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Slamming it shut, I jumped up from my stool and circled the island, as if attempting to make sense of how this might work. Not ten seconds into my musings, the doorbell rang. I ran to my phone. Eleven thirty. Minutes, not hours, had passed.

There were also more than one worried text messages from Nolan. So when the front door opened, the doorbell a warning he was coming in, I wasn’t at all surprised to see him appear in my kitchen.

“I just saw your texts.”

“Jesus, woman. You scared the hell out of me.”

“I’m fine. Just,” I waved toward Father Simon’s chronicles. “Just reading.”

He crossed his arms. Nolan knew me better than that. I was lying, and he could tell.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on a date?”

“Lisa’s done.”

Good.

Thankfully, I hadn’t said it out loud. I’d only pretended to like her for his sake. She was way too flighty for him. Nolan needed someone with depth. He might be handy and part-owner of a hardware shop, but one thing we’d always connected on was our mutual love of thinking about the world and our place in it.

Erudite.

That’s what Rowan had called me. It didn't matter Nolan went to community college, dropped out after two years or was allergic to books. He was just as much a deep thinker as me.

And I loved that.

“What’s going on with you?”

Except … his eyes were the wrong shade of blue.

My fingers drifted to my lips before I could stop them, as if I could still feel Rowan’s almost-kiss, the warmth of his breath against my skin. The scent of smoke and pine had followed me back … faint but real.

“Lena?” Nolan’s voice softened. “You’re shaking.”

I blinked hard. “It’s just been a long week.”

As he moved closer, laughing too brightly. “Guess I’m more tired than I thought.”

Nolan watched me a little too long, the way he did when he was trying to solve something.

“It’s more than that.”

He was right, of course.

“Come here baby,” he said, the same way he had when my last boyfriend had turned out to be a love-bombing, gaslighting narcissist, and I finally figured it out.

I fell into his chest as easily as a kitten who hadn’t yet realized she could rebuff its owner and still be queen of the household. His arms wrapped around me, warm and safe, and for a moment, Riven and Rowan and the book melted away.

And there was just Nolan.

My best friend.