“Taking a gap year, actually,” the employee answered, waving up at me.
“You’re not helping,” Noah said quietly, but I still heard him. “But Zach is employed here, and you dying would probably really mess up his job, so I think you can trust that he’s a professional.”
“You move and I swear I’ll kick off my shoes so they hit you in the head, Morelli!” I shut my eyes for a second and stared straight ahead at the textured, gray rock of the climbing wall. Looking down made it even worse.
“Well, at least I rate higher than someone,” Noah joked.
“Barely!” I reached for the green handhold just above my right hand, then secured my foot on the next logical hold and pulled myself up the wall. “This only makes me hate you more,” I said as I gripped the next hold.
“But you’re climbing,” he countered.
Again, I reached for the next handhold, placed my feet, and continued upward. “I guess I just don’t see how this is going to help solve our plotting issues, considering I’m going to kill you as soon as I get down from here.” I was only a few feet away from the accursed bell. As soon as I rang that sucker, I was home free.
“I’ll take my chances,” he called up. I couldn’t help but notice how tight he kept the line. It was comforting, seeing I had to be a good twenty-five feet above him now. “You know, if you honestly hate it that much, I’m not gonna hold you to the bargain. This is really about trusting me, not hating me.”
I kept my eyes on the prize and hoisted myself another foot, then two. “The hell with that,” I called down. “I’m almost there.”
“You sure are.” I heard the pride in his voice and glanced down to see the same as he smiled up at me.
I was far from happy, but even I could admit I felt empowered. Capable. Strong.
Well, maybe not that strong. My arms and legs shook with fatigue as I made that last handhold and climbed the last twelve inches by sheer willpower alone.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
“Yes!” Noah shouted.
I felt the bell’s vibrations from the depths of my soul. They were strong enough to break apart my own preconceived notions that this was impossible. Strong enough to wake parts of me that had been sleeping since long before Damian’s latest indiscretion.
Perhaps even before I met him.
Just because I could, I rang the bell again just once. This time it wasn’t in desperation to be let down, to be set free of the bargain I made for myself, or to be validated by the person who had set me on this task.
It was in victory.
Logically, I knew it wasn’t Everest. I was maybe forty feet up a climbing wall in a professional environment, secured with ropes, a harness, and a liability policy.
But my chest swelled, filling with a ferocious sense of pride nonetheless.
I could still do hard things.
Gran was gone, Damian had betrayed me, and Mom had left yet again, but I was still here. Still climbing.
And though there was part of me that wanted to throttle Noah, I knew he was the only reason I was on this wall, climbing in the first place. He was the reason I’d started paying attention to my own life again. The reason I looked forward to waking up in the morning lately.
It wasn’t that I was living for him, but that he simply made me want to live. To fight. To prove my point. To take a stand when I’d usually defer to someone else’s emotions and take the path of least resistance.
Maybe my life had caught on fire, but that’s where I shined, right at the melting point where I could take the molten remains and reshape them into something beautiful. I wanted to sculpt again. I wanted to bend glass to my will. I wanted another chance to be happy, which led me to glance in Noah’s direction. I wanted…to get down because whoa was I high.
“Okay,” I called to him. “How do I get down?”
“I’ll lower you.”
“You’ll what?” I chanced another look in his direction. Holy shit—this actually was Everest. He looked a million miles away. So much for feeling empowered. I wanted off this thing now.
“I’ll lower you,” he repeated, slowing his words down, as if I’d misunderstood instead of balked.
“And how exactly does that work?” I gripped the handholds tighter, whitening my knuckles.
“Easy,” he said. “You sit back in the harness, then walk your way down the wall as I lower you.”
I blinked a few times, then looked down again. “I’m supposed to just lean back and trust that you won’t drop me on my ass?”
“Exactly.” He grinned shamelessly, and for the first time, I didn’t find it all that charming.
“What if the rope breaks?”
His grin faded. “What if there’s a massive earthquake?”
“Are we expecting one?” My biceps screamed in protest as I held myself there, perched on the damn wall like a lizard.
“Are you expecting me to drop you?” he challenged.
“It would make it easier on you to finish the book,” I argued.
“There’s some truth to that,” he admitted. “And I’m sure the story behind the murder would really drive sales.”
“Noah!” There was nothing funny about this, and yet there he was, teasing me.
“The chances of an earthquake are far more likely than those of me dropping you.” There was an edge to his voice this time, but when I took another look at his face, there was only patience. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Georgia. You have to trust me. I’ve got you.”
“Can’t I just climb down?” It couldn’t be that hard, could it?
“Sure, if that’s what you want to do,” he answered, his voice dropping.
“Yeah,” I whispered to myself. “I’ll just climb down.” Surely it couldn’t be any harder than climbing up here had been, right?
Muscles aching and plagued by tiny, incessant tremors, I lowered my foot to my previous foothold. “See? That wasn’t so bad,” I muttered. The line was tight, offering me support as I moved my hands and then my left foot down.
