms and pretend everything’s fine. Pretend Nell never showed up, and make sure he knows I never believed her. Not really. I want to pretend it’s possible to simply erase the past even though it’s clearly still a factor in our relationship.

But I don’t want anything about my relationship with Noble to be pretend.

“I saw the arch,” I say.

He looks at me. “Ah, dang it. It was supposed to be a surprise.”

I bump his shoulder with mine. “It’s beautiful. When did you have time to do that?”

“I started planning it out the day after you mentioned it,” he says. “Worked on it at the main house, in the garage. Got a little harder to hide it after we . . . after we, uh . . .” He goes quiet.

After we became “us.”

“Thank you,” I say. “It’s perfect. Better than I imagined.”

“Well, I saw your sketch.”

I pull a face. “My sketch looked like it was drawn by a chimp with a stick.”

“Yeah,” he laughs. “It was really bad.”

I press into him a little closer, needing that point of contact as if it’s confirmation that after there will still be us.

There’s a lull.

Now or never, Hattie.

I hate not being able to just say what I think. That’s never been that hard for me, ever. Especially with Noble. But this makes me feel vulnerable.

He’ll see how deep my feelings are. That I love him and have loved him. For years.

There’s no way to keep any of that to myself because it’s going to be right there, all over my stupid face.

He reaches over and takes my hand. “I think we need to talk.”

My gaze falls to my lap, and I brush my thumb over his. “Yeah, we do.”