Georgia
Jameson,
Oh, love. I could never regret choosing you. You’re the very breath in my lungs and the beat of my heart. You were my choice before I even knew there was one to make. Please don’t worry. Close your eyes and picture us in that spot you’ve told me about— where the creek bends. We’ll be there soon, and even sooner I’ll be in your arms again. Until then, we’ll be waiting here for you. Always waiting. Always yours.
Scarlett
“This was the worst idea in the history of ideas!” I shouted down at Noah from fifteen feet above him, clinging to a wall I had no business being on. He’d waited a week before forcing me to hold up my end of the deal, but that didn’t make it any easier.
“So you’ve told me every five minutes since you started climbing,” he called up. “Now look to your left at that purple handhold.”
“I hate you,” I snapped, but reached for the hold. He’d taken me to a climbing gym a half hour away, so it wasn’t like I was dangling off the side of a mountain, but still. I might have been tied into the harness, but he held the other end of the rope. “You think you’d be better at metaphors, being a writer and all. Put your life in my hands, Georgia,” I did my best Noah impression. “Look at my superior climbing abilities and pretty face, Georgia.”
“Well, at least you still think I’m pretty.”
“You suck!” My arms trembled as I stepped up to the next foothold. The bell about thirty feet above me was only second on my shit list to Noah. I hated heights. Hated the weakness in my own body since I’d stopped taking
care of it. I really hated the impossibly gorgeous guy beneath me with the rope.
“If it’s easier, I can grab Zach to belay you instead, then climb up and guide you myself,” Noah offered.
“What?” I glared down at him and the climbing gym attendant. “I don’t know Zach. He looks like he’s in high school!”
“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.” I nodded.
“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.