Then I shrieked, my voice high and loud, as my foot slipped and I fell. It was only a matter of inches before the rope caught my weight, and I hung suspended, parallel with the wall.
“Are you okay?” Noah asked, his voice pitching slightly.
I sucked in a full breath, then another, willing my heartbeat to settle at an acceptable, nondramatic level. The harness dug slightly into the skin just beneath the curve of my butt, but other than that, I was perfectly fine.
“A little embarrassed,” I admitted reluctantly, heat flooding my already flushed cheeks. “But otherwise fine.”
“Do you still want to climb down the rest of the way?” Noah asked without judgment.
I lifted my arms, raised my hands to the holds directly in front of me, cringing as they shook. The truth was, if he was going to drop me, he would have done it by now.
“So I’m just supposed to sit back in the harness?” I asked, silently praying that he wasn’t an I told you so kind of guy.
“Put your feet against the wall,” he ordered.
I lifted them slightly and did as he asked.
“Both hands on the rope.” Another order.
I followed it.
“Good,” he praised. “I’m going to lower you, and I want you to sit back into the harness and walk your way down the wall. Got it?” His voice was strong and steady, just like the man himself. What did it take to ruffle a guy like Noah? Sure, I’d pricked his temper a few times, but even through the most uncomfortable of our arguments, I’d never seen him actually lose it, at least not in the door-slamming, screaming way Damian often did when things hadn’t gone his way.
“Got it,” I called down, offering Noah a shaky smile.
“I don’t want to startle you, so we’ll go on three. Slow and steady.”
“One, two, three,” he counted us off and lowered me enough to fully sit back. “Good job. Now let’s walk you down the wall.”
Slowly, steadily, Noah let the rope out, lowering me down the climbing wall. A few seconds in and it wasn’t half bad. Defying gravity came with a little adrenaline rush, especially when I boldly emulated another climber farther down the wall, taking fun little hops.
As I got closer to the ground, I glanced up at the bell I had just rung. It seemed so high, and yet I’d been there, all the way up at the top.
All because Noah had been determined to earn my trust—and he had.
I was all smiles when my feet met the earth. “That was amazing!” I threw my arms around Noah, and he held me tight, lifting me right back off my feet.
“You were amazing,” he corrected me.
He held me so easily, as if I weighed nothing, and smelled so good it was all I could do to not put my nose to his neck and breathe deep. His scent was a unique combination of the sandalwood and cedar of his cologne mixed with soap and a little sweat. He smelled like a man was supposed to, all without faking it. Damian would have paid thousands of dollars to smell like Noah did effortlessly.
Stop comparing them.
I pulled back slightly, just enough to look in his eyes. “Thank you,” I whispered.
His smile was slow and the sexiest I’d ever seen. “What are you thanking me for?” he asked as his gaze darted to my lips and back. “You’re the one who did all the work.”
Oh, shit. He really wasn’t an I told you so kind of guy, and that only made me like him more. Made me want him more.
The energy between us shifted, pulling taut, as though we were connected by more than just this rope. There was something here, and it didn’t matter how hard I fought it or how frequently we bashed heads about the book—it only grew.
His gaze heated and his grip tightened.
There were only inches between our lips—
“Are you guys done?” a small voice asked.
Blinking, I looked down at a girl who couldn’t have been older than seven.
“I was hoping to do this one next, if that’s okay?” she asked with hopeful eyes.
“Right, of course,” I replied.
Noah set me down and unhooked my harness from the rope line with quick, efficient moves. God, could his arms be any hotter? The muscles of his biceps strained against the short sleeves of his athletic shirt. Good thing it stretched, or he probably would’ve busted through.
“Thank you,” I said again as he unhooked from the line.
“That was all you. All I did was keep you safe.” The low timbre of his voice warmed my entire body.
“On belay,” another voice said. An older girl, probably in high school, had taken Noah’s place, and the younger one had already tethered herself to the rope. “Climb on.”
“Climbing,” the little girl answered, and then scurried up the wall like she’d been bitten by a radioactive spider.
“You have to be kidding me,” I muttered, watching the girl take only minutes to do what had taken me a half hour.
Noah huffed a soft laugh. “A few more times and you’ll be just as good as she is,” he assured me.
I shot him a look of pure skepticism.
“You didn’t fall once on the way up,” he remarked, reaching for my face slowly, giving me a chance to shy away. I didn’t. “That’s pretty amazing.” He took a slightly sweaty lock of my hair that had escaped my ponytail and tucked it behind my ear.
“I’ve never had a problem reaching for things I want,” I replied softly. “It’s the falling that gets me into trouble.”
And that’s exactly what this was, I realized. It was one thing to joke with Hazel about a post-divorce rebound, but quite another to like more than just his body, even though it really was incredible. It would be all too easy to fall for Noah Morelli.
“I caught you.” There was no smirky smile or flirtatious wiggle of his eyebrows, but that didn’t matter. The truth was intoxicating enough.
He had caught me.
“You did,” I answered softly.
