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He stills, and after a beat, he says, “Yeah. But I haven’t.”

So come home, then, I think, but don’t say.

When he left, he tossed a grenade into the life he’d lived here—I’m starting to understand how hard it was to come back. What I don’t get is why it was so easy to leave in the first place.

Part of me wants to ask, but the other part of me—the part that’s focusing on moving on—keeps the question locked away.

Someday, maybe we’ll talk about it.

But not today.

After a good hour, we row back to shore and spend the rest of the day working with my brothers and sister to finish the barn and yard clean-up. Quent grumbles about “those stupid cows” at least seven times that I heard, and I think we all take a turn riding out to triple check the fences just to be sure they’re secure.

Noble disappears for a while after lunch, and when Boone asks where he’s going, he just says, “I’ve got another fence to mend.”

When he returns a few hours later, he seems lighter. It’s hard not to pry, being a person who wants to know everything about him, but I manage.

After we’ve put in a full day, we all meet down at the lake, grab kayaks and race to the other side like there’s actual prize money on the line.

I have zero chill about winning, basically treating it like an Olympic gold medal. This earns me three oars-full of water shot straight at my face, and when my brothers finally calm down, I’m struck with the pang of nostalgia against the sun setting in the mountains.

Here, in the splashy haze of golden hour in the early days of fall, I warm with the quiet thought that it’s just like old times.

We’re all older now, but out on the water, we’re all seventeen.

And when I was seventeen, I was in love with Noble Kane.

The next day, he and I are back on the water early, this time side-by-side, and when he challenges me to a race, I don’t wait for him to count before I take off. He catches, but doesn’t overtake, me, and we reach the middle point at the same time.

Only one of us is out of breath.

Our time out there mirrors the day before, both of us soaking up the quiet. Neither of us filling it with chatter. There’s something special about being able to sit in silence with a person. And while I get the sense that the lake is healing something in Noble the same way it heals things in me, I don’t press him to tell me what he’s thinking about. Noble has never been someone who dissects his feelings out loud, and I know if he wants to tell me, he will.

And I really hope he wants to tell me.

Mid-morning, it’s time to assess what’s left on the Wedding Chore List—which is in addition to the normal chore list that comes with living on a working cattle farm.

It’s a list that doesn’t seem to be getting any shorter.

The renovations are done, but the cabins still need to be decorated. One room still needs outlet covers because the ones I ordered didn’t match. Two of the ceiling fans click like they’re off balance. We need more twinkle lights because I want the entire yard to feel like a sparkly wonderland. And the wedding chairs and reception tables need to be wiped down.

That and about eighty-nine other little things.

I grab a screwdriver from a junk drawer in the kitchen, then walk upstairs to get started on some of those small details. I’ll knock those off, and it’ll shorten the list, and at least make me feel like I’m making progress. I go up one more flight into one of the loft bedrooms to screw on the new outlet covers that arrived yesterday.

But the package is not on the desk where I left it. I turn a circle, looking around the small room, when I see the new outlet covers are already on.

I flip on the light switch, and the ceiling fan whirrs to life. I listen for the off-balance click that needs fixing, but I’m met with silence.

I walk through the rest of the lodge, surveying each room, and find that everything looks ready.

Like, everything.

The annoying little details—Patch the holes in the wall in the bathroom, hang artwork in the loft bedrooms, fix the shelf in the sitting room—are all done. The rooms are painted, beds are made, extra linens are neatly stacked in the closets.

So I go outside and walk around the rest of the grounds. I do a quick check of the barn, the two guest cabins, the Woodland Forest, and the area of the yard designated for cocktail hour—and everything looks perfect.

Ready.