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While the clock on her wall ticked behind them in the ensuing silence, she said, “I can’t believe we only met two days ago. It feels so much…longer.”
It did feel longer, like time had slowed, paused, stretching itself out just for them. The way her fists had yanked him close the first time he’d walked through her door, her eyes did the same now, beckoning him behind the counter so he could take her face between his hands and kiss her while the loose strands of her hair brushed over his fingers. Back then, the electric spark of her lips against his had felt like the start of something. As badly as he wanted to, he knew if he kissed her now, it would feel too much like the end.
Maybe she felt it too, because when she blinked, folded his coat on the counter, and said, “Thank you for letting me wear this last night,” the momentum shifted, and the tension between them swept out like the tide.
Taking his coat and looping it over his arm, he wondered if it would smell like her now, like citrus and sugar. If it did, he’d never wash it again. “It was my pleasure.”
She stared down at her hands, twin divots sinking between her brows. She was about to tell him something, and even though he didn’t know what it was, somehow he knew it would hurt to hear it. “Cole, I—”
“You know the feeling when something entirely unexpected happens to you?” he said, stopping her before she could leave a bruise. “Some monumental twist of fate uncoils at your feet, and you have no doubt that in twenty years it’ll be one of your favorite stories to tell your grandkids?” Not expecting an answer—because the question he’d interrupted her with was rhetorical—he said, “I can’t wait to tell my granddaughter this one.”
Her eyes misted over, shining like emerald glass. Covering her face with her hands, laughing sadly, she said, “Fucking drummers.”
He laughed too, then reached out, pulling her hands down one at a time to tell her, “Goodbye, Mira Harlow.”
Sliding her fingers out of his, she said, “So long, Cole Sanderson.”
With regret already filling his shoes with cement, he took his box of treats, his favorite coat, and inhaled Mira’s air into his lungs one last time before he made his way to the door.
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
MIRA
She walked into the kitchen,then out into the bakery, then back into the kitchen again. Pacing, she was pacing, clenching and unclenching her fists, her heart thundering louder than the actual thunder outside while raindrops started to slash against her windows. Why had she just let him go like that? Why did it all feel so wrong? When the low rumble of his Volvo driving away from her vibrated through her bones, panic made her knees weak. She’d messed up. She’d missed her chance. She’d hesitated and chickened out, and she’d never forgive herself for it.
But maybe… “Fuck it all!”
Shoving her feet into the nearest pair of shoes—which happened to be Ian’s ratty black Vans at the bottom of the stairs that were a size too big—she raced to the door, wrenching it open so hard her grandfather’s bell flew off its hinges and bounced off the ceiling, hitting the floor with a sharpclang.
Sprinting full tilt out into the rain, she shouted, “Wait! Cole, wait!” Her heart hurled itself against her ribs while she waved frantically at the back of his car. But he didn’t slow. He didn’t see her.
The sky opened up, rain plastering her hair to her face, sluicing down her arms as she dropped them to her sides, as she realized with a sharp twist in her belly that he was about to turn, that she was too late. Why hadn’t she kissed him when she’d had the chance? Why hadn’t she taken the risk when it was so obvious to her now that she’d regret not kissing Cole Sanderson for the rest of her natural born—
Brake lights flared as his car swerved to a stop. His door flew open wide, he stepped out onto the street, his hot gaze seared her cold, wet skin, and she broke into a run.
Shallow puddles erupted under his feet as he raced toward her, his lucky hoodie drenched and clinging to his shoulders. When they collided, his body was hard against hers, but his hands were impossibly soft as they slid over her cheeks. Under the downpour, his eyes searched her face while raindrops glistened like jewels between his lashes. Then his lips crashed into hers, and just like that, like the lightning lighting up the sky, like his name turning to ash between her fingertips, she burst into flames.
Raw, needy sounds tore from her throat as she slid her fingers under the back of his hoodie, desperate for the heat of his skin. His hand fisted gently in her hair, his arm looping around her back, hoisting her up until she hooked her ankles behind his hips—one of Ian’s too-big shoes slipping off her foot to land on the street. She opened her mouth for him and moaned, almost in pain at the soft brush of his tongue over hers. As rain slipped between their lips, between their fingers and tongues, between her toes, Mira—who had never been so starved for another person—finally felt fed.
Lowering her carefully back to the ground when lightning flashed above them again, he said, “Jesus, Mira. We should have done that a long time ago.”
As thunder rolled in the distance, she tilted her face up to his. “I’m proud of us for doing it at all.”
A snowflake floated down, landing on his nose, followed by a few more in his hair, and then dozens, hundreds, fat spring flakes turning Main Street into a snow globe.
“Is it seriously snowing?” he asked, staring up at the sky, baffled as snowflakes turned his shoulders white. “Wasn’t there lightning a second ago?”
Trying to blink through the flakes on her lashes, she explained, “Thundersnow.”
“Huh. I thought that was a myth.”
She grinned. “Just May in Montana.”
“You’re shivering.” He wrapped his arms around her, tucking her head under his chin, brushing snow from her back and her ass, his hand lingering. “You should go back inside.”
She let herself take a deep, slow breath in his arms. “And you should get on the road before this turns into an ice storm.”
Even standing there freezing in the snow, it took several seconds before he leaned back, his hands still warm on her body, and kissed her one last time, as tenderly as she’d ever been kissed. Then he backed away, his eyes never leaving hers until he stepped on Ian’s shoe. Bending down, he picked it up, brushed the snow away, then lowered onto a knee. “Nice Vans,” he said, sliding the shoe back onto her foot.
