That was one year more than Gran had lived, and though I knew it was greedy, I wanted it. Out of every year I’d been alive, this was the one I’d needed her the most.
Noah pivoted, consuming the space in front of me, looking at me with such intensity that I had to fight not to look away. He saw too much, made me feel too exposed. But my body certainly didn’t mind how close he was. My heart thundered, my breath hitched, my blood warmed.
“I see them walking hand in hand at sunset to get a few minutes away—after they put the kids to bed, of course. I see her looking up from her typewriter to watch him walk by, knowing if she gets her work done for the day, he’ll be waiting. I see them laughing, and living, and fighting—always passionate but fair. They’re careful with each other because they know what they have, they know how rare it is, how lucky they were to survive it all with that love intact. They’re still magnetic, still make love like they’ll never get enough, still open, bluntly honest, yet tender.” His hand rose to cup my cheek, warm and steady. My breath caught, my pulse leaping at the touch. “Georgia, can’t you see it? It’s in every line of this place. This isn’t a mausoleum, it’s a promise, a shrine to that love.”
“It’s a beautiful story,” I whispered, wishing that had been their fate…or mine.
“Then let them have it.”
I sidestepped out of his reach, then walked across the gazebo to get some perspective. He wove his words into a world I wanted to live in, but that was his talent, his job. It wasn’t real.
“It wasn’t what she wanted, or she would have written it that way, ended it like all her other books,” I said. “You still think it’s a story, with characters who speak to you and choose their own branches. It’s not. It’s the closest she came to an autobiography, and you can’t change the past.” The tightness in my chest transformed to an ache. “What you described is why you’re so good at what you do, but it’s not what she wanted.” I walked to the split in the railing and down the stairs, staring up at the tops of the trees.
“What she wanted or what you want, Georgia?” he asked from the top of the steps, frustration cutting lines on his forehead.
My eyes slid shut, and I took a steadying breath, then another before turning back to him. “What I want has only ever mattered to one person, and she’s dead. This is all I can give her, Noah. The gift of honoring what she went through—what they lost.”
“You’re taking the easy way out, and that’s not who you are!”
“What the hell makes you think you know me?” I fired back.
“You sculpted a tree coming straight out of the water!”
“And?” I folded my arms over my chest.
“Whether it’s conscious or unconscious, there are pieces of me in every story I tell, and I bet it’s the same for you with sculpting. That tree isn’t anchored by earth. It shouldn’t be able to grow, and yet there it is. And don’t think I didn’t notice the lighting. It shined straight through to highlight the roots. Why else would you call it Indomitable Will?”
He remembered the name of the piece? I shook my head. “This isn’t about me. It’s about her. About them. Wrapping this up with a bow, whether it’s a tearful reunion at a train station or showing her rushing to his bedside, cheapens what she went through. The book ends here, Noah. Right at this gazebo, with Scarlett waiting for a man who never came back to her. Period.”
He looked up to the sky like he was praying for patience, and the fire in his eyes had lowered to a simmer by the time he brought his gaze back to mine. “If you force this, it will earn inevitably shitty reviews and disappoint her fans who will burn me at the stake for fucking with Scarlett Stanton’s legacy. That’s what people will remember, not her love story, not the hundred other books I could write in my lifetime.”
I bristled. His career. Of course. “Then use the opt-out and walk away.” I did exactly that, not bothering to look back as I headed down the path.
I’d seen enough looks of disappointment in my life without adding his to the mix.
“The farthest I’m walking is back to my place. I’m here for the next two and a half months, remember?”
“Good luck crossing the creek in those shoes!” I called back over my shoulder.
Chapter Fourteen
November 1940
Kirton-in-Lindsey, England
The pub was jammed full of uniforms from bar to door. It had taken Jameson a week to secure a house nearby but, for a rather healthy chunk of his pay, as of yesterday, they now had a place of their very own. At least for as long as the 71st stayed in Kirton.
As of this afternoon, Scarlett was his wife.
Wife. It wasn’t that she wasn’t aware of just how reckless they’d been to marry so quickly—it was simply that she didn’t care. That beautiful man with the bright smile and undeniable charm was now her husband.
Her breath hitched as their eyes locked across the crowded room. Husband. She glanced at the clock and wondered exactly how much longer they’d have to stay at their wedding breakfast, because the only hunger she had was for him.
And they were finally married.
“I’m so very happy for you,” Constance said, squeezing her sister’s hand lightly under the table.
“Thank you.” Scarlett’s smile was a mile wide, just as it had been since they’d come to Kirton. “It’s a far cry from what we pictured as girls, but now I couldn’t imagine having it any other way.” The wedding that afternoon had been small, attended only by their closest friends and a few of the pilots from the 71st, but had been perfectly lovely. Constance had procured a small bouquet, and though Scarlett’s dress wasn’t the family heirloom she had always assumed she would wear, the way Jameson looked at her told her she looked beautiful, nonetheless.
“Me either,” Constance agreed. “But I could say that about everything in our life. Nothing is how I pictured it two years ago.”
“It isn’t, but maybe in some small ways it’s better.” Scarlett understood her sister all too well, and though she longed for the days before the war, before the bombings, and the rationing, and the commonplace death, she couldn’t regret any of her decisions that brought her to Jameson.
Somehow, she’d found a miracle in the middle of the maelstrom, and it may have taken her a moment to realize what she had, but now that she did, she would fight with everything she had to keep it—to keep him.
“I am sorry Mother and Father didn’t come,” Constance whispered. “I held out hope until the very last moment.”
Scarlett’s smile slipped, but not much. She’d known that her letter would go unanswered. “Oh Constance, ever the romantic. It should have been you to elope, not me.” Scarlett stared across the pub, marveling that Jameson was hers. How ironic that the more practical of the two of them had been the one to run off and be married. She could barely believe it herself, yet here she was celebrating her wedding—in a pub, of all places.