“Yes, I really don’t like paperwork,” said Victoria.
“Look on the bright side, Samantha.” For some reason, Marcus was still smiling. “This will make it so much easier to tell Noah the Adventure Center is finished once and for all.”
“You still expect me to tell him?”
“Of course. In fact, why don’t you tell him right now?”
I followed Marcus’s gaze to the conference room door, which sat open behind me.
Noah stood frozen in the threshold, his tall frame filling the entire doorway. But it was the details that made my chest constrict with something far worse than guilt.
He was freshly showered, hair still damp and carefully combed in a way I’d never seen before. Usually it was tousled from wind and work, but now it looked like he’d actually spent time trying to tame it. The button-down shirt was clearly new, still carrying the crisp lines of recent creases, chosen in a deep blue that brought out his eyes.
And he was wearing loafers. Actual loafers without a speck of dirt.
“Noah …”
He’d transformed himself. Cleaned up and dressed up for an afternoon with me. The grumpy, frumpy mountain man going on an afternoon spa date he’d clearly been looking forward to.
Only to walk in just in time to hear me reduce everything between us to a business transaction.
To hear me dismiss everything we shared the past week as nothing more than content generation for my Instagram feed.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Noah stared at me from the doorway. It wasn’t just hurt in his blue eyes; it was the systematic dismantling of trust, and I watched it happen in real time.
“Noah,” I whispered, rising halfway from my chair.
But even as I spoke, I watched him retreat back behind his walls. His jaw, that telltale muscle that ticked when he was annoyed, now clenched with the force of someone who’d learned to swallow pain without flinching. The way he stood in that doorway, perfectly still except for the almost imperceptible rise and fall of his chest.
“I can explain.”
“Don’t bother.” What struck me wasn’t his anger; it was his sudden, terrible calm. “I get it now. All of it.”
“No, you don’t.” But even as I said it, I saw Noah Barrett cutting his losses.
Clean. Quick. Final.
“Just business.” I watched him survey the room, taking in Victoria’s calculating expression, Marcus’s curious smile, Maya’s uncomfortable avoidance of eye contact.
When his gaze finally returned to me, it was like he’d been waiting for this exact thing to happen, and now that it had, he could finally relax. “Actually, this makes perfect sense.”
He glanced down at his carefully chosen outfit, the button-down shirt instead of flannel, the loafers instead of hiking boots. “Even this.” His tone was both casual and devastating. “I’m probably going to end up as a before-and-after story, aren’t I? ‘How I Turned the Grumpy Mountain Man into Spa-Date Material.’”
“Noah, please.”
“Congratulations on your career move, Miss Li. Hope it was worth it.” He turned and left.
I half-stood, torn between chasing after him and remaining in my corporate-assigned seat, playing the role I’d just reaffirmed.
“Noah, wait ...” I called after him, but he was already gone, nothing left but the faint scent of pine trees and coffee, which was quickly overwhelmed by the chemical pine scent pumped in through the air vents.
The conference room door drifted closed with a soft click that somehow sounded more final than if he’d slammed it. I sank back into my chair, aware of Marcus’s satisfied smirk, of Victoria’s calculating gaze, of Maya’s poorly concealed sympathy, of Parker’s awkward bewilderment.
“Well, that’s settled then,” Marcus said, as if we’d just concluded a routine budget meeting instead of witnessing the destruction of everything that mattered.
I’d spent my adult life building a career around pretending to have things I never earned, to be someone that I wasn’t. And when finally given the chance to be someone real, my first real test of authentic living, I’d chosen to pretend.
