“I don’t give a shit where the book gets shelved.” Our eyes locked for a tense moment.
“I don’t believe you.”
He lowered his head. “You don’t know me.”
My cheeks heated, my heart rate spiked, and more than anything, I wanted to have this argument over the phone so I could end it and stomp out the infuriating flickers of emotion Noah never failed to ignite within me.
I liked it numb. Numb was safe.
Noah was a lot of things, but safe wasn’t one of them.
I ripped my eyes away from his.
“What is that?” He leaned slightly, his eyes narrowing.
I followed his line of sight. “The gazebo.” The breeze whipped by, and I tucked my hair behind my ears as I marched past Noah, heading into the aspen grove. Space. I needed space.
The crunching footsteps behind me implied that he followed, so I kept going. About fifty feet in, dead center in the grove, was a gazebo fashioned entirely from the trunks of aspen trees. I walked up the steps, trailing my fingers lovingly over the railings, which had been sanded smooth and replaced over the years, just like the floor and roof. But the supports were the originals.
Noah came up beside me, turning slowly so he could see all of the space. It was roughly the size of our dining room but shaped in a circle. I watched him carefully, preparing myself for what would no doubt be a judgment of the rustic little space I’d favored as a kid.
“This is phenomenal.” His voice dropped as he walked to one of the railings and looked over the edge. “How long has it been here?”
“Gran built it in the forties with Grandpa Jameson’s dad and uncle. They finished it before VE day.” I leaned back against one of the trunks. “Every summer Gran would have a desk brought out so she could write here, and I’d play while she worked.” I smiled at the memory.
When he turned toward me, his expression had softened, sadness filling his eyes. “This is where she waited for him.”
I wrapped my arms around my middle and nodded. “I used to think their love was built into it. That’s why she always had it repaired, never rebuilt.”
“You don’t anymore?” He moved close enough to my side that I felt the heat of him against my shoulder.
“No. I think she built her sorrow, her longing into it. Which makes sense now that I’m older. Love doesn’t last, not like this place.” My gaze slid from trunk to trunk to trunk as a million memories played through my mind. “It’s too delicate, too fragile.”
“Then it’s infatuation, not love.” His voice lowered, and yet another flicker of emotion—longing this time—flared into a flame that centered in my chest.
“Whatever it is, it never quite measures up to the ideal, does it? We just pretend it does, lapping up the sand when we come across the mirage. But this place? It’s sturdy. Solid. The sorrow, the longing, the ache that eats you up after the missed chance…those make fine supports. Those are the emotions that last the test of time.”
I felt his stare again but still couldn’t meet it, not with all the word vomit I’d just spewed all over him.
“I’m sorry he didn’t love you the way you deserve.”
I flinched. “Don’t believe everything you read in the tabloids.”
“I don’t read tabloids. I know what wedding vows mean, and I’ve learned enough about you to know that you took them seriously.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I tucked my hair again before I could stop my hands, his gaze warming my skin like a physical touch.
“Did you know that our brains are biologically programmed to remember painful memories better?” he asked.
I shook my head as a shiver of cold swept over me now that we were shaded. Noah closed the inches between us, giving me his heat. The man was a furnace, if his arm was any indication.
“It’s true,” he continued. “It’s our way of protecting ourselves, to remember something painful so we don’t repeat the same mistake.”
“A defense mechanism,” I mused.
“Exactly.” He turned his head to look at me. “Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do whatever it was again. Just means we have to push past the pain our brains won’t let go of.”
“What do they say about the definition of insanity?” I asked, tilting my face so I could meet his eyes. “Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome?”
“It’s never the same. There are a million variations of any situation. No two people are alike. The tiniest change to any encounter could leave us with very different results. I like to think of the possibilities as a tree. Maybe you start with the one path—” He tapped the nearest trunk. “But fate throws all the branches out and what seems like a tiny choice, left or right, becomes another and another, until the possibilities of what could have been are endless.”
“Like if I hadn’t found out Damian was cheating, I’d still be with him? Well, maybe if there wasn’t a baby.” My voice dropped off, and I shut that line of thinking down.
“Maybe. But you’re on a different branch now because you did. And maybe that other branch exists in the fictional realm of possibilities, but in this one, you’re here with me.” His gaze dropped to my lips and back. “I’m sorry that he fucked up but not sorry you know about it. You deserve better.”
“Gran never wanted me to marry him.” I shifted my weight but left us connected. “She wanted what she had with Grandpa Jameson for me. Not that she didn’t love Grandpa Brian, because she did.”
“It took her forty years to move on. Was she finally happy?”
I nodded. “She really was, from what she’s said. I never really pushed her to talk about it, though. It always seemed too painful. Damian did once or twice, but he was always a nosy ass. Still, even while she was married to Grandpa Brian, she wrote out here, like she was still waiting for Jameson all those years later.”
“She was the ultimate romantic. Look at this place…” He studied the gazebo. “Can’t you feel them here? Can’t you see them happy in some other fictional realm of possibility? Some other branch where the war doesn’t rip them to shreds?”
I swallowed, thinking of Gran—not the way I remembered her, but the way she looked in the photograph, wildly, recklessly in love.
“I can,” Noah went on. “I see them cutting a little landing strip into the meadow so he could fly, and I see them with half a dozen kids. I see the way he looks at her, like she’s the reason the seasons change and the sun rises until they’re a hundred and one years old.”