Page 25 of The Love Bus

“Okay then.” And I hated that my ears were probably turning red. “We just need to survive for twelve days?—"

“Ten and a half,” he corrected, glancing at his watch like this was a perfectly rational conversation. “We’ve already survived the first…” He tilted the face toward me. “Thirty hours.”

He was too good at this. Disarming. Deflecting the conversation when asked about himself.

But we’d had that lunch together. And I’d told him everything. Most likely, too much. And I wasn’t going to let him slip away so easily this time.

I exhaled. He didn’t have to answer me, but that wasn’t going to stop me from asking.

“Why are you here?” I asked softly.

His smile faded, brow barely lifting. “Here?”

“On this bus tour?” I asked.

Because I’d told him my story.

And now I needed to know what had brought Noah Grady onto this silver bus with a bunch of retirees and his well-mannered, if a little clingy, mother.

Because it wasn’t for fun.

And it wasn’t for himself.

This time he was the one to exhale, long and slow.

“My mom.” His voice dropped slightly, and he ran a hand over his face, shaking his head. And then he winced. “It’s kind of a Mother’s Day present. She asked and…I couldn’t say no.” It seemed like he was going to add to that.

But then he didn’t.

“That’s actually really sweet,” I told him.

He shrugged a little and stared off to the side. “Well, I mean. She’s…a lot. But she’s always been there for me. Felt like the least I could do, you know?”

I nodded slowly. My own mom had never really been that person for me—the one I could count on, lean on. But I knew what it meant to have someone step into that role anyway.

Ashley had always done that for me. She had her twins and Beckett now, her own family, and still, she made space. She was the one who checked in, who noticed, who asked if I was okay—even when I wasn’t ready to hear the question.

She was the reason I was here. And it felt good to do something, even a small something, in return.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Only child.”

I hummed, letting that settle.

I wondered how my mom and I would carry on if we didn’t have Ashley to run interference for us.

I loved my mom. Of course, I did. She did her best. But I would probably like her a lot more if she could like anything about me , without trying to change it first.

Rather than controlling me. Rather than always looking at me like my life choices were some sort of personal offense.

From my choosing not to go to college to the guys I dated.

“What about you?” Noah asked.

“One sister. Ashley’s four years older than me,” I said, then added how her husband commuted to Boston so they could stay close to my mom.

I told him about my twin nephews, my mom’s injury.

..and then I winced slightly. “Ashley basically threatened to make me move in with Mom if I didn’t go on this trip. ”

It came out more flippantly than I intended, but I didn’t try to walk it back. Not entirely. “It’s just…my mom and I don’t exactly thrive in close quarters. I can’t imagine what that would be like with the breakup and…everything that came with it.”

I kept my eyes forward, hoping the seat in front of me would swallow the rest of that sentence.

“She had a lot of opinions,” I added, after a beat. “And I wasn’t really in the mood for an ‘I told you so’ from someone who married her high school sweetheart.”

I tried to keep the tone light, but it landed heavier than I expected.

Beside me, Noah let out a quiet breath. “Yeah. Relationships...they’re rough.”

Then…

“I’m divorced. Little over a year.”

“Oh, wow,” I said and instantly winced. “I mean…I’m sorry?” He shrugged, easy. “Don’t be.”

No sigh. No bitterness. No trace of lingering sadness.

Just…nothing.

Which was strange. Because anytime someone mentioned his job, the tension rolled off him like static.

That contrast alone was enough to make me curious.

“Was it…amicable?” I asked, cautious.

With the sun slanting through the window, his eyes looked almost silver when he glanced over. “Do people actually have those?”

Ha . “Leo and I didn’t.” Over five years . Not wasted exactly. But not what I’d pictured, either.

Honestly, if this were a date, I’d be steering the conversation far, far away from heartbreak. But this wasn’t a date. We were friends, right?

And friends shared.

“I don’t think breakups are ever easy,” he said, his gaze dropping to the seat in front of us. “I wouldn’t call it messy. But we kept trying when we probably shouldn’t have. Instead of just…making the cut, we tore each other apart. In the end, it was inevitable.”

He was talking—for once—so I didn’t interrupt.

His hand flexed against his thigh. “We met in med school. Got married right after graduation. I went straight into residency, which was…brutal. She didn’t.”

I tilted my head. “What did she do?”

He nodded. “She said two doctors in the family could never work. Decided to stay home and write novels. When that didn’t work out, she went to work for my mom.”

“Does she still?—”

Noah cut off my question with a nod.

“Does that bother you?”

He paused, just for a second. “Courtney needed the job. And she and my mom are close.” He shrugged like it was no big deal, like it wasn’t messy.

Even though it felt messy to me—keeping that kind of arrangement in place, shoving his feelings aside.

Maybe he was used to that.

Honestly, the whole situation sounded like a minefield.

But he seemed…fine.

Which was weird, right? Was anyone ever really fine after a divorce?

Would I feel this way about my breakup a year from now?

We both fell silent, and I realized that Babs and Mrs. Grady, who had not stopped talking since breakfast, were suddenly very, very quiet.

Suspiciously quiet.

I tilted forward, half-expecting to find Babs grinning at us like we were her own personal project. But instead, I met Christine Grady’s stare.

A flicker of distaste passed over her face—a scowl? A glare?

She didn’t look unkind. Just…wary.

But I immediately remembered what Noah had said—that his ex-wife still worked for his mom. That they were close .

Ah.

Maybe that explained it. Or maybe I’d imagined it entirely.

I’d been told more than once that I tended to read too much into things. To see things that weren’t really there.

Not that I had much time to dwell on it.

“Oh my God! Look!”

The shout came from somewhere near the front of the bus, and every single head whipped toward the windows.

I turned instinctively, scanning the landscape. Pine trees. More pine trees. A stretch of open meadow. More pine trees…

I maybe, just maybe, saw something big moving beyond the tree line, but before I could make out any details, we’d already flown past it.

“Was that a bear?” Helen called out from the front.

“It was a moose!” another voice countered.

“That was not a moose,” Helen insisted.

“Well, what else could it have been?”

Silence fell.

And then Babs answered with theatrical, ominous certainty, “What if it was…Bigfoot?”

“Oh, for the love of Pete—” There was laughter behind us.

“We are not in Washington!” Josie declared.

“There have been no verified Bigfoot sightings in Colorado!” Tay called over the microphone. I definitely heard laughter in her voice.

“Not yet , there haven’t ,” Babs said, using her spooky voice.

I grinned and, on a whim, decided to join in. “Well, whatever it was, it had fur! And it was like, ten feet tall!” Honestly, I didn’t know why I was feeding into Babs’s shenanigans.

I turned back to my window, biting back giggles. We’d probably just witnessed some poor hiker unknowingly become the next blurry image on a conspiracy website.

I turned and found Noah’s silver-blue eyes staring at me. He arched a brow, oh-so-casually. “Ten feet, really?”

“Oh, absolutely.” I widened my eyes innocently as half the travelers continued arguing around us. Phones out, all pointed out the windows.

“You’re horrible, you know that?” That husky sound in his laughter, I seriously felt it everywhere.

“Who, me?” I rolled my eyes and turned back to the window, refusing to acknowledge the heat creeping up my neck.

And just like that, I realized something even more ridiculous than Bigfoot: somewhere along the way, Noah Grady’s teasing had ceased to annoy me. It left me feeling warmer. And the look in his eyes felt a little too charged to pass for friendship.

Which, clearly, was going to be a problem.

But luckily, not one I had to solve today.