Page 21 of Haunting the Mountain Man
“No,” she says firmly. “You’re supposed to make him eat those words. You show up tomorrow in that dress you love, dyed black like you wanted, and you look him dead in the eye. If he wants to push you away, make him do it in front of the judge, and all the busybodies in Crescent Ridge. Let him own it. Or,” her tone softens, “he’ll prove that he loves you the way you deserve.”
My throat tightens again, but it’s not from crying this time. It’s from hope, fragile and treacherous, rising in my chest.
“What if you’re wrong?” I whisper.
Noel chuckles, dark and dry.
“Only one man was able to fool me, and that’s because my head was too far in the clouds to notice the obvious. I’m never wrong about men. Especially not lumberjacks with hearts bigger than their biceps. He’s already gone for you, Sabrina. He just hasn’t figured out how to stop sabotaging himself yet.”
Oswald sprawls across my lap, purring like nothing in the world has gone wrong. Maybe Noel’s right. Cole’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t want me. He can’t believe he deserves love.
Still, the hurt lingers sharp under my ribs.
“I don’t know if I can face him,” I admit.
“You can,” Noel says simply. “And you will. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about you, it’s that you don’t back down from a fight. Not with tourists, not with this town, and not with a man too dumb to realize he’s already yours.”
Her words hang in the quiet. And for the first time since Cole’s call, a spark of defiance stirs in me.
The hurt still lingers but it’s duller now. Noel has always been the optimistic one out of the two of us. At least she was until her fiancé proved himself to be a lying piece of shit. Now a year later she’s finally reclaiming that spark of joy and optimism and I’m happy to see it.
“Hang on,” I mutter as a thought strikes me. “When did you figure out it was Cole?”
Noel’s giggle echoes loud and bright in my ear.
“I made a list ofallthe single men in town.”
“No!” I shout in disbelief.
“I did,” she sing songs. “Did you know there are exactly two-hundred and thirty-seven?”
“No,” I repeat in awe.
“Yes,” she says. “And I eliminated them one by one.”
“How long did it take?”
“I narrowed it down to him and that bossy carpenter living in the old clocktower.”
“So, you didn’t know it was Cole?”
“Not until I saw you at the Fall Festival yesterday.”
“No!”
“Yes!” she chirps. “You’re lucky I’m the only one. Calhoun and Madison were there too with Stella.”
“It would ruin my grand reveal,” I mutter.
“You’re so melodramatic.”
“It’s a lifestyle.”
“If you don’t marry that man, there won’t be any grand reveal.”
“Shut up,” I grumble. “You’re making too many good points.”
Later after we end the call, the silence in my apartment is deafening. Even the cats sense it. After they’ve eaten, Onyx curls tight against my thigh, Obsidian settles like a gargoyle on the bookshelf, and Oswald climbs back into my lap, pressing his warm little body against me as if he can anchor me here, keep me from unraveling.
