Page 54 of Hooked on Emerson
The night of the storm, when everything was chaos and water was coming through the roof, you looked at me like I was an anchor in the middle of it all. No one’s ever looked at me that way before. Like I was necessary. Essential. It terrified me and gave me hope all at once.
I don’t know what you’ll decide about Seattle. I meant what I said and I want you to choose what’s right for you, not what’s right for me or anyone else. Your happiness matters more to me than my own comfort. That’s new for me too.
I think that’s what love is, though. Not the desperate need I once thought it was, but this quiet certainty that your joy matters more than my fear of losing you. Love crept in when I wasn’t looking. Not in grand gestures or dramatic moments, but in mornings with coffee and shared work. In the way you hum when you arrange flowers. In how you touch the lavender mural when you think no one is watching.
If you go to Seattle, I’ll still be here. Not just waiting, but living, working, building something worth coming back to, if that’s what you choose someday. And if you stay, I’ll be here too, helping you build whatever you dream of, however you want to transform the shop or the mill or your life.
Either way, I’m yours, Ava. I think I have been since that first day, when we were strangers pretending not to be.
~Emerson
The words blurred as tears filled her eyes. She blinked them away, not wanting to mar the paper with their evidence. She read it again, then a third time, each reading revealing new layers of the man who had written it. His careful handwriting, his measured words, his exposed heart laid bare on the page.
He hadn’t sent it. Hadn’t given it to her before she left. But he’d written it, had placed it in this beautiful box he’d crafted with his own hands. Had he meant to give it to her when she returned? Or was it, as he’d said, just for himself, a way to process feelings he struggled to express aloud?
Love crept in when I wasn’t looking.The words resonated inside her, true in a way that made her breath catch. That’s how it had happened for her too. It wasn’t in a lightning strike of revelation, but in the accumulation of small moments. Coffee delivered without asking. A shelf built to the perfect height. The way he listened, really listened, when she talked about her mother. The gentle touch of his hand at the small of her back as they moved through a crowded room.
The sound of a truck engine approaching snapped her back to the present. She carefully refolded the letter, her fingers lingering on the creases, and placed it exactly as she had found it in the velvet-lined interior. She closed the box with gentle hands, the lid settling with a soft, precise click. She stepped away from the workbench, heart hammering against her ribs, unsure whether to stay or flee.
But the truck passed by, not Emerson’s after all. She exhaled slowly, gathering herself. She couldn’t be here when he returned, not now, not after reading words she wasn’t meant to see yet. She needed time to process, to find her own words in response.
She left a note beside the coffees—Just wanted to say I’m back. Talk soon. —A—and slipped out, closing the door quietly behind her. The morning had warmed considerably, the dew burning off the grass, the sky a clear, endless blue above Millfield.
Ava drove slowly through town, her mind full of Emerson’s words. They seemed to overlay the familiar landscape with new meaning. The hardware store where he bought supplies for her shop repairs. The bench in the square where they’d sat eating ice cream after the final roof inspection. The spot where they’d stood during the Harvest Festival, his hand warm against the small of her back as the band played.
In Seattle, everything had been sleek and polished, designed rather than evolved. The design studio’s white walls and concrete floors had felt sterile, the arrangements displayed like museum pieces rather than living things. There had been a coldness to the perfection, a distance that she’d felt but couldn’t name until now.
She parked outside the floral shop,hershop, studying it with fresh eyes. The blue awning her mother had chosen years ago. The sage green trim she and Emerson had painted together. The window boxes filled with autumn flowers that someone hadwatered in her absence, the blooms still vibrant and healthy. Through the glass, she could see the lavender mural they’d created, its colors softened by distance but still as vibrant in her mind.
It was her mother’s shop, yes. But it was becoming hers too, transformed by her choices, her vision, her work alongside Emerson. Not an inheritance but a foundation, something to build upon rather than simply maintain.
She didn’t go inside, yet. Instead, she continued on, retracing the steps of the list she’d made before deciding about Seattle. First to Miller’s Pond, the surface glassy and still in the morning light. She walked to the small dock where she and Emerson had launched the canoe that day, the wood warm beneath her shoes. The memory was so vivid she could almost feel the gentle rock of the boat beneath her, hear the soft splash of paddles entering water.
Would you wait?she had asked him here, voice barely above a whisper.If I went to Seattle, if I tried it for a few months... Would you still be here?
Yes, he had answered simply.I would wait.
When she’d asked why, his response had been equally straightforward:Because what I feel for you isn’t conditional on you staying. It’s not about where you are. It’s about who you are.
The same sentiment echoed in his letter, in his certainty that her happiness mattered more than his comfort. In his willingness to let her go if that’s what she needed, to stay rooted if that’s what she chose.
From the pond, she drove to the town square, where the festival had been held. The space was empty now, just a few benches and the gazebo where the band had played. But she could still see it transformed by string lights, still feel Emerson’sarms around her as they danced, still hear his voice saying,I think I’m falling in love with you.
She sat on a bench, letting the sun warm her shoulders. The folder from the design studio was still in her car, the formal offer inside. Everything she had thought she wanted: prestige, challenge, independence, a chance to prove herself beyond the boundaries of Millfield. The studio’s Creative Director had called her traditional work “exceptional” but had been more interested in her experimental pieces, the ones that pushed boundaries.
In the studio’s white gallery space, with its concrete floors and precise lighting, she’d felt a flicker of excitement at the possibilities. But it had been tempered by something she couldn’t name then, a hollowness, an absence. Now, sitting in the familiar square where generations of Millfield residents had gathered, she understood. What had been missing was connection. Roots. A sense of belonging not to a place merely, but to a community with history and a future that included other people who mattered.
And Emerson. The man who fixed broken things and saw possibility where others saw only damage. Who had been falling in love with her even as she’d been planning to leave. Who had written his heart into a letter he hadn’t sent, then tucked it into a beautiful box he’d made with his own hands.
She continued her journey to the edge of town where the old mill stood, its weathered structure a testament to time and neglect. Pushing open the crooked door, she stepped inside. The space was as she remembered but now she saw it through new eyes with her own vision. A studio, perhaps, where she could experiment with designs that bridged traditional and contemporary. A workshop where she could teach others. A place where she could honor her mother’s legacy while creating something uniquely hers.
The bones are good, Emerson had said when she first showed him this place.Worth saving. He’d seen the potential in this forgotten building, just as he’d seen it in her shop after the storm, in her when she was still raw with grief and uncertainty.
She sat on an overturned crate, its rough surface catching slightly on her jeans. A beam of sunlight fell across her lap, warming her despite the chill in the air. She watched the light shift as afternoon approached.
As she sat in the quiet mill, Ava finally understood what had been missing in Seattle, what the sleek studio with its white walls and architectural arrangements couldn’t offer. It wasn’t just Emerson, though he was certainly a significant part of it. It was a sense of belonging. Not the kind that trapped or confined, but the kind that rooted and nourished, that provided a foundation for growth rather than a ceiling that limited it.
She’d been so afraid of staying because she thought it meant surrendering to someone else’s life, carrying on her mother’s legacy at the expense of her own dreams. But what if staying could be a choice rather than a default? What if belonging somewhere, to someone, wasn’t a limitation but an expansion?
