Page 59 of How to Say I Do
He chewed on his bottom lip and dragged his fork across our shared plate. “I knew she’d like it,” he finally said. “I knew she would. Everything you’d said, and the way you described this place… I saw it so perfectly. And it’s exactly what she was dreaming of.” He breathed in. “Wyatt, I’m not going to let it become a circus. I won’t let your father’s dream be trampled. I promise.”
We were so close, touching from our calves to our hips to our shoulders. It was easy to turn to him and drop a kiss on his hair. We stayed like that, not moving, not letting time roll forward—
Until he yawned, just like in Cancun, right into my face. He sucked in a breath, this huge, whooshing racket, and flapped his hand in front of his mouth like he was blowing out a fire. I chuckled into the side of his neck.
“We’ve got so much to do, but can we take a nap first?” Noël sounded like a first-grader.
“Yeah, a nap sounds good. C’mon.”
I took his hand and led him upstairs.
I’d rebuilt our home exactly as before, even the sunroom, even the upstairs. My parents’ old bedroom had become my office, and I still slept in the bedroom I’d had as a boy, with a shared bathroom connecting Liam’s old bedroom with mine.
Liam and Savannah and Jason had lived here when Jason was a baby and they were still going to school. I used to watch Jason while they were in classes, and there was a well-worn path trod into the landing where my boots had hit the hardwood, pacing while I hummed baby Jason into his nap. Lord, he used to be smaller than my two hands.
Over the years, Liam’s rodeo posters were replaced with Spider-Man and Mario, and now his dresser was full of outgrown baby onesies and old burp clothes. There were still tub toys in my bathroom, and Jason’s baby mobile, a parade of playful farm animals, still hung over the empty space where his crib used to be, over beneath the corner window where the sunlight would tickle his chubby cheeks.
What would Noël think if he saw me holding on so tightly to my past?
I’m a chicken. I didn’t want him to see.
It would have been better to guide Noël into Liam’s old room and let him have his space, but instead, I took him to mine.
He hesitated at the doorway, first staring at my bed like it was a hole in the ground, then turning to inspect every inch of my room. It wasn’t the same as when I was a boy—there were no collections of dinosaur stickers on the bottom of my dresser, and all my Little League trophies were gone—but it still had a time-capsule feel, like I’d bottled up a part myself and had never let go.
I’d never had a man in my house, or in this room. Having Noël here felt like I’d unzipped my adult self and was revealing my inner baby boy, still hidden inside my bones.
Yesterday, I’d said I wasn’t going to let Noël hurt me anymore, and now he was in my bedroom. I was my own worst enemy.
I toed off my boots and left them in a heap, then tugged off my button-down and draped it over the footboard. I crawled into bed in my jeans and t-shirt. It took a minute, but Noël followed, kicking off his sneakers and dropping his cardigan before sliding into my bed on his side, facing me. He took my hand and threaded our fingers together. I curled an arm beneath his neck and pressed my lips to his forehead.
What did it mean that he was here?
What did he want from me? What did I want from him? What were we doing to each other?
And what happened in six months, once he had his partnership and I had my site fee, and Tessa was married, and our lives moved in different directions? Were we doomed to collide and part ways until we bounced so hard off each other we’d never meet again?
We should have talked about all of it, but we didn’t. He closed his eyes, and I closed mine.
Right before I fell asleep, I heard him whisper, “And I wanted to see you again.”
We woke after noon, and then we had to scramble. Noël had a late flight out of San Antonio, and we hadn’t gone through a single line of his site evaluation or his to-dos. We hopped to it, working from the front of the property to the back, from the barn to the house to the yard, talking through everything from erecting shade sails to stringing globe lights to clearing out a space for a dance floor.
Noël’s to-do list turned into my to-do list. I wasn’t going to be bored any time soon. I had a heap of work to do to earn my site fee, but, when all was said and done, this place was going to be beautiful. Noël’s vision echoed my dad’s dreams. This was the leap forward I’d wanted to take myself, but I hadn’t been able to work up the courage to tackle it.
We finished with just enough time to rush through town and grab his bag from the bed and breakfast and race to the airport. All along the drive, Noël shot off emails and answered phone calls, directing celebrity assistants and models and setting call times for shoots and appearances and bookings.
When he took a breath, I reached across the center console for him. He powered off his cell and relaxed into the seat, and we held hands for the last hour of the drive. He sang along with my old country radio, humming to Waylon and Willie and songs I didn’t even know he knew.
He had less than an hour to get to his gate when I pulled up at the departures curb. Not long enough, certainly, for a meaningful goodbye, or to ask him the questions I’d been scraping off the inside of my skull.Will you be back? Are we doing anything here? What do I mean to you?
He was rushing to get out of the truck—phone shoved into the tight front pocket of his skinny jeans, notebook and iPad pushed into his bag, ID out, sunglasses off—when a glint of gold caught my eye, slipping out from beneath the neck of his t-shirt. That glint belonged to a ring, a ring slipped through a chain, and it stopped my heart cold. Was that the ring he was supposed to wear with Jenna?Stupid, Wyatt. So stupid. You keep trying to be important to him, but you were just the getting-over-her hookup—
Then I saw a line of sea turtles marching around the middle. I’d put that ring on his hand.
I reached for it, my fingers brushing the hollow of Noël’s throat. “You still have it.”
He froze, halfway out of his seatbelt. “I never take it off.”
