“Then we won’t,” he said, like it was that simple. And maybe it was.
We sat there a while longer, wrapped in quiet, and I let myself just exist in that moment—with him, in my kitchen, in the stillness. No expectations. No labels. Just comfort.
When I finally got up, he followed, gathering the mugs and rinsing them in the sink like he’d done it a hundred times before.
Chapter 10
Hunter
The clatter of a socket wrench echoed off the concrete floor of the shop as I straightened up and stretched my back. I’d left Paige’s house and gone straight to work. My shirt was stuck to me in places I didn't want to think about, and there was a smear of grease across my forearm. It was a warm day, and the fan overhead might as well have been stirring soup.
Cassidy's Automotive looked exactly as it had since Dad took over the place from my grandfather when I was a little kid. The walls were lined with tools, pegboards filled with wrenches, and sockets sorted by size. An old fridge hummed in the corner, covered in fading bumper stickers and notes scrawled on taped-up paper. The smell of motor oil and rubber was baked into the concrete, and the front office always had a faint aroma of coffee and air freshener. I loved that it rarely ever changed in here, but I wouldn’t mind the addition of an air conditioner.
We were working on the old ’67 Camaro he’d acquired, and I was trying to get Paige out of my mind so I could focus on the task at hand and not screw it up.
Dad leaned against the open garage door, sipping coffee like he didn’t notice the heat at all. “You’re quiet today. Everything okay?”
I shrugged. “Just thinking.”
“That wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain bartender we both know, would it?”
I shot him a look, and he grinned over the rim of his travel mug.
“You think I don't notice things? The look on your face is intense.”
“It’s complicated,” I muttered as I wiped my hands on a rag, stepped outside into the morning air, and squinted up at the sky.
“Complicated?Pfft.You look like you're waiting on a delivery that ain’t coming,” he observed. He held his mug of coffee and looked every bit the grizzly bear he'd always been—hair in a ponytail, beard like a lumberjack, coveralls pulled down at the top and tied around his waist.
“Just thinking,” I repeated. “Trying to figure stuff out is all.”
“Don't hurt yourself.”
I grinned, grabbed my water bottle, and wandered over to sit on the steps.
“You know, when I turned forty,” he said, lowering himself beside me with a groan, “your mother gave me a card that said, 'You're not old, you're vintage.' Then she made me a cake and we spent the rest of the day with you kids.”
I chuckled. “I remember. I miss her.”
“Paige?” He asked, confused.
“Mom.” She died when I was barely a teenager. Cancer. She’d hardly been sick before she was gone. It had been that quick.
“Ahh, I miss her too. Always will.”
“You never dated anyone after her.”
He fell quiet, gazing out over the patch of sunlit yard as if searching for something hidden in the shadows of the fence. The silence hung heavy between us.
I fiddled with the cap of my water bottle, unsure what to say—unsure if words could even reach the place he had drifted to. Grief doesn’t ask for permission; it just arrives, settles in, and makes itself comfortable.
“Why would I?” he finally said, his eyes shifting to mine. “She was the love of my life. The mother of my babies. I’ll never find anyone better, and I’ll never be happier than I was when she was here.”
“Aren’t you lonely?”
He let out a low chuckle, though it sounded rough around the edges. “She used to say I could fix anything, but I never figured out how to fix a broken heart.” My throat tightened. I wanted to reach over, to say something that might fill the space she’d left behind, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, we both sat there, letting the sun warm our shoulders, each lost in memories that never really faded. He looked away as a sad smile crossed his face. “I’ll be with her again. Just a matter of time.”
“Dad…”
