The bookstore had a smell that seemed to change with the hour.
In the early mornings, it was mostly dust and coffee, almost bitter. By afternoon, Faded into something like sun-warmed pages, and faint vanilla from the scented candle Noah kept near the register. But in the evenings, it was something entirely different, a breath of silence, like the scent of stories preparing to sleep.
That's when I found the note.
It wasn't addressed to anyone. No envelope, no name. Just a piece of folded paper placed between the pages of "Wuthering Heights".
I hadn't even planned to pick up the book. I was running my fingers along the edges, killing time before closing, when something made me stop. A nudge. A pull at my heart. And there it was.
The note was handwritten in blue ink, tilted handwriting, hasty but legible.
"Some hearts never learn to beat quietly. They thunder until someone listens. If you found this, maybe you're the someone. Maybe I am, too."
I read it twice. Then again.
Something about it made me sit down right where I stood. The words weren't overly poetic, but they carried weight. They felt like a confession not meant for the world but left behind anyway, just in case the right eyes landed on them.
I looked up at Noah, who was rearranging a display of poetry books a few feet away.
"Hey," I said, my voice soft.
He turned, eyebrows raised. "You okay?"
"Did you write this?" I held the note up.
He walked over slowly, glanced at it, then let out a small laugh. "Wow. That's been floating around the shelves for years."
"Years?"
"Yeah," he said, slipping his hands into his pockets. "It's sort of a thing. People leave little notes inside their favorite books. Sometimes they write letters to strangers, sometimes they recommend coffee pairings, sometimes they just… confess."
"Confess?" I asked.
He nodded. "Love. Regret. Fear. Hope. You'd be surprised how many people treat books like a church booth."
"Did you start it?"
"No," he said, then smiled faintly. "But I left a few of my own over the years."
I glanced back at the note.
"Do you think the person who wrote this ever came back to see if someone found it?"
"I like to think so," Noah said. "Even if they didn't, maybe they just needed to say it out loud."
I placed the note into my coat pocket and didn't bring it up again that night. But it stayed with me, pressed against my thigh like a secret.
Later, when I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, I pulled it out again and reread it under the warm, dim light of the bedside lamp.
"Some hearts never learn to beat quietly."
Mine hadn't. Not for a long time. Not even now.
It made me wonder if Noah's heart thundered, too.
The next day, I brought my camera to the lake. I hadn't been there yet, not properly. It was about a fifteen-minute walk from town, hidden behind a grove of pine trees that felt like a curtain between reality and something softer.
The lake was still.
Not mirror-like, there were waves from the wind, but calm. Balanced. It reminded me of Noah. Quiet on the outside, but always moving underneath.
I sat at the edge and watched a woman teach her dog how to fetch a floating stick. Nearby, two boys skipped rocks with the kind of intense focus only kids seem to summon. I lifted my camera and clicked gently, letting the moment come to me rather than forcing anything. I didn't need a masterpiece. I just needed to remember.
When I returned to the bookstore in the afternoon, Noah wasn't behind the counter. Instead, a girl with an undercut and round glasses sat perched on a stool reading Norwegian Wood.
She looked up and smiled. "You must be Elena."
"I must be," I said with a smile.
"I'm Kay," she said. "Noah's out back rearranging the garden books. Said I could watch the shop for a bit."
"He trusts you, then."
"He should. I basically live here."
I laughed. "Don't we all?"
Kay closed her book and tilted her head. "He likes you."
The words came so casually I almost missed them.
"What?" I asked.
She smiled. "Noah. He talks about you."
I suddenly forgot how to hold my camera properly.
Kay went on. "Not in a weird way. Gently, He said you're 'in tune with the quiet things.' I didn't know what that meant until I saw you walk in."
My throat felt too tight. I cleared it, then said, "He talks about me?"
"All the time," she said. "But not like a crush. Like someone who sees the parts of you probably don't talk about much."
Before I could respond, the bell over the door jingled and Noah walked in with a stack of gardening books under one arm and a coffee in the other.
"Hey," he said, spotting me. "Do you find any more secret notes?"
"No," I said, trying to keep my voice even. "But I might leave one."
That evening, I wandered the shelves alone, fingers tracing the titles I already knew by heart. I found a worn copy of The Little Prince, cracked open the back cover, and slipped in a note of my own:
"I didn't come here to be seen. But now that I am, I'm scared to leave."
It wasn't poetic. It wasn't clever. But it was true.
A few days passed. The rain returned, soft, gentle rain that made the town smell like cedar and earth. The kind of rain that begged for silence and comforting second pour.
Noah invited me to the local art exhibit that opened in a renovated warehouse just outside town. I didn't usually go to things like that. Crowds made me nervous. But with him, it felt okay. Safe.
The space was full of sculptures made from driftwood, light projections, and large abstract canvases with names like Tangled Silence and You Were Here Without Saying So.
We wandered slowly, commenting on nothing in particular. At one point, I stopped in front of a piece titled "Unsent Letters" , a wall covered in envelopes nailed shut.
Noah came to stand beside me.
"I wonder what's in them," I said.
"Maybe everything people were too afraid to say."
"You think we all have at least one?"
"Probably more," he said quietly.
I looked at him. His face was calm, but his jaw was tight.
"You have one?" I asked.
He nodded.
"What does it say?"
He took a deep breath. "It says, I never wanted to be in the safe place someone passed through. I wanted to be the one they stayed for."
I swallowed.
And for a moment, I wanted to reach out and take his hand. But I didn't.
Because the truth is, I didn't know how to stay either.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
I kept replaying his words in my head. "…the one they stayed for."
I rolled over and stared at the note still placed on my nightstand.
"Some hearts never learn to beat quietly."
I finally understood it.
Noah wasn't safe.
He was real.
He was steady. Present. Brave in the way most people aren't, by choosing to remain instead of run. And that terrified me more than any far-off location or tight deadline.
Because I wasn't sure I knew how to remain.
The next morning, I stood outside the bookstore with a layered pastry in one hand and my camera in the other. It had rained again overnight, and the pavement glowed under the weak sunlight like it had been washed clean of yesterday.
Noah opened the door before I could knock.
"Morning," he said, warm and easy.
"Can I leave another note?" I asked.
He didn't blink. "You don't have to ask."
I slipped the note into Wuthering Heights, just a few pages after the first one I found.
"Sometimes, the bravest thing we do is admit we want to stay."
Then I placed the book back on the shelf and walked away without looking back.