“Want to do another one?” he asked, the corners of his mouth quirking up.
I laughed. “I don’t think my arms would let me even if I wanted to. They feel like spaghetti noodles.” I held them out as examples, as if he could see the exhaustion in my muscles.
“I’ll rub them down later,” he promised, and this time that sexy little smile of his reappeared.
My breath caught, imagining his hands on my skin.
“Want to learn how to belay?” he asked, halting my flash of fantasy.
“Spaghetti noodle arms, remember?”
“Don’t worry, the harness does all the work.”
“You trust me with your life?” I asked, peering up at him and doing my best not to stare at his long eyelashes or the curve of his lower lip.
“I trust you with my career, and that’s pretty much the same thing to me, so yes.” The intensity in his eyes was a clear challenge, and I felt it like a jolting shock to my heart, exceptionally painful yet life-affirming.
He really had risked it all for this book, hadn’t he? He’d left the city he loved and moved his life here to see it through.
In that moment, I knew two things about Noah Morelli.
The first was that his priority was and would always be his career. Anything else he loved would take a back seat.
The second was he and I operated on complete opposites of the trust spectrum. He gave it first, then waited for the outcome. I withheld it until it was earned. And he had more than earned mine.
It was time I started trusting myself, too.
“Lead on.”
Once he’d dropped me off at home, I pulled out my phone and called Dan. Within the hour, I’d put an offer in on Mr. Navarro’s shop.
I was all in.
Chapter Eighteen
May 1941
North Weald, England
It had been almost eight weeks and the light still hadn’t returned
to Constance’s eyes. Scarlett couldn’t push her, couldn’t advise her, couldn’t do anything but watch her sister grieve. And yet, she’d still asked her to transfer with her to North Weald. It was the most selfish thing she’d ever done, but she didn’t know how to simultaneously be a wife and a sister, so now both suffered.
Though she may have been on the outs with her parents since marrying Jameson against their wishes, they’d apparently kept the rift private, since Scarlett and Constance’s request to transfer to North Weald had been approved.
They’d been here for a month, and though Scarlett rented a house off-station for the nights Jameson could get a Sleeping Out pass, Constance had chosen to billet with the other WAAFs in the huts on the station.
For the first time in her life, there had been an entire week of Scarlett’s life where she’d lived completely, utterly alone. No parents. No sister. No WAAFs. No Jameson. He was over an hour away at Martlesham-Heath but came…home—if that’s what this was—whenever he could get a pass. Between her worry over Constance and her fear that something would happen to Jameson, she lived in a constant state of nausea.
“You really don’t need to do this,” Scarlett told her sister as they knelt on ground only recently thawed by spring. “It still might be a bit early.”
“If it dies, it dies.” Constance shrugged, then continued digging with the small trowel, readying the space for a small rosebush she’d taken from their parents’ garden while on leave that weekend. “It’s better to try, right? Who knows how long we’ll be at this station? Maybe Jameson gets reposted. Maybe we do. Maybe just I do. If I keep waiting for life to give me the most opportune circumstances to live it, I never will. So fine, if it freezes and dies, then at least we tried.”
“Can I help?” Scarlett asked.
“No, I’m just about done. You’ll have to remember to water it regularly, but not too much.” She finished tilling the soil at the edge of the patio. “The plant will tell you. Just watch the leaves and cover her up if it gets too cold at night.”
“You’re so much better at this than I am.”
“You’re better at telling stories than I am,” she noted. “Gardening is learned, just like mathematics or history.”
“You write perfectly well,” Scarlett argued. They’d always received similar marks in school.
“Grammar and essays, sure.” She shrugged. “But story lines? Plots? You are far more talented. Now, if you truly want to help, you sit there and tell me one of your tales while I put this girl in.” She formed a mound of dirt at the bottom of the hole, then placed the crown of roots over the mound, measuring the distance to the surface.
“Well, I guess that’s easy enough.” Scarlett sat back and crossed her ankles in front of her. “Which story and where were we?”
Constance paused in thought. “The one about the diplomat’s daughter and the prince. I think she’d just discovered—”
“The note,” Scarlett jumped in. “Right. The one where she thinks he’s sending her father away.” Her mind slipped back into that little world, the characters as real to her as Constance was sitting beside her.
Eventually, the two sisters lay on their backs, staring up at the clouds as Scarlett did her best to weave a story worthy of distracting Constance, if only for a few moments.
“Why wouldn’t he simply tell her he’s sorry and move on?” Constance asked, rolling to her side so she could face Scarlett. “Wouldn’t that be the most straightforward answer?”
“It would,” Scarlett agreed. “But then our heroine won’t see his growth, can’t really find him worthy of that second chance. The key to bringing them the ending they deserve is to pick at their flaws until they bleed, then make them conquer that flaw, that fear, in order to prove themselves to the one they love. Otherwise it’s really just a story about falling in love.” Scarlett laced her fingers behind her head. “Without the potential for disaster, would we ever really know what we have?”
The Things We Leave Unfinished Page 22