“Can I stop you?”
“Nope.” The roll of her eyes ends with a playful glare. “You don’t need to apologize, Hannah.”
I nudge her shoulder. She nudges back. “Okay, soldier. Ask your questions.”
“How?” I inquire simply.
Hannah takes a deep breath, fixes her attention on the opposite wall. “It was maybe a week or so after…that night. I stopped by the cabin to check on him.”
My chest grows tight. She drove an hour to see him. I ball my fists at my sides to keep from reaching for her, crashing my lips to hers. “And how was he?”
“He was…not thrilled to see me, but I charmed my way in with baked goods.” A rough laugh sputters out of me. “The cherry pie was my golden ticket.”
I run a hand down my face. “He always loved how Nana put cinnamon in the crust. It was his favorite.”
She nods thoughtfully, finally meeting my gaze. “Yeah. He told me.”
Pops kept his grief over Nana’s death pretty locked down, even with me. “Did he talk about her?”
Her forehead pinches and she pops a shoulder. “Not much, but sometimes. It never seemed like a subject I should press, so I didn’t.”
“Yeah,” I choke out, the response lodged in my throat until I push past it. “He didn’t talk about her much with me either.”
A heavy silence expands between us. So help me, I can’t look away from her.
“Anyway, I bribed him with food to get in the door and told him I’d never come empty handed if he promised to never turn down a game of chess with me.”
There’s barely enough air in my lungs to support my reply. “You made the lasagna.”
She holds my gaze unapologetically. One cheek rises. “I couldn’t have him living off canned goods and whiskey seven days a week.”
The grip her confession has around my heart sends a rush ofemotion barreling out of me faster than I can contain it, and I drop eye contact for the first time in minutes. I try to press back the tears with the heels of my hands, but it’s too late. Feet flat, I rest my forearms on my knees, head hung between them while I try to compose myself.
But Hannah shifts closer. Her hand runs slow strokes up and down my arm, around my neck. I don’t know which one of us initiates it, but my head lands on her shoulder.
“He wasn’t alone, Rowan,” she whispers. “I was here the whole time.” A barrage of tears I’ve held in for far too long spills out.
Hannah. The woman who’s been the godsend in my dreams for the past five years was here playing the real life thing to the most important man in my life the wholedamntime. Right under my nose yet thousands of miles away. Entirely untouchable.
Exactly likethat night.
And now, with her arms around me, my lips close enough to taste the perfume on her neck, nothing has changed.
Her life is here. And mine is in North Carolina.
Hannah holds me for the next few minutes. No words, just the lazy drag of her fingers through my hair with one hand, the other draped over my shoulder. When my pulse settles enough, I sit up to look at her. Her hands fall away, but I catch one in mine. She dips her eyes to where I lace our fingers together.
“I know thank you isn’t enough for what you did, but?—”
“Rowan, stop. You don’t have to?—”
“I do.”
She just stares. Her expression pleads with me to not make this a big deal. But how can I not?
“Thank you, Hannah.”
A sigh. “If I say you’re welcome will you promise never to thank me again?”