Noah shifted uncomfortably. “Actually, I drove around the corner, waited a bit, then came back. But you were gone. I figured you went back inside, so I parked and went inside myself. Searched everywhere. Brie’s coffee shop, the gift shop, even sweet-talked my way past security to check inside the terminal.”
My stomach did a weird little flip, and not from the sausage. “You really came back for me?” The circumstances of our first interaction had haunted me ever since. Now, a wave of relief washed over me as powerful as the relief I felt when we found out Vera the Osprey was going to be okay. Noah had misjudged me. But I had misjudged him too.
“I’m sorry, Sam. It was stupid, and I wasn’t thinking. I was pissed at LuxeLife and … doesn’t matter. It wasn’t my best moment, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
“I did kinda provoke you,” I admitted.
“I guess a part of me just wanted to prove you weren’t the one in charge. Which, for the record, you still aren’t.”
“Oh, I’m totally in charge,” I said. “I just let you think you are.”
“Well, technically, I guess Victoria’s the one in charge. She’s the one holding the purse strings.”
“You can say that again.” We continued eating, with me reflecting on everything Noah had said. If he hadn’t actually left me … it sorta changed everything. Didn’t it?
“We must have just missed each other.” His expression softened. “How’d you get over to the resort, anyway?”
“I took a taxi.”
“You drove with Al?”
The taxi ride to the resort with Al would forever remain seared in memory. “Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Aster Park has limited transportation options.”
“That tracks.”
“Did he talk to you about flapjacks?”
“Yes. A lot. Like, really a lot.”
“Birch syrup?”
“That, too.”
“Damn. Now I’m really sorry.” Noah shook his head. “Imight have to make you a batch of my birch syrup glazed pecan scones to make it up to you.”
“Might have to? Try definitely have to. In fact, maybe we should go straight back to your place and …” I stopped, realizing what I’d said. “I mean …”
“You still have a lot of authentic Colorado to see first,” said Noah, rescuing me from my tangle of words just as surely as he’d rescued me from the tangled ropes on the climbing wall. “Ready to see the rest of the festival?”
“After you.”
Noah helped me to my feet, and we strolled deeper into the festival. Under a striped tent, a teenage girl demonstrated how to make something called chokecherry syrup while her grandmother explained the traditional ways to use it.
I pulled out my phone to capture the scene. Kids with sticky faces eating kettle corn. Elderly couples holding hands.
“There’s Lewis,” Noah nodded toward a gray-haired man selling honey jars, each one labeled with the type of flower the bees made it from. “Best beekeeper in the valley. And over there’s Rita. She makes soap from goat’s milk.”
Across from us, a band started up on the gazebo stage, a fiddle, a banjo, and what looked like a washboard. The music they played defied categorization, bluegrass meets rap meets poetry, fused with classic rock. Couples spun across a makeshift dance floor to the hypnotic beat.
“There’s more to our small little mountain town than you thought, huh?” Noah asked, reading my expression.
“Yeah. A lot more,” I admitted, surprising myself with how much I meant it.
Noah led me past storefronts with hand-painted signs and window displays that belonged in a Hallmark movie. He greeted passersby by name, fist-bumpedkids, and paused to scratch dogs behind their ears. Oddly, I found myself wishing Yeti were there with us.
As Noah stopped to introduce me to his former first grade school teacher, who he still called Mrs. Harrison, I thought to myself, this wasn’t the gruff mountain man who I thought abandoned me.
